When they reached her grandmother’s quarters, Ellie didn’t pause to knock. She pushed the door, slamming it back on its hinges. Lottie jumped at the sound. Lying in bed, frail as an autumn leaf, Ellie’s grandmother was propped up on a throne of silken pillows. Other than a knife-thin slit of light from a crack in the curtains, the room was dark apart from the glow of Willemena’s eyes.

‘No ceremonious crap,’ Ellie said. ‘You tell us both everything, right now.’

King Alexander draped himself over an armchair in the corner of the room, head resting in his hand, while his wife stayed in the slit of light, gazing out and away at something beyond the windows. And there was Ellie, stood at the end of her grandmother’s bed, looking like death itself come to take her away.

Lottie remained by the door.

‘Is it true?’ Ellie stared her grandmother down, the storm simmering, ready to take a bite at any sign of a falsehood. ‘This whole time, was Jamie just my Partizan as some messed-up punishment?’

Willemena tried to speak, but a cough cut her off, hunching her over while they watched.

Has she always been this frail? Lottie wondered. Had she always been putting on a show of strength or was this decline a recent development? Either way, right now, she was no match for her granddaughter.

‘We did not mean for –’

‘I don’t care what you meant to do.’ Ellie cut her off with a growl, turning to her parents to make sure they wouldn’t attempt to intervene.

‘I made a mistake.’ The queen mother’s voice was thick with guilt. ‘I made a terrible mistake, and now we are all paying the price for it. Eleanor, please take a seat, and allow me to explain.’ She shuffled over on the bed, so Ellie could sit beside her. ‘You too, Miss Pumpkin.’

Lottie blinked, surprised to be called further into the room. Reticent, Lottie and her princess moved to settle on the bed.

Up close, Lottie could smell bergamot and lilac, a sleepy Earl Grey that covered up a dwindling rot like tooth decay which occasionally caught in her nose. It felt strange to be sitting here in such an intimate fashion, and Lottie kept thinking of the wolf in the grandmother’s clothing, wondering if all this was only a ruse to lure them closer before swallowing them up. Looking at the yellow-eyed old woman, feeling the lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away, she realized she needed to trust the queen mother. She had nothing else left.

‘No one really knows what they’re doing, Eleanor,’ Willemena said slowly, her lips trembling. ‘We can only keep trying to do the right thing, to retain the image of strength for others. This is what you have to do when you rule, when people rely on you.’