‘There was one time when I caught the others red-handed, abusing him,’ Blackthorn says. ‘Calling him names, worse ones than changeling. Calling him bastard, saying his father was a murderer or a madman or a demon. Saying foul things about his mother that they must have learned from their own mothers and fathers. Things they probably didn’t even know the meaning of. And Cully just standing there in the middle of their circle, white as a sheet, letting it all rain down on him. I marched in and told them what I thought. Shamed them with their own cruelty. Said if I caught them at it again I’d turn the lot of them into toads. I wasn’t sure I could really do that, but they must have believed I could. They never teased him again. And if they told their parents what I’d threatened, I never heard a thing about it.’

‘Could be the parents didn’t fancy being toads either.’

‘Anyway,’ says Blackthorn, ‘in time I moved on. Left Brocc’s Wood. Never did find out what happened to Cully. Only . . . I’ve wondered if it could have been him. Conmael. A real changeling. A fey child brought up as a human boy. A boy who was always out of place in this world. A boy who repaid my small act of kindness, years later, by saving my life. Though he did put conditions on it. As if he saw, even when we were children, that my anger could all too easily boil over and make me lose my good judgement.’ She gets up to fetch dried herbs for a brew. ‘What do you think, Grim? It seems a mad theory. The favour Conmael did for you and me was huge. It changed our lives forever. And what I did for Cully was such a little thing. Besides, you know what Conmael is like. Tall. Imposing. Handsome. Every bit a nobleman and obviously fey. A different creature from that awkward, frightened boy.’

‘What do I think? I think the only way you’ll know is if you ask him straight out.’

‘Which I can’t do.’