Joss stops. "Oh," he says. "I'm sorry." But he isn't, though he's trying to pretend to be. He doesn't understand this kind of emotion very well. "Humans do have a nasty habit of dying, and you're still young enough you haven't outlived them yet. You will; give it time." Joscelin's not very good at sympathy or saying the right thing to someone who's grieving.

He reaches under his shirt and pulls out his daylight ring on its gold chain. "I didn't know my real mother very well; Father sent her off to a nunnery somewhere once I was old enough to do without her. But my sire was the closest thing I had to a mother. This was her ring. She was murdered in 1598; Millicent sent hunters after her. Some sort of power struggle.

"It gets easier, over time, and you've got a lot of it. It'll hurt, sure, but it hurts less."