She’s out there now.

They’re all out there. While I stay in here, with my hot chocolate and my watchful nan.

I pick up the crockery and drop it into the sink with a clatter.

‘I’m going in now,’ I say into the silence.

‘I know I can’t stop you,’ Nan says. And if ghosts can cry, then she is, though it doesn’t show on her face. ‘But you’re still under the glamour, Stella. You haven’t got all of your power yet.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I have some power, and that will have to be enough. My friends are in there, and they know who I am. That legend of yours about the Lost Prince is still spoken about, and even if they don’t all believe it, it still means something. It means me. I wish we’d helped sooner.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘Honestly, Stella, if I thought we could have, then I would. They are my folk in there, as much as they are yours.’

‘And yet we left them.’

‘I died!’ she says. ‘It was my time. And then, when I returned, it was as this flimsy thing. Your mother used the last of her magic to bring me back; it was her last wish that I be here to care for you. And energy is finite, Stella. I had to make sure I’d be around for as long as you needed me. I realized that day when we were on the edge of Winterspell, and the shadows rushed around us, that I didn’t have the strength to fight them and to look after you . . . I chose you.’ She leaves her chair and comes towards me, her figure pulsing. ‘I would always, will always – I shall never regret choosing you.’

She cups her hands around my chin, and though they don’t touch me, I can feel the warmth there.

She has always been here. A bit faded, a bit tattered, sometimes downright see-through. But always, always here.

‘OK,’ I say finally, when I can find my voice again.

She moves away, settling back into her chair.

‘So, I’ll do it for the both of us.’

She smiles through the worry in her eyes. ‘Don’t lose your way,’ she says, her voice clear and firm, regal. ‘Keep to the path. Find the palace. And when you get there, keep going. Find what you need in there and break the curse – blast those shadows to smithereens. And when you’ve done that, my Stella, you’ll see Winterspell just as it always was. Just as it should be once more. Peg, find the lantern! You’ll go with her this time.’

‘I know I will.’ He sighs. ‘Even though technically I’m banished . . .’

‘That isn’t going to stop you now, my warrior Peg.’

He bristles and then starts digging around in the cupboard by the back door, finally dragging out an old, dusty lantern with glass sides and stiff metal shutters.

‘Behold, the oldest fae lamp in all the world, with a crack that surely shall lead to our downfall,’ he says miserably, blowing at it and coughing on the dust.