The first breath I take in fairyland is a breath of relief.

There is no army of fairies bristling with deadly blades and deadlier smiles, waiting to escort us to their nightmare leader. If they ever were here, the three hours we waited have paid off, because they’re gone.

We’re in a clearing – the same clearing where I stood two weeks ago, two weeks that was also one second and a thousand years, when I stared into the wolfish eyes of the prince and called him a liar.

But there’s no prince now, no one to pin Phil and Cardy and Holly and Julian up to trees with knives that look like diamonds and to make me make another horrible choice. It’s just the five of us: us and the trees, moonlight glinting off the dark, rich, fat berries on the vines winding up their trunks, leaves rustling gently, as if they’re speaking to each other in a language too lyrical for human ears to understand.

It was freezing at home, but not here. Here, it’s warm – not hot, not humid, but the perfect temperature, weather that makes you want to lie down on the ground and fall asleep right there under the night sky. The air is crisp, almost sweet, like apples, or champagne. The faintest of breezes ruffles through my hair, and my eyes flutter closed for a moment, because it feels like Finn’s fingers, stroking gently across my scalp, sending frissons of feeling through every part of my body.

I turn around, certain, so certain, for a second that it was him, it was his fingers, that he’s here, I found him, everything will be all right.

But there’s nothing there but the trees. We’re alone in another universe, and the Summer Door has closed behind us.

‘The stars are different,’ Cardy breathes.

I look up.

The stars are closer.

The stars are brilliant, glimmering diamonds in the velvety black of the sky. There are no clouds, no haze of pollution, nothing but the clean air between us and them. And if I reach out – if I extend my arm –

Finn drapes the diamonds around my neck as I sit at the piano. ‘Stars for a star,’ he says, kissing my cheek.

I run my fingers over them. ‘It’s too much.’

‘Please, being a fairy prince has less perks than you would think,’ he says. ‘Let me share one of them, all right?’

He puts the crown on my head. ‘Tam was right,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘Oyster was the other side of a queen.’

I want to swallow a star. I want to be filled with starfire, to be brilliant and radiant, so brilliant and radiant that even the prince would fall to his knees before me.

They’re singing. The stars are singing. They’re full of music, wrapping itself around me, sinking into my veins, replacing my blood with starlight, and I am full of them, full of starlight, and I am burning.

I am buried alive, and hold on hold on hold on but every second she seems further away, and I reach out my hand to her …

‘Don’t look at the stars!’ I yell.

The next breath I take in fairyland is a breath of panic, when I look at the time on my phone.

5:23 a.m.

One glance at the stars, and two hours evaporated into nothingness.