The Lost Folk: Those Who Have Left, and Those Who Long to Return.

It seems to be mostly about extinct fae creatures. It talks about lost habitats, changes in the air itself. I take the paper knife out of the pot on the desk and carefully break apart the uncut pages. They’re handwritten in spiky black lettering. I flick through, my fingers moving over unfamiliar words, until I find it.

Teacake was leading me straight here.

THE LOST PRINCE

When the fae queen succumbed to the Plaga, shadows descended over Winterspell, and great change was wrought. The creatures who had known only peace were slow to realize the danger they were in, but once they saw how the shadows destroyed all they touched, they began to fight. Sometimes, they won, and sometimes they lost. But always, the shadows remained, for the old fae king’s mourning knew no bounds, and he hardly knew what he had unleashed upon the world. Hidden in his cursed palace, locked away from all the fae, he saw only his own grief.

The fae will fight for eternity for Winterspell. They need no hero, for they are all heroes living in that magical forest. But there are few who gleam with the moon’s own light. And fewer still who can call upon the fae king’s heart. The child of the Lost Queen may just be the key, in time.

The Lost Prince will return when he is grown. He will find the palace, though the way is treacherous. He will face his father, and his arrival in Winterspell will herald both a new beginning and an end, in time.

‘Oh will it,’ I mutter, stroking Teacake. ‘What a load of rubbish – it’s no help at all. Nan made it up, after all. There is no Lost Prince!’

Teacake makes a questioning sound in the back of her throat, staring hard at me with her unblinking green eyes, and then she sticks her claws into my knee and starts to knead, purring. I tuck the book into my cardigan, and pick her up, heading to my bedroom. What would it have been like to grow up in Winterspell like Yanny did? To be truly part of that fae world? We did live in there, once.

If only I could remember.

‘Stella!’

Peg pokes his imp head in through the door.

‘You didn’t say goodnight.’

‘You were asleep!’

‘That doesn’t usually bother you.’

He leaps across the floor and lands on the bed, bouncing Teacake into the air with a fierce little toothy grin. She recovers herself and prowls around him for a moment before curling up next to him, her smoky tail twined with his bright scaled one.

‘Pesky creature,’ he hisses, but he doesn’t move away. ‘So, you’re not happy?’

‘I don’t know what to do. Nobody will tell me. They just keep saying when the time is right . . . How am I supposed to know when that is? I can’t even undo Nan’s glamour – I’m useless!