‘You might feel that way,’ Grim said. ‘But you’re one woman. One woman can’t fix every wrong. One woman or one man can’t help every soul in trouble. Doesn’t matter how much you want to.’

‘I don’t want to fix every wrong. Only this one.’ I knew even as I spoke that this was no longer true. It had not been for some time. There had been other wrongs, smaller ones maybe, but to the folk involved, as big as life and death. Between us, Grim and I had fixed some of them, or gone a certain way toward doing so. An abused girl; a prince trapped in someone else’s lie; a woman with a sick child, on her own and struggling. If I said those were not important, I would be denying the value of a human life. If I said I’d helped them only because my vow to Conmael demanded it, I’d be lying. Which put a new idea into my head. ‘Maybe Conmael would think I’ve changed enough by now. Seen the error of my ways. Maybe, if I could find him, it wouldn’t be so hard to convince him.’

‘So you tell him you’ve changed. He says yes, forget the seven years. And you rush off south again and get yourself killed.’

‘Even you don’t believe in me.’ In my mind, for some reason, was the look on Flidais’s face as she played with baby Aolú. Had I ever been like that, full of hope, lit up by joy? Had my eyes held that same delight as I played with my own son? ‘A pox on all of it,’ I muttered, fishing for a handkerchief. What was wrong with me? Where had the brave Blackthorn gone, the one who knew her own mind?

Grim moved to sit beside me on the bench. Put an arm around me. ‘Not true, and you know it,’ he said. ‘Believed in you from the first, when they brought you into that place of Mathuin’s. All us poor godforsaken sods did. That hasn’t changed.’ When I said nothing, he went on, ‘Have a cry, if you want. You’ve seen me bawling like a baby. No shame in that.’