Rosa’s hands trembled upon the page. If she’d still had any doubts about whether the Winter Garden actually existed, they now melted away. Her mind blazed with how such a thing was possible, how the book could speak out to her personally like this. More than anything else, one question scorched itself into the darkness inside her head: how much would she be able to transform her life with one wish? She glanced over at the twins sleeping in their cribs. If she won that competition, then surely she could use the prize to fix everything?

She even wondered fleetingly whether she would have the nerve to wish for Eustace to die, but it was no use. She shuddered at the wickedness of it. And Rosa had wanted a husband all along, as she had wanted to be a wife and a mother and a duchess. Perhaps she could wish that bad, rotten part of him away? Like removing a core from an apple. She could make him decent and gentle, and then they would be happy at Raven Hall and her life would be what she had always longed for.

Some small part of her wondered what might be left of Eustace if she took away all that was wrong with him, but she thrust the thought aside. When it came to magic and wishes, surely anything was possible. Anything at all.

Of course it would mean staying at Raven Hall. If Rosa was to leave, she would not be able to return to her family in Georgia ever again. Her mother would see to that. She would have nowhere to host a garden, and no money to create one. But at Raven Hall she had a seemingly endless supply of funds via Eustace, as well as extensive grounds.

The only question was: was it worth staying for? She might not win the competition. Indeed, for all she knew, there was no contest at all, simply words written in stars in a book. Within the hour they had melted away as if they’d never existed. Rosa thought about it, round and round, all night.

Finally her mind settled on the notion that perhaps the carousel sometimes appeared in the book because she was destined to win the competition with it? After all, if she could create such a thing, then surely it would be a wonder worthy of winning the competition? And how else might one explain how her own design kept appearing in the book, yet no one familiar with the garden had ever heard of a Carousel of Icicles? She must create it for real – and put it on display for the whole world to see at Raven Hall.