Haru’s words had the world melting away, a memory forming, not of his princess but of Lottie and the gift she’d bought him for his birthday before she knew his preference not to celebrate it. It was a book about Pakistan, filled with recipes and stories and history, which he’d been so angry about, so afraid. But, despite his disapproval, he’d found himself unable to part with it. Ellie had never given him such a thing, nor had the rest of the Wolfsons. All he had from them was the silver wolf they all hung round their necks. Biting down hard on his cheek, Jamie reminded himself that they’d also taken him in and, most importantly, trusted him.

‘I have a question,’ Haru said, his summer-breeze smile returning, eyes creasing like a fox. ‘It’s about your princess, and her friend Ellie – they are very close, are they not? Closer than most friends?’

Jamie froze, torn between his relief at the change in topic, and the prickling feeling on his skin at the mention of Lottie and Ellie in the same sentence, knowing they were skirting dangerously round the truth.

‘Yes, they are very close.’ Saying it out loud made the phantom burn in his chest surge.

‘It is only my observation, but the two of them seem so different, like night and day.’

Jamie winced once more. It was his greatest fear to see that light in Lottie snuffed out by the darkness of the Wolfsons’ burdens.

‘Sometimes opposites are good for each other,’ he replied through gritted teeth, furious with himself for having all these awful thoughts.

‘Then why does Ellie make your princess so unhappy?’

Somewhere a twig snapped, and Jamie turned sharply in the direction of the sound. However, there was only Haru staring back at him, his dark brown doe eyes black as charcoal in the encroaching night.

No more was what he saw in Ellie and Lottie his own bias; it was fact, observable to those around them. Jamie knew that Lottie had been good for Ellie once, because she’d showed her the damage her carefree attitude could inflict. In that split second the Maravish royal family no longer felt like his saviours. They were not benediction, kindness and salvation. They were a disease, one that had already claimed him. And when he searched deeper into the feeling he could not see Ellie as his princess. It was only Lottie that he wanted to defend, and Ellie was what she needed protecting from.