No hesitation now. Her head snapped around to the other shoulder, and there was another mass of mottled plumage. It didn’t matter over which side she looked, the view was identical and reversed.

She had wings.

Actual wings. Sodden, bedraggled, dripping water, but they were incontrovertibly wings. They hung off her back, still and lifeless, on her and part of her, and she couldn’t move them because she had no way of knowing how to move them. Which muscles should she flex, which part of her brain should she spark to trigger that? She knew how to move her fingers, her toes: she just thought about it, and it happened. But wings?

How did she even get wings? Where did they come from, and what did they mean? Was it what Crows said, about doing too much, too soon? Had she become so infested with magic that it was breaking out, changing her without asking, taking her over.

She didn’t know if she should be scared or not. She’d grown wings because … she’d wished for them. Trapped on the mountain with only an angry dragon for company, with a sheer drop behind her, she remembered what she’d thought, what would have helped at that moment. If she could have flown.

And now she had wings. She didn’t know if that meant she could fly. Perhaps it did, if she could work out how to use them. On the other hand, if she did, then she knew nothing about how to fly. If she’d been given a car, she wouldn’t know how to drive it any more than being given wings gave her the knowledge of how to swoop and dive and soar.

Still sitting in the pond, she forced her legs out the boiler suit, then worked it backwards over the wings until she was free of it. She felt awkward, that standing would make her overbalance. But she couldn’t just stay there. Afternoon was stretching into evening, and soon it would be night.

As well as awkward, she felt restless. She hadn’t eaten for a day, two days, maybe longer – however long it had taken for her to get back to the castle. She was battered and bruised and bewinged, but she was also hollow.

Gripping the side of the pool, she got herself to crouching. Then slowly, slowly, she stood, more water pouring from her, giving her goosebumps as it evaporated away. She felt the wind catch the feathers behind her, and she shivered.

Her wings flexed, and tugged against her. She splashed her feet, scrabbling for stability, and after five or six steps, was able to stand mostly upright again. Gingerly, she lifted a leg over the edge of the pool, then the other, and she was on the pavement, leaving damp footprints trailing up to the door.