‘He’s like a little brother to us,’ Midori confessed, pulling her hair up into a ponytail before delicately sipping on her hot chocolate. ‘We always thought it was cute how serious he was as a child, but the older he got, the harder it was to see him like that.’

‘So you knew? About who Jamie really was?’ Lottie’s fingers paused where they held the mug mere inches from her lips.

Eyes cast down, Hanna and Midori said nothing, their silence speaking louder than any words, and Lottie couldn’t blame them; she hadn’t told him either.

‘We think Willemena was a bit afraid of Jamie,’ Midori admitted, stirring the spoon in her mug until the cream had melted. ‘He was always so smart and strong. It made her uneasy knowing what his father had done.’

Hanna began absent-mindedly fiddling with a curl of her orange hair. ‘And after he was born, the gardens grew wild,’ she said. ‘The queen mother stopped bringing people in to tend them.’

‘Why?’

‘They are very superstitious.’ The way Midori said it made it clear they were not the only ones who were superstitious. ‘I suppose she feared invoking Hirana’s spirit, that Jamie would seek retribution one day.’ Pausing to lick a clump of chocolate sauce off her spoon, Midori’s eyes clouded over. ‘Now it seems that future she was so scared of may be coming true.’

Lottie imagined what it must be like for all of them in the palace to live with this awful secret, and she felt the burden heavy on her shoulders, that same feeling of guilt. ‘I can’t believe he’s really gone,’ she said at last.

The two maids shuffled and Midori looked up at the door.

‘Lottie, we want you to have something,’ Hanna announced, her voice pitching, as if she wasn’t quite sure if what she was about to do would be allowed. She stuck her hand in her apron pocket and pulled out a small silver drawstring bag, its velvet skin glistening like mercury.

As fast as a kingfisher, she opened it and poured the contents into her hand, placing something in Lottie’s palm with her eyes shifting constantly back to the door, as if this was all very secret and important. ‘This is the ring Hirana left for Jamie,’ she said, voice barely a whisper. ‘They were going to give it to him next year when they told him the truth but after we found out he’d left we, umm … well, we took it. To look after it – for Jamie.’

‘You what?’ Lottie couldn’t help baulking; even in her grief she had enough sense to be shocked.

‘You do not understand – the queen mother was going to lock it away,’ Hanna quickly explained. ‘She thought it would become cursed because she failed to give it to Jamie.’