‘I don’t understand…’ Alice was reeling. How could her mother have allied herself with this woman?

‘She was one of us. She ran away, of course, when she found out she was expecting you. When she realised I’d find out about how she betrayed me. I imagine she was trying to protect you and her revolting lover. He was a fallen member of the Brotherhood, just to really drive the dagger into my back. You were just a dreadful symptom. I could have perhaps forgiven her indiscretion had she grovelled on her hands and knees, but no. She left me for him, and that was the ultimate betrayal.’ The priestess cackled. ‘She put all that effort into hiding you away – she even got herself killed – and all for nothing! Because here you are, standing before me, the spitting image of your poor mother. You have to appreciate the irony, no?’

Alice felt tears burning behind her eyes. It felt like such an injustice that this woman, with her smirks and her callousness, had spent much more time with her mother than Alice ever had. ‘You killed her, didn’t you?’ It wasn’t a question, not really. It was a fact, and the gaps in Alice’s personal history began to fill up with vague explanations.

‘Killed her? Maybe. If you want to see it that way. I gave the order to have you all killed but we couldn’t find you. They succeeded in squirreling you away for years. I’d almost forgotten about her. But magic leaves traces, and I couldn’t really sit here, thinking about her living her life, carefree, with a scrawny little rat of a daughter to fawn over. No, the image itself made me squirm. So, a few years after Ailísh left, I decided I would take her by surprise, let’s say. But she got the better of me for the last time. She and your disgusting father hid you away and ran. They abandoned you, Alice. But I knew I’d find you one day, so I had no qualms in dispatching your wretched parents the moment I heard they’d been caught.

‘I’ve been searching for you ever since. To begin with, it was because I wanted you dead, just like your mother. I wanted to punish you for what she did to me. But after a while, I started to feel the loss of a powerful witch by my side and I decided that the closest I was ever going to get to a woman of Ailísh’s power was her daughter, so I gave the order to find you, track you, and eventually steal you away as soon as you were old enough to join our ranks. We had no interest in raising a snivelling child, so when we found you, wide-eyed and defenceless, when you were probably eleven or twelve, we waited until you were grown, and then we snatched you in the night. It really was a faultless plan and I’m still impressed that it went so smoothly!’ She paused, smirking, as if waiting for Alice to confirm that her plan had been, in fact, impeccably executed. ‘Do you want to know how she died, your mother? I received a very detailed account from my—’