W NTE PELL, reads the twisted silver sign over the main gate, its bars jagged with splintered ice.

‘Something’s here,’ Zara replies, making my spine itch.

‘I’m not ready,’ I say, halting in my tracks.

‘Yes you are.’

‘Zara—’

‘Stella!’ she rounds on me, and her face is fierce, her eyes glowing. ‘This is it! And I do love you for all the thinking you do, but this is not the time for thinking – this is the time for acting!’

Nobody’s ever talked to me like that before, not even Nan.

I swallow. She keeps her eyes level on me and folds her arms.

‘I don’t know what he’ll be like,’ I whisper. ‘What if he’s like Nan – just a ghost, all thin and disappearing? What if he doesn’t know me? What if he hates me?’

‘He doesn’t know you,’ she says. ‘But I do, and Yanny does. You can do this. Not because of legends, or Lost Princesses. But because you’re you!’

Her words reach into me, and moments later, nerves steeled, we rush together towards the palace, ignoring the howl of the shadow creatures around us, and when I strike at the ice that screens the vast front door, it’s not that I think I can break it with one small fist – or two . . . or even with four, when Zara’s join mine – but that I know we will. The frozen barrier shatters and crumbles before us, crashing down the steps in a great glacial tide. Sweeping over the icy rubble, I grab the tarnished silver door latch and twist it, desperately muttering the words for the charms that Nan taught me, over and over.

I catch my breath as the door swings open to another wilderness, gleaming ice roping through tarnished silver chandeliers, frozen spider webs clinging to the marble banisters, fine snow carpeting the glass floor.

It used to glow with the amber reflection of candlelight and faelight, and with all the footsteps of all the fae. I lay on it once, to feel the vibrations of all their comings and goings, to feel the bare skin of my arms against its smooth warmth . . .

The memory hits me and slows my footsteps. When I blink it away, the Stag is here, standing before us, his great antlers twisting up and out to fill the vast, bleak hallway. Teacake rushes down the stairs towards us, as the Stag flickers and disappears from view, and the tread of heavy, slow footprints echoes through the palace.

The Shadow King.

‘What did your Nan say about breaking the curse?’ Zara whispers. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We were looking for the palace,’ I reply. ‘And we found it, but there’s something . . .’ My eyes drift to the stairs that Teacake just came down. ‘I think there’s something up there.’

‘KITTEN!’ roars a voice, splitting the air and sending blasts of icy mist through the corridors ahead of us. ‘Where have you gone now? I thought you had returned to me!’