The babies seemed to cry incessantly. They never laughed or smiled, as Rosa had imagined they would. Instead their little faces seemed to be forever screwed up in an incandescent rage that nothing would soothe. All they ever wanted from Rosa was her breasts, but feeding was so intensely painful that she would often weep as she was doing it. She began to feel hollowed out, exhausted with the effort of trying to please two tiny monsters who could never be satisfied. Even holding them did not come naturally. Their heads fell back too easily, their limbs were too uncoordinated, they were forever scratching at their own faces, leaving deep, vicious welts there, as if devils had been at them in the night.

In the dark hopelessness of the endless days, Rosa even wondered whether perhaps they sensed, somehow, that she had not wanted them to begin with. Might they have been able to feel her emotions whilst still in the womb? Might that explain how keenly they seemed to dislike her? Even worse, perhaps they somehow knew that she had been working on a carousel to erase them from existence. Maybe this was what they could not forgive her for.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, over and over again. ‘I do want you. I do.’

She even made them another carousel – not a cold-hearted one built from icicles, but a brightly coloured music box, with a cheerful circus tune and friendly, prancing ponies in vibrant ribbons.

Eustace was, naturally, disappointed the twins weren’t boys and took little interest in them. This would not have bothered Rosa in the slightest if it hadn’t meant that he broached the subject of a male heir once again. One night he even had the nerve to knock on the nursery door. It was late and Rosa was already in her narrow fold-out bed. The twins had finally stopped crying and she was just drifting off to sleep. For a moment, in the confusion of coming properly awake, she thought Eustace was in the room with her, imagined she felt the touch of his fingers, hot and slick and greedy on her skin.

She jerked upright, gasping for breath, but he was nowhere near her bed and her ravens knew well enough what they must do. The duke yelled as they descended upon him in the corridor, and she heard his footsteps retreat as he fled to the safety of his own bedroom, like a rat disappearing back down its hole. The noise had awoken the twins, who began to bawl once again. Exhausted, Rosa dragged herself from her bed to take them from their cribs. She could no longer remember what it felt like not to be tired.