‘I’ll go first, Cully,’ she says all of a sudden. Eyes open now, but not seeing me. Looking into the past. ‘Ready? Hop, frog, hop, frog, out of your den. Hop across the top of the pond and hop right back again.’ While she’s chanting the rhyme she’s flicking a stone out of her heap, not touching it but using the sticks. Flicks it once, flicks it again and the stone sails through the air and onto the other heap. Where it settles. But not for long. It wobbles, flicks itself down to the ground, then hurtles across the cleared space and lands on Blackthorn’s stones. Can’t see Cully, but it looks like he’s playing.

‘Your turn,’ says Blackthorn. Voice shaking a bit.

He’s there, sitting cross-legged opposite her. Reaches to flick a stone from his own pile to hers. Falls a bit short, half a handspan from Blackthorn’s heap. She gathers it in with her two sticks. ‘Mine to keep, Froggie weep,’ she says, and looks over at him.

Cionnaola’s seen him. Comes striding down the path. I put up a hand, palm out, and he stops where he is. Fair enough to be a bit alarmed. Not a little boy sitting there, but a tall man in a black cloak, dark hair tied back with a cord, silver rings glinting on his long fingers. Take one look at his face and you’d know he was fey. Even if you’d never seen one of them before. You can tell he’s different. You can tell he’s dangerous. Looks the way Blackthorn said, arrogant, forbidding. He’s always like that, even when he’s being helpful.

The two of them put their sticks down.

‘I was right, then,’ Blackthorn says. ‘About where we had met before and why you’ve helped me.’

‘I had thought the memory lost to you forever.’ His voice is like the cloak, dark and soft. Sort of voice that could draw a person in deep if they weren’t careful.

‘The memory wasn’t lost. Only . . . you’re so different now. It was hard to imagine the Cully of my childhood becoming . . . this.’ She goes quiet, thinking. ‘I have a favour to ask. A big one. Probably undeserved. Only I want to ask questions too. All kinds of questions. But there isn’t much time.’

‘I have been gone some while,’ Conmael says. Solemn as an owl. Not so haughty now. ‘I owe you a few answers.’

Blackthorn doesn’t ask, Where have you been? She doesn’t ask, Why didn’t you come when I called you? She doesn’t even tell him about Mathuin, at least not yet. ‘Back then, I never thought you might be a real changeling,’ she says. ‘I should have known.’

‘You were young. How could you have known?’