I squint up at him through the dim moonlight and consider his words. He’s not what I thought he would be. After all these years of listening to Kit talk about him — telling me stories of a boy who would laugh and cause mayhem and burn down the world for the people he loved — nothing could have prepared me for the angry, bitter man in front of me.

“He’s my best friend,” I say, my voice pleading. I had hoped he would understand this. “I don’t abandon the people I love.”

Thomas reels back like I’ve slapped him, and I can see his temper rising. For a moment I think it’s going to come rocketing at me, but it doesn’t. He just nods, his jaw tight.

“Sometimes the people we love don’t deserve our dedication. Sometimes you have to pick yourself. Being selfless isn’t always a good thing, Isla.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, takes a step back, and clears his throat. “I’ll be inside. Find me when we dock.”

3. THOMAS

I was never meant to be here.

I wasn’t born on Mab, or even in Scotland. I was born in some small town in Hungary that I don’t know the name of, to parents I don’t really remember. My father was Scottish, middling at magic, and apparently looked like me. My mother was Hungarian, had green eyes, and specialised in banishing and purification rites.

I know. The irony isn’t lost on me.

When my parents first brought me to Mab, people still called me Tamás and I barely spoke English. I knew “hello” and “thank you” and Kit very quickly taught me “no.” We all spent a day playing in the ocean, and then my parents and Cormac left Kit and me with a friend and went off to Skye to try to banish a nuckelavee. My parents didn’t come back.

I never expected to stay on this rainy island that time and God forgot. My parents weren’t supposed to drown and I wasn’t meant to spend the rest of my life ten minutes outside a village called Towe, living in a house with too few bedrooms, being raised by my father’s aging former tutor alongside his strange, unmagical grandson.

When I left Mab, I spent a long time convincing myself that it wasn’t my home — that I wasn’t tied to it. I told myself I couldn’t be homesick if it wasn’t my home.

But looking at it now, I know that was bullshit. This place tugs at my inside in a way only home could.

Cormac Macrae’s house — my house — sits at the top of a hill overlooking the North Sea. Standing at the kitchen window you can see everything. The village of Towe, which is nestled on the jagged cliffs and looks like it’s about to slide off and get bashed to bits on the sea stacks. The curling coastline that snakes around the bleak beaches all the way to the drowned causeway, and the dark mass of Eòghan's Cave. As a boy I could stand in Cormac’s kitchen and see the boundaries of my whole world.