I drew a ragged breath, forcing myself back from the past. Prince Oran. The wretch! He’d had me completely fooled. For a brief time, I’d let myself believe that there were good men out there. But it seemed the prince of Dalriada, for all his pretty manners, was as bad as any of them. My heart was pounding fit to burst from my chest. I had to do something, act on this, now, straight away.

‘He gets so angry with me,’ Flidais said, sounding like a miserable child. ‘Every day it’s worse. I make a silly mistake, say something amiss, and he looks at me as if he wants to hurt me. He was . . . he was not gentle in the bedchamber. I fear the hand-fasting for what must come after.’

By all the gods. There was nothing uncanny about this at all, simply a naïve young woman drowning in a sea of shock and cruelty and heartbreak. No wonder she kept saying the wrong things. No wonder she seemed so ill at ease. She must have been half out of her mind with distress.

‘I’ll go and talk to him,’ I said. ‘Right now. And if he won’t see me, I’ll hammer on his door and shout until he has to listen. You can’t let him get away with this.’

‘No!’ Flidais blanched. ‘Oh, please, no, Mistress Blackthorn! Nobody must know. He’s the prince of Dalriada. We’re to be hand-fasted.’

‘You must tell someone,’ I said. ‘Not only me, but – Lady Sochla, or – or Master Oisin, before he leaves Winterfalls.’ Her situation was dire. Oran ruled over the entire district; he was the king’s only son. Like Mathuin, the prince doubtless felt he could do anything he chose. As for why he had bid me spy on Flidais, and spun me that tale about her, I could not begin to guess his reasoning – and I no longer cared to. Perhaps, like Mathuin, he played cruel games to amuse himself.

‘No! I can’t tell! And you mustn’t either!’

‘But, Lady Flidais,’ I protested as my mind raced ahead, trying to find answers for her, ‘you cannot marry a man who has shown such disregard for your feelings. You cannot wed a man you are afraid of. What sort of life would that be for you?’ Even as I spoke, I reminded myself that this kind of thing happened all the time. Flidais was at least being offered marriage, where Mathuin had taken his victims casually and abandoned them without a second thought. But Flidais should not have to bear the full weight of this; Oran should be held to account.

‘I need this marriage,’ she said now. ‘Oran will be king one day. My family needs it; you know their situation, Mistress Blackthorn. I cannot just pack up and walk away. I would disgrace everyone back home. Besides, there is nowhere to go.’