‘Anyway, they found themselves in a poor house in a village called Barley. They were treated dreadfully, forced to work in awful conditions, and barely given enough food to survive. They escaped, thankfully, and I found them drifting around the backstreets of Kelseth, stealing discarded corners of bread from behind the bakery. Glenn had only been with us a few weeks as well, although his story isn’t mine to tell.

‘They’re getting ready to leave at the moment. They’ve grown in confidence so much, especially Glenn; he wouldn’t talk at all when he first arrived.’

Lily could tell Jem was stalling, trying to find the words to tell Grace’s story properly. He stared into the fire and Lily worried he’d never start back up again, but all of a sudden, he inhaled deeply and continued.

‘One night, it was Grace’s turn to go out and gather supplies, and Cass was desperate to go with her, to “protect” her. He has always been the paternal type; he is fiercely protective over all of us, and he was so angry at me for not letting him go. But I couldn’t risk him being seen so soon after he had come to us because his “death”, along with Morven’s, was still a talking point in the town and I couldn’t bear to imagine the consequences of someone seeing him.

‘Anyway, Cass was sulking and Grace promised him that she would return within the hour and that he wouldn’t even miss her. That seemed to pacify him, and we were all mostly in good spirits when she left.

‘The hour came and went, and there was no sign of Grace. After two hours, I started to worry, but I didn’t tell the children. After four hours, I knew I had to go and look for her. I woke Cass and told him that he had to look after the rest of them for the next few hours and I could see him battling between pride and fear. The thought of something bad happening to Grace filled us all with terror.

‘I set out in the boat and, even at that early hour of the morning, there were people in the streets, crying and panicked. Something was wrong. So wrong that it had dragged the village folk from their beds at an unearthly hour and set them wandering and wailing. Mooring my boat as quietly as I could, I pulled my hat brim down and my scarf up over my mouth, hoping that it would keep me unknown, unnoticed. It was then that I started listening in to the mutterings and the theories.

‘What I heard was that the Shadow Sect had returned. That night, screaming had woken the village folk. As people had come out onto the streets to see what was happening, they discovered that two young women from the town had been taken, and a note had been pinned to the village noticeboard outside the crumbling church. The Sect apparently had a new method to torment the families of those taken, because the victims had been forced to sign their own names before they had been swept away. I still have the notice, if you want to read it?’