“Send for!” The voice was disbelieving. It came from behind me. It was my mother’s voice. “You did not send for our child!” She emerged from behind the curtain. “You’ve been away all these years!” Her voice had cracked a little and had a faint madness to it now. “Away from us! Away from your child! Living here as some elven prince! All this time you send for things! And you never once ‘sent for us’! Your family! How dare you Lehre!”

My father did not seemed in the slightest troubled by my mother’s accusation. Nor did he seem remotely concerned by Handeln and Manquer following my mother out from behind the curtain.

“They call me Betrüger now Scheren.” he said coldly.

“Betrüger!” My mother spat the name at him in disgust. “Was your goblin name not good enough for the elves? You’re pathetic! You’re a traitor! You’re – You’re a coward!” Her voice rose with every insult.

“Scheren,” He replied, as evenly as ever, “I know I’m none of those things but right now that is immaterial. You need to calm down.”

“Calm dow-” My mother began to scream but my father cut her off before she had the chance. In a flash, he’d crossed the room impossibly quickly to hold his hand over her mouth.

“Yes, you need to calm down and keep your voice down or the elves will here you. You may think I am their ‘prince’ but I assure you that I would be powerless to stop them from harming you, from harming the child, should they find you all here.” He paused before adding. “Why have you come here?” He frowned down at me emotionlessly. “And why did you bring our child?”

When he took his hand away from my mother’s mouth, she turned away from him and walked back to the entrance to the tunnel.

“They came to free you.” It was Manquer who spoke. Her hood for once was pulled down and her eyes blazed with hatred as she stared at my father.

“Hello Manquer,” my father replied emotionlessly. “It’s been - quite - a while.”

“Not long enough.” Manquer replied – her voice strangely calm and yet simultaneously boiling with rage.

My father poured a golden liquid from a decanter into a small tumbler on the table in the middle of the room. A table that I noticed now was covered in grains of a fine black powder. Looking around, I saw black powder seemed to cover every surface. Whatever my father had been doing here, this black powder must surely be at the heart of it.

“Would anyone care for a drink?” My father frowned as Handeln shrugged and took a glass from him. “And who are you?”

“Handeln.” Handeln replied in his usual gruff voice.

“Have you kept my child safe?”

Handeln shrugged before nodding at Manquer, “Haven’t done as much as she has.”

“Thank you,” my father nodded at Handeln ignoring Manquer entirely. “But, I still don’t know why you have come. Scheren, please stop this nonsense. You must talk to me at some point. Why are you here? Why have you come? Why didn’t you stay in Ruraux?”

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