Her dream confirmed for her that in her heart she didn’t believe Phillip was to blame for Maleficent’s disappearance. Aurora knew him. She believed that he was still the person she’d fallen in love with despite herself, someone kind and decent and good. She could believe he’d gone back to Ulstead, but she could never believe he would hurt anyone just for power or revenge.

Count Alain’s words had played into her fears, but that didn’t make them true.

And if I’m wrong, then nothing is fair, she told herself, because we didn’t even get a love story. He didn’t kiss me one time when I was awake. If he was going to betray me, he should have at least kissed me first.

With those thoughts in her head, Aurora followed the raven. As she walked, she noticed the imprints of boots on the ground. Count Alain must have gone the same way.

Her heart beat harder, the dream and her reality blending.

Through the woods she walked. Diaval moved silently above her, winging from tree to tree. They went past the spot where Diaval had stopped before. Along the way, she lost Alain’s footprints, and the moonlight wasn’t bright enough for her to find them again. She hoped that she wasn’t lost.

“You know where we’re going, right, Diaval?” she whispered.

But all he could do was caw in return.

As she walked on, she came to a place with steam rising from the ground. Frowning, she knelt, expecting to find a passage to hot springs beneath the earth, but there seemed to be a chimney there, venting up from the ground.

What was below them? Could her godmother be held there?

She nearly shouted for her, when her sense got the better of her fear. She was going to have to find a different way.

On she went until she found the path again. It forked, one part winding on through the woods and another cutting down into a quarry.

She recalled Count Alain’s words: We are not so far from my estate. Let’s make for it in the morning. I will put my soldiers at your disposal.

If they were close to his estate, then they were also close to his iron mines.

She found her way down the path in the moonlight, wishing with each step that she had an easy means of sending information to Smiling John. Wishing she’d come up with a different plan. Wishing she hadn’t tried to be quite so clever.

Because there, gaping in front of her, was the entrance to the mine. She crept toward it. The closer she got, the more she was sure she heard voices. She peered into the smoky torchlit darkness, blinking and trying to make out shapes.