Alberic is so quiet over dinner. He keeps looking at Mum with these haunted eyes as she buzzes around the kitchen, bangles tinkling, bringing little dishes of olives, parmesan, tomatoes; lighting candles, talking about her work with Mallory and asking him questions about school, family. He murmurs the briefest answers, looking away whenever she looks at him. I wonder if he even remembers his own mother.

He and Mallory keep exchanging glances. When I dust my cutlery with ice I can see how they notice, how they flinch. Even Mum starts watching me more closely after a while, picking up on the tension at the table. And then it’s too much. I make my excuses and dash to my room, my head buzzing, only to be followed by both of them minutes later.

‘Don’t you think you should go home?’ I ask peevishly, staring at them from under my hat.

‘No,’ says Mallory, lighting candles.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You’re doing this,’ she says. ‘Alberic, get the book, let’s get started.’

‘Mallory!’

‘I’m not losing you too,’ she says. Her voice wobbles but she refuses to look at me, just keeps darting around with the matches.

‘Oh, Mall . . .’

‘Just do it, Owl,’ she says fiercely, sitting next to me on the bed, her eyes sparkling. ‘At least try!’

I look from her to Alberic, as he joins us on the bed. He pulls the book on to his lap and reaches for my hand, and even if I don’t think it’s going to work I find I can’t say no. He doesn’t hesitate, his eyes blaze as he starts to read the incantation, his voice deep and melodic. The words get slower as he goes and the buzzing in my head seems to intensify. Suddenly a shudder of something silver bright goes through me and I feel myself falling, falling, my stomach lurching, then there’s the sharp tang of crisp outdoor air in my nostrils, hard earth beneath my feet.

Winter cuts sharp and true across my face as I open my eyes to see, all around me, the world my mother described so many times, soothing me to sleep with the magic in her voice. I realize I’m in exactly the same place she came to, all that time ago: ‘in the clearing between the trees that towered out in every direction: black with bark and white with frost.’

And my father found her here, as she turned and turned again, waiting for something to become familiar.

‘Nothing was familiar.’

The air aches with the bleakness of winter and when I look up I half expect to see Jack there, his dark hair thick with frost. I turn, and turn again, hoping to see him and hoping not to. And all around me is only the stark silence of looming, skeletal trees beneath a pearl-bright sky.

‘Owl?’

Alberic. His voice is fractured, grating against the silence. It sounds like he’s been calling for hours. I turn again, eyes searching for him between the narrow trunks of the trees.

‘Alberic?’

There’s a scuffling sound and he emerges, breath steaming in the air. He’s different here: taller, broader, his hair a flame against the black and white.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he says, his voice uncertain as he comes towards me. His copper eyes glint as he looks me up and down. His footsteps are unsteady. ‘This place . . . distorts things. I feel like I’ve been here for days already.’ The shadow of a smile flickers at his lips. ‘I haven’t been, have I?’

‘No,’ I say, reaching out as he stumbles. ‘But time passes differently here, I think. Mum always said . . . Have you been wandering for days?’ Between his hair and his eyes he’s pale with cold, and there’s something haunted in his face, something that suggests he’s been where he should never have been. No matter how angry I am with him it’s painful to see. ‘Go back, Alberic. You don’t look like you belong here.’

‘You do,’ he says, pulling away from me and leaning up against one of the trees. ‘You look like a part of it all already.’

‘Perhaps I am,’ I say, looking down at myself. My skin is the colour of the purest just-laid frost, it gleams in the pale sunlight that filters through the wooded glade. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Find Jack . . .’ His eyes are full of doubts. ‘Will you? I’ve got you this far, but now that we’re here, I can’t . . . I’m not sure what comes next. I couldn’t even find my way out of this glade.’ He looks up; the trees reach their brittle branches way up high into the sky, bending only slightly in the breeze. ‘It’s not like anywhere I’ve been before, Owl, it pulls at me—’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say, reaching for him again. I tuck my hand through his arm and pull him forward through trees that start to whisper around us, as a pale wind moves through them. ‘Is that you?’

‘Is what me?’ he asks, still looking upward.

‘The wind.’

‘Oh! Might be. Who knows?’

‘Alberic, snap out of it!’ I say. It’s like pulling a dead weight, like all the will has gone out of him. We reach the edge of the glade, finally, pushing our way through the tightly packed trees as roots twist in the ground, reaching for our feet. It must be some kind of defence, to stop interlopers getting through to whatever else is out there. I get the feeling that without me Alberic really would have just wandered forever. I didn’t realize. Mum’s stories were all about the magic and the beauty. They didn’t give enough idea of the danger.

I push my way through dark, thorny vines, the stark silence making my head spin. Alberic follows silently behind me, his hand in mine, and then we’re through, out into the open air of a world all blue and white. Before I have time to look around, my feet give way beneath me and suddenly I’m careering down a snow-covered hill towards a frozen, ice-blue lake. I lose Alberic along the way, tumbling head over heels, eventually landing in a spray of snow on top of the lake. The ice creaks ominously beneath my weight but it doesn’t give. The sky is a pale bruise overhead, glowing yellow over in the west.

‘Alberic?’ I sit up. ‘Where are you?’

‘H-h-h . . .’

I frown, standing to look for him, as a mound of snow at the bottom of the hill rears up and explodes, revealing a blue-lipped Alberic.

‘Are you all right?’ I demand, making my way over to him, my bare feet firm on the ice. He steps towards me and immediately slips, landing flat on his back with a grunt. I’ve never seen him so clumsy. It must be something in the nature of Jack’s world that works against him even as it stirs in my veins, making me feel stronger than ever.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, staring up at me. His features are taut in the winter glow, his eyes dazed as his teeth begin to chatter. We’re both dressed in the light clothes we were wearing in the flat and it’s clearly not going to be enough for him here.

‘Get up,’ I say, reaching down and steadying him as he slips on the ice. ‘Take my jumper.’ I pull it over my head and try to give it to him, but he thrusts an arm out and swipes it away.

‘No, thank you,’ he mutters, keeping his head down. ‘It won’t fit anyway. I’m fine.’ He pulls away from me and moves forward over the ice, his back hunched, breaths coming quick and hard.

‘Are you sure? We shouldn’t have done this, Alberic. We should never have come here! What were you thinking?’

‘Couldn’t carry on like you were . . . and we’re here now. We need to find . . .’ He frowns, looking up. ‘Who was it?’

‘Jack!’ my voice rings out with frustration, which is mostly born out of fear. He’s like a shadow of himself. My heart thuds in my chest as I remember what he said about wraiths. Is this how it happens? Is he losing himself, all because he came here? All because of me? All because I was embracing who I’m supposed to be?

‘Jack, Jack, Jack!’ My father’s name rings out all around us and I turn, heart racing, but it’s only an echo of my own voice, a brittle sound that makes snow slide from the hills.

‘That’s right.’ Alberic nods, pushing himself forward along the ice. ‘Jack.’

‘Alberic.’ I stop him with a hand on his chest. ‘Go home. You don’t need to be here. I’m not even sure why we are here, and your father will be furious.’

‘He’s always furious,’ he murmurs, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He moves my hand away and starts forward again, his movements dogged. ‘Doesn’t mean he’s right. He thought you’d be easier to deal with than Jack. Weaker.’ He looks sidelong at me. ‘He was wrong. People. People are more different than I thought.’ His voice slurs. ‘They’re scornful of humans at court. I thought it would all be jealousy and pride . . . destruction. But at school . . . I see the way you laugh, the way you look after each other. All the other stuff’s there too, but the way you all live, I’ve never known that . . . all that time you spend with each other, fighting, hoping, trying to make something with what little time you have . . .’

I steady him as he slips again on the ice, and search the horizon for signs of Jack’s house. Something. Anything. But stretching out in every direction is only more ice, and frozen hills to either side, grey mountains rearing up behind them. Didn’t Mum speak of goats and eagles? There are no signs of life here at all, and I have no way of knowing if we’re heading in the right direction.

This is Jack’s world. He must know, somehow, that we’re here. Why doesn’t he come?

‘JACK!’ I shout at the top of my voice. Alberic startles beside me, jolted from his dreamlike state as the call brings snow tumbling down on to the ice. There’s no way Jack can’t have heard it but there’s no response as the echoes subside. Only more silence.

And then a sound that hurts my ears and makes my heart stutter.

A desperate, keening howl that echoes endlessly and makes yet more snow crash from the hills around us, cascading down and spilling over the ice in a great white tide.

The wolves of winter.