Tears leaked from her eyes, rolled down into her hair. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, crying silent tears, but it must have been a while, because the beam of sunlight had shifted when next she looked. Then a new sound, a baby crying. She rolled over, onto her side; her back felt odd. Heavy. Numb. A big feather floated close to her face, speckled grey.

A feather-stuffed mattress! No wonder I feel like I’ve slept for a moon.

She stretched, muscles shifting, and ran a hand through her hair. It felt longer. The longest it had ever been.

A fair-haired woman was sitting close by, half in shadow, a baby wrapped in swaddling held in the crook of one arm, feeding at her breast.

‘Hello, Riv,’ the woman said.

It was Fia.

Riv tried to sit up, but her back felt strange, as if it were heavier than it should be, dragging her back onto the bed, and then there was the thud of boots, and hands were taking hers, helping her up, faces dipping into her vision. Vald, grinning, Jost, eyes wider, odd. Staring at her. She looked at herself, saw she was wearing breeches and a linen shirt, baggy and shapeless.

‘Where am I?’ Riv asked, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling light-headed. She blinked them open, realized she felt better, physically, than she had for such a long time.

The fever is gone. And I feel stronger, full of energy.

‘A woodsman’s hut, deep in Forn,’ Fia said.

‘Safe,’ Vald said.

Jost was still staring at her, all white-eyed wonder.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said. He was starting to annoy her.

‘Wrong? Nothing,’ Jost said. He looked away, eyes almost instantly drifting back to her. No, behind her.

‘What is it, then?’ Riv snapped.

‘Well . . . you’ve got wings,’ Jost said in wonder.

‘Don’t be an idi—’ Riv started. Then she stopped. Another feather drifted idly down to the ground. She looked over her shoulder.

The arch of a wing reared there, big. She took a staggering step forwards and the wing followed her. Her head snapped around to the other shoulder, another wing there, too.

‘I’ve got wings,’ she said, fear and wonder mixed.

Without knowing how, a subconscious movement, she unfurled them, a shifting of muscle, a ripple of feathers, and her wings snapped wide, almost filling the room.

‘Not in here!’ Fia laughed as pots and plates went tumbling and smashing, and somehow Riv furled them back in with a snap. Vald and Jost led her outside, Fia following behind her, and Riv stepped out onto a timber porch, a woodland glade around them. The wings felt heavy upon her back, a shifting of weight and balance that she wasn’t used to. Horses whickered somewhere nearby and she saw a figure sitting on a tree stump, tending to a bow on his lap.

It was Bleda.