‘And I hope it always will be,’ says Fen. ‘But it has been a decade already, of fighting and hiding, and hoping for change. The Shadow King’s subjects are wilder and stronger than ever, so we must make our own changes, prepare for our future. For your future.’

‘My future is here!’

‘Enough of this,’ Elowen says. ‘Stella doesn’t need to hear all of our family dramas. I’ll make us a hot drink, and then, Yanny, you can walk Stella home.’ A flicker of doubt crosses her face. ‘The nights are so dark now, you’ll need your faelight.’ She looks from Yanny to me and frowns. ‘Stella – are you all right?’

‘Oh! Yes, of course – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause such trouble.’

‘You haven’t,’ she says, her brown eyes glowing with golden flecks. ‘You are most welcome here.’

But she doesn’t know who I am.

How would she look at me if she did?

The walk through the forest is quiet. Yanny holds the wand-like faelight high above our heads, and mist drizzles through its light, so that a nimbus cloud surrounds us. My fingers find the silver acorn around my neck, and there’s reassurance in its familiar weight, even if nothing else is familiar. Even if the shadows crow and call and slither on either side of us.

‘Thank you for having me,’ I whisper, to distract myself from thin, leering faces and the tread of the shadow wolves by my side.

‘It didn’t go quite the way I thought.’ Yanny sighs, looking sideways at me. ‘Nothing ever seems to, around you.’

‘I’m sorry things are so difficult here . . .’

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘What’s it like living with ghost nan and a cat and an imp?’

‘Ha.’ I think about it for a moment, fresh from all the joy and the worry of his home. ‘It’s quiet. In a good way.’

The roots beneath my feet lurch suddenly, and I’m sent sprawling into the trunk of a slender, still young oak tree, my shoulder jarring hard against it. My breath plumes out in a cloud of steam, and ice crystals fall all around me. A tiny golden shape rolls towards me from the upper reaches of the bank, and I stretch out over the cold earth to grab it as the tree whispers to me of days in the sun.

It’s an acorn.

My heart thumps as a flicker of a memory washes over me: my mother, wearing something like this around her neck, its chain catching in her pale hair, smiling as we crouch to pick wild strawberries together . . .

The image is so vivid, it takes me a while to find my feet. I feel like I’m back in that moment, back with her. Yanny stoops to help me up.

‘What happened?’ he asks, as I brush myself down and pocket the acorn. My hands are trembling, my mind still clinging to that golden summer day. ‘You’re a liability in here . . .’