He reached up and hooked her neck. He did two things, at the same time: pull her down, and twist his body on top of her.

Claws raked the stones beside them, raising a shower of flinty sparks. Then they were gone, away and into the night.

‘Bell disagrees,’ he said, searching the sky for her.

Mary threw him off, and he was too weak to stop her.

‘It was always going to come to this, wasn’t it?’ A flash of movement on the cliff face caught her attention. A long neck, a long tail, broad leathery wings against the rock, then out again into clear air. ‘Fuck. She’s coming back.’

‘What, precisely, do you want me to do about that?’ He raised himself to a half-crouch, but seemed to lack the strength to go any further.

‘Run?’

‘Where? How?’

She couldn’t spot Bell any more. Dalip was right: he couldn’t do anything, but she could. She coiled her legs under her and leapt. With a strong sweep of her wings, she was aloft in amongst the turbulence. Her sight, pin-sharp, spotted her quarry immediately. Out over the castle and heading straight for her.

She flapped hard, building momentum. Someone was playing chicken with an East End girl, and she was determined not to flinch. They closed on each other, and at the last moment, she drew in her wings and turned her whole body. For the brief second of contact, they slashed at each other, and then they were apart, the distance between them widening.

Mary turned the right way up and banked hard, wheeling around the blazing tower and heading back towards the lake.

Here came Bell again, dead ahead, jaws wide, feet raised to strike. And again, Mary flipped over and tried to close her claws on something substantial. Missed. Gone.

They could do this all night until one of them made a mistake, this passing joust. Most likely, because she was less familiar with her skin, it would be Mary who would fall. So she had to change the game. What could she do better than a dragon?

Rather than fly at her – she could see Bell lining up her next pass – she started to climb. The dragon tried to match her, but flew harmlessly underneath.

Mary dipped a wing and gave chase.

The shallow dive she put herself in took her to within touching distance of Bell’s scaly back. Bell’s serpentine head twisted around and a slight adjustment left Mary with nothing beneath her but the speeding ground. She pulled up, turned in a tight circle and set off after her again.