Bryn had come looking for the truth behind the dynasty controlling her kingdom, and she’d found the answer, with my help because I knew everybody in town. I was only fourteen then, but I knew the options in Iskyla—for work, for love, for friendship, for finding my parents—were very slim, and I saw a chance to escape, so I took it.

Mr. Tulin tried to give me a good life, but life in Iskyla is hard, and Mrs. Tulin never saw me as anything more than a burden. After I left, I kept in touch with Mr. Tulin, mostly through letters, but last winter, he stopped replying. A month later, Mrs. Tulin sent me a small package and a letter, telling me he’d passed away.

The package contained what little memorabilia she still had from my childhood. A few medical and school records, a few photographs, and a small painting that Mr. Tulin had done.

And now I was riding right back into my history, and it left me feeling sick and anxious. Lying in bed, staring out at the darkness, reminded me of the cold nights alone in the inn, listening to the wind howling at the feeble windows, with frost so thick over the panes, I couldn’t see outside.

On the train by myself, I felt sad and alone. I missed my friends, my family—both the ones I had and the ones I never had the chance to really know.

But the exhaustion of the travel wore me down. My earbuds played the Carpenters, and I cried softly into my pillow as I finally drifted off to sleep.

The sound of the ocean woke me up—the crashing waves and far-off gulls calling to one another, but faintly behind that, I still heard Karen Carpenter singing, demanding to know if a superstar still remembered her. I opened my eyes, and I was on the beach in Oregon, just beyond the city walls of Merellä, and the sharp drop-off around them. I looked back at the citadel, towering above me, and the only gap in the stone wall was the crescent-shaped arch that let the Forsa River flow easily underneath.

I’d gone through that once, walking along the narrow banks, out to where the dirt and mud became pebbles and sand. That’s where Hanna and I had found Eliana, hiding from a Shadow and a Dragon—Illaria and Sumi.

But now I was alone, with frothy waves crashing onto the rocky beach. A sharp pebble stung the bottom of my bare foot, and I felt the cool spray from the ocean. All the while, the Carpenters’ mournful melody played on, somewhere nearby.

“Ulla!” Pan’s voice was behind me, and I whirled around to see him standing there.