The fury wakes me up. I’m so full of it I might explode like a volcano. Not a little one, either. I’m talking Vesuvius, totally obliterating Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing tens of thousands of people.

I’m so angry that it takes me longer than it should to realise that the burning in my stomach isn’t just fury. I only just make it to the bathroom in time to throw up a frighteningly large amount of sea-green foam.

Foam. The same foam that Finn threw up when his brother first poisoned him.

It wasn’t a dream. It was real. The prince poisoned Finn, and he tried to take him away from me, but I found him somehow, and Misrule isn’t Valentine’s Day, and I am going to rip Tam’s face off and wear it as a hat.

I throw up twice into a plastic bag on my way over to the Blacklins’, and then again in one of the flower beds in the front yard. I pound on the front door hard with a closed fist, then lean over and throw up again.

‘Pearl,’ Tam says, still pulling a shirt over his head as he opens the door. ‘Is something –’

I shove him hard in the chest, and the fact that it makes no impact at all makes me – impossibly – even more angry. ‘You lied to me,’ I snarl.

He looks at me with a silence that I cannot read.

And oh wow, it turns out there are new levels of anger beyond ‘utterly incandescent’, because how dare he not say anything to me right now? ‘You know how important it is that we get Finn and the others out, and you lied to me!’

I shove him in the chest again, and this time he has the good grace to let me push him into the house. ‘You arsehole, Tam,’ I say, kicking the door shut behind me. ‘You absolute fucking arsehole. Is being loyal to the Seelie and kissing Emily’s arse so important to you that you’d screw over the others? My sister? Your sister?’

‘Pearl, what are you talking about?’

‘You know what I’m talking about!’ I exclaim. ‘Misrule, Tam. You told me the wrong date!’

He raises his chin. ‘I did no such thing. Misrule is the day you were born. The day I was born. The day the Valentine was born, and Rhymer, and the dark-haired girl, and Cardy, and the girl who died. We are all children of Misrule.’

‘No, we’re not, dipshit,’ I say. ‘We’re children of Valentine’s Day. Why else do you think they call him the Valentine? And Misrule isn’t Valentine’s Day!’

I should have known. I should have known Tam was lying to me again. He faked his own baby brother’s kidnap for Emily, FFS! I should have known he wouldn’t disobey one of her commands. I should have listened to Holly. I should never have been so stupid.

‘Pearl, I have not lied to you,’ Tam says. ‘Misrule is the day we were born. This is what I have been told all my life. And if that day is Valentine’s Day, then that day is Misrule.’

I run into the kitchen and throw up into the bin.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘No!’ I yell. ‘You want to know why I’m sick, Tam? You want to know how I know you’re lying? Because I saw Finn in my dreams last night, and he told me when Misrule really is. His arsehole of a brother has poisoned him, and –’

I grab the bin and throw up again.

‘He’s sick,’ I say. ‘He says he feels like he’s dying. And you were going to let me leave him –’

And again.

‘I have no great love for the Valentine,’ Tam says, once I’ve resurfaced, ‘but I have not lied to you.’

The calmness in his voice is so infuriating I consider hurling the bin at his head – although knowing him, he’d probably deflect it with, like, a roundhouse kick or something and I’d end up covered in poison vomit foam. ‘Well, one of you is lying,’ I say, ‘and I know it’s not him, because he can’t.’

‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘why would I lie to you?’

‘Because you’re loyal to the Seelie,’ I say. ‘Just how much did you laugh at the idea of me rocking up to the Summer Door on Valentine’s Day and finding out I had the wrong day? Give me a ballpark. Scale of one to ten.’

‘I am not loyal to the Seelie. I am loyal to the Silver Lady.’

‘Oh yes, that makes all the difference, because she totally wouldn’t find the idea of me failing hilarious at all.’

‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘the prince has abandoned her. He pursues you – seeks you out – plays with you – teases you – tries to lure you to his kingdom – but he will lock the Silver Lady out without a moment’s thought, and kill her in the process. I have no loyalty to he who would harm she who I love best.’

How is it that I can read Tam’s silences better than his actual words? When he stands there and just folds his arms, I can work out exactly what he means. But I have no idea whether he’s lying now or not.

‘It is true that I do not wish to share the life that is rightfully mine with the Valentine,’ Tam is saying. ‘He is a prince of the Seelie, and the lands of the Seelie are where he belongs. But they are also where the Silver Lady belongs, and of the two people who claim my loyalty, you are the only one who has promised me you will return her there.’

I have no idea whether he’s lying – but does he know that I’ve been lying? That the prince does want Emily back?

‘Have I not shown to you that I have chosen your side in this?’ he says. ‘I have buried a body for you, Pearl.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘And I’m grateful. But that doesn’t change the fact that you told me the wrong date.’

‘Do you really think so little of me?’ he says, something like anger in flashing in his eyes. ‘That I would leave behind my sisters and my brother, who were stolen just as I was stolen? I disobeyed the Silver Lady to tell you of Misrule. I was forbidden to speak of the night we escaped, and yet I did it.’

‘Why?’ I interrupt.

‘Why?’

‘Why did you do it?’ I say.

‘I have told you this. You have promised to return the Silver Lady to me, and the prince would gleefully abandon her just to punish the Valentine.’

He’s lying. I’m almost positive that he’s lying, because he has to be. He knows that the prince wants Emily back, and now he’s trying to –

‘And because what I saw that night we all escaped remains true,’ he says. ‘I looked at the bright girl in the darkness of the bush, and saw the starlight shining in her eyes, and I knew she was the other side of a queen.’

Well. Um.

Well.

‘That’s very flattering,’ I say, ‘but it doesn’t change the facts, Tam. You told me Misrule was Valentine’s Day. And it isn’t.’

He moves closer. He doesn’t touch me at all, but something about it is so uncomfortably intimate that I want to run away and have, like, seventeen showers. ‘I swear I have not lied to you. I have nothing to gain by doing so, and everything to lose.’

‘You told me Misrule was Valentine’s Day,’ I say. ‘Finn told me it was the sixth day of the New Year. Someone’s wrong, and there’s only one of you that can’t – oh shit.’

‘What?’

‘I know who’s lying,’ I say. ‘It isn’t Finn, and it isn’t you. It’s Emily.’

‘She cannot lie.’

‘Tam, you and your crew tried to stage an escape on Misrule. Do you really think there’d be any chance they’d let you remember when it was? What if you tried to do it again?’

He rocks back on his heels, and falls into Silence #64: I’m Not Quite Sure How I Feel About This.

‘You might not be loyal to the prince, but Emily is,’ I say. ‘And there’s no way the prince would let you keep that little bit of information in your head.’

‘The prince knew,’ Tam says slowly. ‘He knew that if I must choose to be loyal to you or to him, I would choose you. He knew I would tell you about Misrule.’

‘But Emily messed up your mind so you didn’t know when it was,’ I say.

‘She did not trust me,’ he says, more to himself than to me. ‘My lady did not trust me.’

There’s something entirely lost about the expression on his face, and I feel like I should say something vaguely comforting, but I grab for the bin instead and throw up more clouds of foam.

There’s nothing pleasant about throwing up, but it makes me feel weirdly triumphant. There’s no way I can write off my dream about Finn as just as a dream, the product of me missing him so, so, so much. The horrible sensation of acid disintegrating the lining of my throat proves that it was real. Proves that he was right. Proves that there are things the prince can’t control, even if every piece in his chess game does exactly what he wants, even if he puts Finn to sleep for a year and a day.

He can’t control me. He doesn’t know what I know.

And I’m going to make the bastard kneel.

Tam walks me out, a little while later. I let him put his hand on the small of my back, and to kiss my cheek goodbye, to appease the prying eyes of the neighbours.

We walk past the flowerbed I threw up in on my way inside. Every single plant in it is dead.

‘I’m not sure,’ I say, when the prince asks me the question the second time.

‘Not sure?’ he says, quirking an eyebrow. ‘That’s not quite no, kitten.’

He’s in Dave’s body again. ‘Hey, Pearl,’ the real Dave had croaked at me when I snuck into his room about half an hour ago. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you’d be awake.’

The corners of his mouth had lifted up in a smile. ‘Just came to gaze upon my beauty then?’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘You caught me.’

I regretted it a second later, because he laughed, and it turned into a fit of coughing, fogging up the inside of his respirator.

‘Don’t talk,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘I’m just going to sit with you for a while, okay?’

He squeezed my fingers so imperceptibly I wasn’t even sure that he’d done it. ‘Okay, Pearl,’ he breathed.

I felt it the moment the prince took him over. It’s hard to explain how I knew. He didn’t move. He didn’t tighten his grip on my fingers. I didn’t get, like, an electric shock.

But something happened, and I knew. I looked into his eyes, and Dave wasn’t there any more.

‘You’re wavering, kitten,’ he says to me.

‘I said I wasn’t sure,’ I say. ‘I didn’t say yes.’

‘You didn’t say no.’

‘There are things I like about what you’re offering,’ I say. ‘You want Emily back, I want her gone. I want to see Finn, you have Finn. But it’s a big decision. I need more time. To think.’

‘Time is short, little one,’ he says.

He brushes his thumb over my wrist, and I’m suddenly very conscious of my hand in his. I wish I’d thought to take it away. Dave’s weak fingers with their papery skin suddenly feel like steel.

Emily broke my wrist once. Without even really trying. If the prince wanted to, I have no doubt that he could just tear my arm clean off.

Like he did to Helena’s head.

‘Did you really expect me to say yes on the second try?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he replies.

That’s good, I tell myself. I’ve done the maths. Today is January the third, ticking over into January the fourth. The third time he’ll ask me the question is January the sixth, ticking over into January the seventh, AKA the midnight when Misrule ends, AKA the dickiest possible time he could ask me, because I’ll have missed my chance to use my rag-tag team of misfits to break into fairyland and get Finn and the other kids back by, like, seconds.

We talked about me saying yes when he asked me. The five of us all had dinner together. Sitting around on the floor of the Blacklins’ living room, eating Chinese takeaway, we seriously discussed me going to fairyland, finding Finn, and then meeting up with everyone once they broke in two days later on Misrule. Holly was all for it. Cardy thought it had possibility. I was wavering.

But, ‘If you go now, the prince will realise you know Misrule is coming,’ Phil had said. ‘He’ll get suspicious.’

‘I could play lovesick,’ I said. ‘Like, “Ooooh, I just can’t live without Finn, I’m withering away without him, my life is nothing unless he’s holding my hand every single second of every single day.” Or scared. I have a lot of reasons to be scared. What he did to Helena, for one.’

‘He would see through that ruse in an instant,’ Tam said. ‘You have showed no signs of wavering. If you crumbled, he would know it was a trick.’

‘Maybe you should show some signs of wavering this time around, though,’ Holly said, leaning over Phil to grab a spring roll. ‘Stroke his ego. Make him feel like he’s on top. Men love that shit.’

It’s all going to plan. The prince thinks I’m breaking. Him saying no, he didn’t expect me to say yes this time, is good. He’s not onto me. He’s buying what I’m selling.

When he’s smiling at me like he’s a shark and I’m the seal he’s about to eat, though, it’s a bit harder to feel like I’m winning.

‘I just need more time to think,’ I say.

‘You have three days.’

‘Do the terms from last time still stand?’ I ask. ‘Will you keep protecting me and the people I love from the Unseelie while I think? Will you still forgive Oyster and let her wake up if I agree to go with you?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But know this, kitten: if you refuse me a third time, then this deal will be null and void. Your sister may sleep for a thousand years, and then a thousand years again. The Seelie are bound to protect you, but not those you love.’

‘I understand,’ I say. The shake in my voice is entirely real.

‘I am not sure you do.’

‘Trust me, I do.’

‘It is hard for children to understand things they are told sometimes,’ he says. ‘Sometimes, they must be shown.’

I open my mouth to reply.

Dave’s head explodes.