‘Sorry . . .’ I start, but he shakes his head.

‘I was trying to imagine how it feels. You really never . . . You never went to school before?’

‘No.’

‘So what did you do?’ his curiosity is suddenly needle-sharp.

I shrug. ‘It’s just me and Nan at home, and Peg, my . . . my pet. There’s lots to do, but . . . it was lonely.’

‘You’ll like it here,’ he says. ‘You’ll fit right in. I can feel it.’

He smiles. There’s that flicker of magic, only this time it doesn’t tug at me. It soothes, like the flame of a candle. I remember when Nan used to glow like that, before she faded.

Our last visit to Winterspell was the winter I turned ten. That was when I knew for sure what Nan was. She’d talked to me for years about the legends of the fae, and the Plaga that strikes every few generations, and that this time took only my mother. About how the grief of my father, a fae king in his prime, had become a visceral thing that birthed the shadows that have blighted Winterspell ever since.

How she’d hidden me so that his shadows, grown into their own power over all this time, would not be able to reach Winterspell’s last future hope: me.

She never told me what she was.

I thought she was flesh and blood, a sprite just like me. Like my father, the tree sprite who I barely remembered, just a blur at the edge of my mind – stern one minute, laughing the next. Like a storm in spring. I wanted to know him, even as the very idea of being close to him now terrified me.

That night, we stole between the glowing stalks of winter trees at sunset, and she held me close as ever and used her magic to shield us, and we watched as tiny, bright figures leaped between branches. Spiderwebs gleamed like copper wire, and the trees flexed their roots beneath the hard earth with deep sighs, and there was singing in the distance. We skirted around them, watching, listening, and we trod on our familiar path, searching once more for the cursed palace.

But as we went, the way grew colder. Frost gathered in every nook. Trees hung with bright daggers of ice. And between their stark branches, the shadows came. They were wolves, and men eight feet tall, showing their teeth and claws, howling into the grey winter air. We pushed on, for only if we reached the palace could the king be raised – maybe even brought back to himself. Back to me. But the shadows were bolder. They were snakes upon our path, and bats in our hair, they were great monsters, and when they touched me, it hurt. With every breath, they took something from me – and as they took, they grew.

The terror overtook curiosity.

‘Nan,’ I managed, when I could barely move. She turned back, and horror whickered across her face. She rushed back to me, howling, cutting a swathe through the shadows.