Getting away had been oddly easy. Although she’d left at dawn there had already been folk about. Guards patrolling. Lights in the house, perhaps the cook and her assistants starting up their fires. But nobody had noticed Cara slipping across the garden and the farmland and the open space between the trees to climb over the gate and walk away from the prince’s holding. She wasn’t sure how she had managed it. All she had done was think of an oak tree, how even when the branches and the foliage were whipped to confusion by a winter gale, the trunk stood strong and still. As she’d moved, she had held the inside of herself as still as that tree. She had thought of other quiet things, a shadow on snow, the tiny footprints of a vole, the wings of an eagle, gliding. An egg in a nest. The breath of a spider, spinning magic.

She’d wondered, moving on through the forest, whether she had worked a magic of her own. Made herself invisible. The old Cara, Cara-Before, would have known that was impossible. But Cara-Now might be able to do all kinds of things. Cara-Now was a completely different girl. She had a drop or two of fey in her blood.

And now she was here. The house lay low and quiet within its green shield of beeches, holding its secrets close. Cara shivered, pulling her cloak more tightly around her. The weight of this was heavy on her shoulders. What she had to do. What she had to say. The words she had to find, even if her father’s heart broke right before her eyes. If she did manage to say them, what about afterwards? What was meant to happen?

The leaves stirred in a breath of cool wind. The crow spoke at last, a sound that might have meant anything. It brought the druid’s words back to Cara. Two paths lie before you. He’d said one was broad and straight, without surprises. That would be the path of turning around right now and walking back to Winterfalls. The path of doing as her father bid her. Of not facing up to the truth. And the other one was the path of twists and turns, of challenges and surprises. The path of confronting her father with the past and dealing with the consequences. Being brave, like Blackthorn. Being strong, like Grim. Being wise, like Master Oisin. Being honest even if it hurt so much she could hardly breathe.

‘Forward,’ she whispered. And with the three birds for company, she walked toward the house.

There was a familiar horse in the yard, loosely tethered. Father’s grey, Willow. He must be planning to ride out somewhere. He wasn’t heading out to look for her, was he? No, that couldn’t be it. How would anyone here know she’d even left Winterfalls?