‘What are you doing here at this time of the night?’ she whispered as she opened the window. ‘You think simply because it is dark it is safe? All it takes is one guard mentioning that he saw you flying free and His Lordship will shoot you from the sky himself.’ But as she was delivering her speech, she was also guiding the eagle onto her arm. ‘Fine, you can stay, but you need to be gone before the sun rises.’ She made a face as she added, ‘His Lordship wants to take a walk in the morning.’

Isabel made her way back to the warm bed and climbed in. As she was lying down, she noticed something wound around Margery’s leg. She slid the eagle across the linen until the bird was directly beneath the moonlight coming in through the open window. Isabel’s breath caught when she saw it was a daisy chain, just like the ones she and Ita used to make when they were children.

‘Where did you get this?’ Isabel asked as she attempted to unwind it. Losing patience, she broke it apart and held it up to the light to study the handiwork. It was painfully, and impossibly, familiar. She held the ends together to see if it was the right size for a crown.

It was perfect.

‘If she was alive, I would know long before now.’ She laid the daisy chain on the table next to the bed. ‘If she had made it out of the house, she would have run straight to me. Am I wrong?’

Margery blinked sleepily.

Isabel had screamed Ita’s name over and over, pulling against Lord Hodge’s iron grip to return inside the burning house for her friend.

‘Stop,’ her mother had cried.

‘Do not go,’ Everard had pleaded as he clung to her waist.

‘It is too late,’ Hodge had said moments before the roof collapsed, sending flames twenty feet into the air.

She could almost feel the heat from them. Her toes curled beneath the blankets at the memory of walking barefoot across a scalding floor. It had taken a month for the burns on the soles of her feet to heal.

She ran a finger over the rough skin on her left hand, a permanent reminder that she had tried to get into that room before Hodge had dragged her away through the thick smoke.

‘It was locked,’ Isabel whispered, stroking the eagle’s back. ‘That door was never locked.’

Margery turned her head, blinking at her.

‘I suppose you are sick of hearing about it,’ she said as she tucked her arms beneath the blankets to warm them. The eagle took that as her cue to sleep. The pair had slept together every night since Isabel’s father had rescued the nestling—until they came to Hampstead Keep.

‘Sweet girl,’ she said when soft feathers brushed her forehead. ‘I wish I could come with you.’

‘Isabel!’

Isabel startled awake at the sound of Hodge’s voice, then shot upright, looking around for Margery. The eagle was nowhere to be seen.