“I’ll take him.” This soft voice was that of the nursemaid, and when I looked up she was standing right by me, reaching out her arms. “I’ll look after him, I promise.” Her face was not blank now, but bore a sweet, shy expression. I wondered how she had come to be here in the Otherworld and whether she was content.

The moment had come. “Very well,” I made myself say. I kissed Becan on his brow, my tears watering his leafy skin. I unfastened his twiggy fingers from my clothing—oh, so tightly he clung—and put him into the girl’s arms. He began to cry, a tiny, forlorn sound. I gathered Finbar up. Though he was small, he was a far heavier burden than Becan; a warm, real human baby. And yet . . . and yet, at that moment, my heart ached fit to break for my changeling, my little one, beloved in all his curious oddity.

Mac Dara smiled. It was the kind of smile a man gives when he scents victory in a game of wits. He clicked his fingers. The nursemaid put Becan in his arms, and Mac Dara threw him into the fire.

A great scream ripped itself out of me. Dropping Finbar on the seat, I flung myself toward the flames. Mac Dara’s arm came around me, holding me back. Becan’s shriek pierced me like a blade. I fought, biting, scratching, sobbing, every part of me straining toward the fire.

“I’m sure that was loud enough to do the trick,” observed the Lord of the Oak.

Gods, oh gods, no . . . He was burning, burning, his twigs and bark and mosses going up like a torch. I kicked and struggled, my body convulsed with wrenching sobs, until Mac Dara released me and I threw myself down beside the fire, scrabbling in the burning coals for any part of my little one that still remained.

“Careful,” said Mac Dara. “Don’t burn those pretty hands.”

Blinded by tears, I snatched at a corner of the woollen shawl, the only part of Becan I could see, ripping it out of the flames. Something rolled with it as it came: a speckled pebble, my baby’s blind, dead eye. I clutched it in my hand; its heat scorched my palm. My gorge rose, and I retched the contents of my stomach out onto the floor of Mac Dara’s pavilion, splattering the embroidered gown they had made me wear for this travesty of an audience.

A commotion outside the pavilion, running footsteps, shouting, a clash of metal. I heard the Lord of the Oak suck in his breath, and then someone flung himself down beside me, setting his hand on my bent shoulder, and I wrenched myself violently away.

“What have you done to her?”