‘It should be at full moon. A time of magic and mystery, tides and changes. There will only be one chance.’

‘How can I persuade her to go to Dreamer’s Wood? What if she refuses? I do not wish to have her conveyed there by force.’

‘You can leave that part of it to me,’ said Blackthorn. ‘Just be advised that, at some point between now and the council, the lady will put an unlikely suggestion to you. When she does, make sure you say yes.’

‘I see.’ That was a lie; I did not see at all, but I understood this was my only hope.

‘Take Donagan into your confidence,’ Blackthorn said. ‘Grim says he can be trusted, and Grim is a good judge of men. Tell him as much of the truth as you think he can stomach. In particular, make sure that when you do ride out to Dreamer’s Wood, the escort you take is Donagan and nobody else.’

‘Donagan is leaving my service after the council.’

‘You might prevail upon him to stay for one more night, my lord,’ said Blackthorn. ‘I wager he’ll have changed his mind by the morning.’

38 Blackthorn

38

~BLACKTHORN~

I fed her the idea piece by piece. A sudden revelation, straight after I’d told her there was no sure way to conceive a boy, would surely have had her suspecting a trap. So, while I went to talk to her and Mhairi every evening, what I told them was that I was studying the lore, going over all the charms and spells I knew of, and speaking to the old folk of the district, one by one, in case there was something useful that I didn’t know. I hoped to have an answer for her soon. Soon.

She was impatient, just like the prince. I guessed that she feared discovery before they were wed, and knew that if she could say she was with child, or might be, Oran would feel obliged to stand by her even if the strange truth came out. As for what would happen to her if my plan succeeded, I shrank from it even as I knew that we must do this for Flidais’s sake. To pretend we did not know what Ciar had done, to let her continue as Flidais, marry the future king and condemn the real Flidais to remain in her current form would be a coward’s way forward. Besides, now that I had told the prince, there would be no doing that. I’d agreed to help Oran, and Oran wanted his true Flidais back. He’d hardly hesitated before he said yes to my proposal. He was a man of some intelligence; he must realise what it could mean for him, for all of us, if this went wrong. High stakes. My instincts, and Grim’s, had better be right.