He listened carefully, took it all in, silent and stone-faced. With his grey-skin and dead eyes, he might as well have been a statue. He hadn't felt so wholly, unnaturally dead since he'd left his father's home, but now, in the face of Kieren and all his vitality, it was impossible to ignore.

"Someone else," he parroted flatly. The only indication that the revelation affected him all was a faint twitch of tension in his jaw.