There he is, she thought with a smile, tracing over the cover with her fingers. She remembered when she first showed the drawing to her grandmother and how shocked she had been when she had started to laugh and cry all at once.

It was Emily’s favorite of all her grandmother’s book covers—an enormous, violet dragon with eyes of gold and teeth like shards of glass, soaring high over a river filled with lantern-lit boats, all heading out to sea.

It was also the last book in the series, written just before Catriona first fell ill. When Ophelia had learnt to walk again. A medical miracle, according to the doctors, but of course she and Terence knew better. The miracle was Ophelia swimming in enchanted waters at the bottom of a waterfall, behind which lived a fearful dragon, a dragon who the local villagers believed to be wicked and cruel, but Ophelia heard him crying while she swam and asked him what was wrong. The dragon was grieving the loss of his brother, who had been shot down by a cannon as he flew over the seas. His grief made him angry, made him roar and breathe fire over the villagers, burning their houses to the ground.

“Don’t be too quick to judge the monsters,” Emily said as she opened the book to read one more dedication.

For Beth—thank you for saving us both.

“Monsters?” Noah asked as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. It made Emily think again of Tyler, of that first morning back in her Norfolk kitchen, when he helped himself to a snack and told her they had a train to catch.

“Everyone has a secret pain they’re trying to hide,” Emily replied, staring down at the name of a woman she knew only too well. Someone she dared to think might possibly be the final piece of this puzzle, and might just be the last step on her journey back home.

“She loved to watch you draw,” Noah said, as Emily slowly turned each page. “She said it was when you were most at peace.”

“Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you.” Emily reached into her bag, found an empty space where her sketchbook should have been, then looked across at Noah as she tried to think back to when she last had it. “Verona.”

“What about it?”

“I must have left it in Verona.” Along with all the other people and places she had been trying to forget.

“What was it you wanted to show me?”

“I can’t.” Emily shook her head no. Squeezing tight her eyes, she tried to block out the memory, all the memories, that she had been shown, that she had been drawing ever since she left England.

“Yes, you can.”

He told me to talk to them. Emily remembered what Giancarlo had said. He told her not to forget them, because then they would never be gone.

“She used to sing to me.” Her words came out all tumbled together, as if they had been trying to escape for a very long time and were afraid she might change her mind, keep them locked away.