‘OK?’ I manage, as the next thing is upon us.
Yanny winces. ‘I’ll be fine . . . I’m not sure about your fighting methods though.’ He watches as I swing the lantern again, this time into a swooping shadow owl.
‘I didn’t bring any other weapons!’
‘Some Lost Prince you are.’
‘Not a Lost Prince!’ I huff, swirling the lantern through the shadow snakes that now gather by our ankles. ‘Just me. Stella Brigg.’
I flail and batter with my lantern, aware of its absurdity. It does seem to be working, though. The air around us starts to clear, and the shadows that get hit by the lantern are slow to re-form; some of them disappear entirely.
‘You’re pretty handy with that!’ yells Zara, swiping up with her spear to catch a small spine-covered shadow that has launched itself from the nearest tree.
I grin. ‘Could say the same for you!’
‘Mrs Mandrake gave it to me,’ she says, wielding the spear with a flourish and accidentally catching a shadow bat that was coming close in behind her. ‘She said if I heard the horn, it would be time. I don’t think she thought it would happen so soon . . .’
Her voice drifts off, and she looks with horror over my shoulder into the distance.
I turn slowly, and my stomach fills with icy dread.
He is here, approaching slowly through the frigid reaches of the forest where the palace hides. The Stag. And behind him, a horde of terrible shadows I’ve not seen before, all of them gruesome monsters nearly ten feet tall.
‘You must’ve made him angry,’ Yanny says. His whip is smouldering, his eyes no longer ablaze.
I gasp. ‘It wasn’t just a scratch!’ I pull him away from the shadows to take a closer look at his shoulder. The cloth of his shirt is torn, and beneath is what looks like an ugly burn. ‘Yanny, you need to get this seen to!’
‘Get your father seen to first!’
‘This is more important right now, Yanny! Where are your parents? Who’s the healer around here? Quickly!’
‘Hang on!’ says Zara, dipping into the pocket of her yellow mac. Camouflaged, she is not. ‘Don’t panic, Mrs Mandrake gave me this . . .’
She brings out a small glass jar, the label of which reads Mrs M’s Best Blackcurrant Jam.
‘What is that?’ Yanny scowls, wrinkling his nose as she unscrews the lid. ‘I don’t think this is the time for Mrs M’s Best Blackcurrant Jam!’
‘It’s not jam.’ Zara rolls her eyes. ‘It’s mer-fae nest, mixed with some other bits and bobs. Have you ever seen Mrs Mandrake’s house? It’s amazing – shelf after shelf of jars and rocks and potions. This is a new thing – she made it up after she fixed you that day . . . Anyway, she said it might help if anyone was injured.’ Zara dips a finger into the jar, and leans over Yanny, smearing it on his shoulder before he has a chance to move away.
‘There,’ she says.
‘It stings!’
‘Good medicine always stings,’ she says, tucking the jar back into her pocket. ‘Or tastes vile. At least I didn’t make you eat it!’
I turn back to the Stag, who is coming over the icy ground, taking his majestic time as the shadows grow longer with nightfall. ‘Is it helping, Yanny?’ I ask urgently.
‘Probably,’ he says, shifting his shoulder.
‘You can thank me later,’ Zara says. ‘Once we’ve sorted this guy out.’
She bares her teeth in a growl, standing up and glaring at the Stag.
‘Zara!’
‘He’s making me cross,’ she says. ‘Look at him, prancing along as if he owns the place, after everything he’s done.’ She turns to me. ‘Aren’t you angry, Stella?’
‘Sad.’
‘Be sad later,’ she says. ‘Angry now.’
Yanny and I stare at her, but all she does is shrug.
‘Isn’t it time?’ she says.
‘I’d say so,’ says Yanny, looking over at the place where his parents stand shoulder to shoulder, battling shadow men with bolts and chains of fire.
Rory turns from the melee and sees us. She charges over, the shadows thick in her wake. They cling tight to her night-dark flanks, and they spool from her hooves as she thunders towards us. And then Peg is here, rushing up to my shoulder, a tiny glowing lizard.
‘Oh, Peg,’ I whisper, as Rory halts, sending up a flurry of ice crystals.
‘You know how to do it! We practised in the garden,’ Peg says. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘That was practice? I thought it was an emergency!’
‘It was both,’ he says, somehow managing to sound smug even in the midst of all this chaos. ‘And now that you are come into your power, you will be magnificent!’
‘She is a child, foolish imp,’ snaps Rory, leaning towards us. ‘What do you propose she do? I never bought into that ridiculous legend – it means nothing on the battlefield. She is a child, barely versed in our world.’
‘I have been to the palace,’ I say. ‘I fought through the shadows and the deepest part of the forest, and I faced my father, and he didn’t know me, or if he did, it was only for a moment. He is lost, but I am not.’ I remember Teacake’s words and let them ring true. ‘I’m right here. And I want to help.’
‘She can do it,’ says Yanny, and his voice sends a rush of hope through me as he stands by my side. And then Zara is here too. And if Yanny is tired and fading, then she has only just begun. Her eyes spark; she looks ready to take on the whole of Winterspell by herself.
Rory snorts. ‘Go on, then. Show me what magic you have.’
‘I don’t think this lantern is going to do much against him,’ I whisper to Yanny, as the Stag raises his head and bellows through the clearing.
‘It’s not the flipping lantern,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘It’s never the stuff that matters, Stella. It’s what you put into it! The lantern is just an extension of your hand – of your power. The lantern isn’t sending shadows away – you are! Just . . . do it bigger!’
‘Send him away, Stella,’ Zara says, tucking her arm through mine.
Yanny links my arm on the other side, a look of determination on his face. And something clicks, deep inside me. Something that was so lonely, and even today, standing before my father, felt so out of place.
I’m not out of place.
I’m not alone.
I am fae. I am all that he is, and more, because I have friends, and he stands alone in a flurry of nothing but his own fear.
I breathe long and slow, and let it gather, noticing that the clearing has become still. Every fae creature is staring from me to the Stag. Fierce Elowen is shouting something, but I cannot hear the words through the snarling chaos. The Stag stands before me, his breath steaming, antlers held high, and he roars, and I take a step towards him, and my bare feet don’t make a sound on the ground, and I clench my fists, and I roar right back at him, and it reverberates, a boom of sound that never came from a human mouth. I pour all of my hurt in there, and all of my fear, until my chest burns, until my back aches. The acorn at my neck flashes hot, and then there is a sharp twist of pain, and a lift beneath my ribs. My heart is thudding like a thunderstorm. I look at the shadow of my father, who does not acknowledge me, even now.
‘Get away from here,’ I say in a small voice that somehow rings through the clearing, as the moon comes into view, crescent-thin and dazzling bright.
He lowers his head as if preparing to charge, and I step towards him again, and I start to run, but the ground falls away beneath my feet as wings – my wings, that Nan’s glamour hid for all these years – spread and catch the air, and Winterspell lights up around me.