Finn’s legs go out from underneath him and he sits heavily on the ground. I’ve heard some epic swearing from him before but this is something special. He buries his face in his hands. ‘No,’ I hear in among the cursing. ‘No no no no no no.’

I’m having quite a lot of feelings myself, but Finn is clearly down for the count, so it’s time for me to step up.

‘So, what, are you here with Emily doing bodyguard/ massive-guilt-trip double duty?’ I say to Tam. ‘“Go back to your family and I can go back to mine”? Is that how it is? Because that’s really not fair. Finn didn’t choose any of this. He was a baby when all this went down.’

‘If you had been taken from your family,’ Tam says, ‘from your sister and your brother – wouldn’t you want to see them again?’

‘Obviously I would. But that wouldn’t mean that it was fake-Pearl’s fault, or that she had to move to another dimension.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Of course I don’t. I’m talking completely out of my arse. I have no idea what it would feel like. But I am not going to let anyone, no matter how legitimate their claims are, shame Finn into running off to a fairytale kingdom.

‘Finn’s not going anywhere,’ I say firmly.

‘I don’t understand why you’re so opposed to this. The Valentine will be safe from the Unseelie. I can return to my family. If you go with him, you will live forever; and if you do not, you will never have to deal with fairies again. Everybody wins.’

‘You think I’ll never have to deal with fairies again if I stay here? That’s freaking hilarious, Tam. Have you ever met one of the Unseelie? If they can’t find Finn, do you really think they’re going to just go “oh well” and pack up their toys and go home?’

‘You have no value to them on your own.’

‘And let’s not even talk about the fact that if Finn and I do go to fairyland, neither of us will ever see our families again. You understand that, don’t you? Wanting to see your family?’ Tam and I glare at each other. His eyes, now that I look at them properly, are not like mine at all. Sure, they’re brown, but they’re not Linford eyes. They’re Mrs Blacklin’s eyes. They’re Matty Blacklin’s eyes.

This is the boy I was supposed to go to school with. This is the boy I was supposed to fight with and rage at and loathe, loathe, loathe. This is the boy that is supposed to have been in my life all along.

I feel sick.

‘Look, guys, I don’t want to interrupt this fun screaming match you have going on, but what are we going to do about her?’ Holly asks.

‘Weigh her down and dump her in the creek,’ I say, at the same time as Tam says to Finn, ‘you will heal her.’

If I thought Tam and I were glaring at each other before, I was wrong, because now we’re really glaring at each other, intensity turned up to a million. ‘There is no way in hell he is healing her,’ I say.

‘She is written on his bones.’

‘I don’t care if she’s written on his muscles and his tendons and his organs and tattooed onto his brain. He’s not healing her.’

‘She is the Silver Lady of the Summerland and she comes to him from his brother.’

‘She is a homicidal maniac who’s threatened to kill every single person I’ve ever met!’

‘Stop,’ Finn says hollowly.

I’d almost forgotten he was there. ‘Finn, please don’t heal her,’ I say. ‘She tried to kill Phil. She threatened to kill Disey and Shad. She deserved what she got.’

‘She is the lady I serve,’ Tam says, ‘and you owe me, Valentine.’

‘That’s ridiculous. None of this is his fault. And why the hell would you want to wake someone that calls you her pet?’

‘She is my lady.’

‘Stop,’ Finn says. ‘Please.’

He’s breathing hard. He’s still on his knees where he fell, and dirty water from the broken table I crashed into is dripping onto him, leaving reddish-brown tracks on his white school shirt. ‘Please stop,’ he repeats. ‘Just – give me a minute. I need to think.’

I can practically feel Tam’s glare drilling into my skin, and it sets my teeth on edge. It’s enraging. He’s enraging.

I should have spent the last seventeen years being enraged by him. He should have been here. While Finn was in a castle in the clouds, learning, I don’t know, which fairy fork to eat with first at fairy dinner.

I clench my fists, dig my fingernails into my palms. I will not let them take this boy away from me. Away from his home. Away from where he belongs, which is here, in this boring town where nothing is ever supposed to happen.

‘Holly?’ Finn asks. ‘What do you think?’

‘Finn, this is your choice,’ Holly-Anne says. ‘I can’t make it for you.’

She turns away, but Finn grabs her hand. I feel a sick thud in the pit of my stomach, and I’m immediately disgusted with myself. I’m jealous? Right now, in this moment, I have room in my mind to be jealous?

‘She’s done the most to you,’ Finn says.

‘It is a great honour to serve the Silver Lady,’ Tam says.

‘Oh sure, such a great honour to be brainwashed!’ I shoot back.

‘I know when fairies come into your life you usually don’t have a choice in the matter,’ Finn says to Holly. ‘So . . . so I want you to have a choice now.’

A tear trickles down Holly’s cheek, a lone tear, because of course she’s the kind of girl that can cry like she’s on The Bold and the Beautiful. ‘I’m scared, Finn.’

‘I know, Hol. I know.’

‘I don’t want this much power,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t want her here. I don’t want her in my head. I don’t want to be her servant. But if I tell you not to heal her, when she eventually heals herself and wakes up, she’ll kill me. Or worse.’

One vote yes. One vote no. One abstention.

Normally when we have a situation like this in student council meetings, we move to a secret ballot. Somehow I don’t think that would be especially useful in this situation.

‘You have to choose, Finn,’ Holly says. ‘I can’t. Don’t make me.’

He nods, lets go of her hand, breathes deep. There’s a long moment where everything is completely silent, and we’re a perfect tableau: two almost identical dark-haired boys, two redheaded girls, one burned and blackened, the other pale and ashen, and me – me, the odd one out, the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit.

Then, ‘I’m not going to heal her,’ Finn says, and the stillness shatters as Holly and I let out twin sighs of relief and a sound escapes Tam that is almost like a roar.

If he hadn’t still had Emily’s body draped over his lap, I think he would have leapt at Finn like a lion. ‘You have taken everything!’ he shouts. ‘You have taken everything from me, and now you take her too!’

‘I’m sorry!’ Finn says. ‘I’m so sorry, Tam, but –’

‘All she wanted was your safety!’

‘She was hurting people! She threatened to kill people!’

‘She had orders,’ Tam snarls. ‘Orders from your brother. She is not permitted to return to the Summerland until she brings you home with her.’

‘Oh, cry me a river,’ I say. ‘She’s immortal. Even if she had to stay here for, like, seventy years, that’s nothing to her.’

‘What about this don’t you understand?’ Tam explodes. ‘The Unseelie will come for the Valentine. They will come for him. Maybe they have already come. They will find a way to kill him. And if he dies, she is shut out of the Summerland forever, doomed to a world of iron, a world apart from all she holds dear, alone.’

‘So you’re upset because she might end up going through the same thing you want me to go through?’

‘You would not be alone. You would have him.’

‘That’s not enough!’

I regret those words the second they come out of my mouth. I can’t see Finn’s face, and he doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. I can – it’s like I can feel the hurt, as surely as if I had my hands around his neck, my iron rings scorching through layers and layers of his skin.

When Finn speaks, it’s not to me. ‘Tam,’ he says, ‘if you want to meet my family, I’ll take you. I owe – you deserve that much.’

‘No.’

‘But – you just said –’

‘I do not want your charity, Valentine.’

‘It’s not charity.’

Tam stands, the limp, burned form of Emily in his arms. ‘I will not meet my family at your sufferance,’ he says, in that tone of his which is so even, so calm, and yet so utterly frigid.

Finn looks at him for a long time. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘You know what? Fine. Be that way. Now give her to me.’

It’s Tam’s turn to stand and stare.

‘Do you really think I’m going to let you run around with her body?’ Finn says.

‘I am her loyal and devoted servant,’ Tam says. ‘You may be written on her bones, Valentine, but I will not relinquish her to you.’

‘That’s exactly why I don’t want you to have her,’ Finn says. ‘You’re loyal. You’re devoted. And I don’t want her waking up. She’s threatened two people I care about, and –’

‘You will not take her from me!’ Tam roars.

Finn takes a step closer, straightens his back, takes advantage of every tiny bit of the extra height he has on Tam. ‘You can’t stop me,’ he says.

They stare at each other for a heartbeat. One. Two. Three. It’s Finn who blinks first.

‘All right, fine,’ he says. ‘Have it your way, Tam. I won’t take her from you. She can stay here. In this greenhouse. I’ll hide her. But – Pearl, do you still wear that iron necklace?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Give it to me.’

I pull it over my head and hold it out. Finn takes it from me, careful only to touch the leather strap and not the iron pendant – and, I can’t help but notice, careful not to touch my fingers as well.

‘I’m going to put this on her,’ he says to Tam. ‘And you won’t take it off.’

The sound that comes out of Tam’s mouth is . . . well, I’ve never actually heard what a wounded bear sounds like, but it’s what I imagine it would sound like. ‘She will not heal!’ he bellows. ‘You will burn her, and she will sleep in torment, and –’

‘She could use a sleep in torment,’ Holly says. ‘It’s better than she deserves.’

‘You,’ he snarls at her. ‘You are her handmaiden. You –’

‘No,’ Holly says. ‘No. I’m not. Not any more. I’m free.’

Tam turns to me, and his eyes are pleading. ‘Pearl,’ he says. ‘The Silver Lady is bound to protect you. Do not condemn her to this. Do not condemn her to sleep in iron, in agony from which she cannot wake. Do not rob yourself of your protector.’

‘My protector?’ I splutter. ‘Are you serious right now?’

‘Do not do this, Valentine,’ he says. ‘Do not do this unforgiveable thing.’

‘Tam,’ Finn says, and there’s an edge in his voice, a command that cannot be resisted. ‘I will leave her here with you. I will allow you to care for her. I will make sure that she’s hidden. But you will not try to wake her. You will not move her. And you will not take the iron necklace off.’

‘How dare you?’ Tam croaks.

Then his eyes go blank. He crashes to his knees, and then falls – against all odds, and all laws of gravity – backwards, still cradling the body of Emily to his chest.

It takes longer than it should for us to pry them apart. Partly it’s because Finn told Tam he wouldn’t take Emily from him and he’s, I don’t know, magically bound by that or something, so Holly-Anne and I have to do the actual prying, but mostly it’s because we’re not really talking. Holly seems to be in some kind of daze, and Finn and I, well, Finn and I . . .

Once we have Emily all laid out on a table near the back of the greenhouse, my iron necklace around her neck, Finn and I try and manoeuvre Tam’s body into the backseat of Disey’s car. It should be one of those things we bond over. Like, one of us should drop his feet at some point, and the other one should accidentally walk into a wall, and it should be weirdly hilarious, and we should laugh. But we don’t. We grunt a little, maybe, because Tam is heavy, but, ‘Can you get a hand free to open the door?’ is the only thing Finn says to me.

He goes to walk away after we’ve finished, but I reach out. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Finn, wait.’

He shakes his head. ‘Linford, I . . . just not now, okay? Come on, Hol. I’ll take you home.’

I want to protest. There are so many things I want to say, but I can’t find one single word to say them. I just stand there, silent, like an idiot, and watch them walk away.

He doesn’t text me that night. Or the next night. Or the next. I keep waiting for it – Hey Linford – but it doesn’t come.

‘That’s not enough.’ Of all the words to come out of my mouth, I had to yell ‘that’s not enough’. While he was in the room. Practically in front of his face.

I know I have other things to worry about. Emily might be down for the count, but who knows when the Unseelie will decide to step up their campaign to the next level? I’ve made exactly zero progress on working out what the Riders are, Cardy’s possessed, Julian’s apparently lost his mind, Phil’s in permanent danger that she won’t let me even tell her about, and then there’s the problem of Tam, living in my house (and you can imagine that when he finally woke up after the incident at the nursery he was not exactly what one would call happy with me); but of all the things in the world I have to worry about, it’s those words – that’s not enough – that make me feel sickest.

Which is ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous.

I try to convince myself that Finn knew what I meant. We’re not even together, and even if we were, surely anyone would think twice about uprooting their whole life and moving to a magical fairytale kingdom for-literally-ever just to be with someone. Phrased like that, it sounds logical, sensible, completely reasonable.

But when you phrase it as ‘that’s not enough,’ then . . .

Oh God. Why am I so bad at this? Why am I so bad at everything?

On the third night after the greenhouse, Disey knocks on my bedroom door. Or I assume she knocks, anyway – I don’t hear her. I’m at my keyboard with my headphones on, trying to write the bridge to my latest song for Hunter, when suddenly she’s there in front of me.

‘Thanks,’ I say, slipping my headphones off and taking the cup of tea she offers me. ‘You look nice. Going out?’

‘Yes. But it’s late, Pearlie. And it’s a school night. You should go to bed.’

‘So you bring me caffeine?’

She raises an eyebrow.

‘I’ll go to bed soon,’ I promise. ‘I just want to finish this last thing.’

‘You’ve been playing a lot lately.’

‘Just catching up for lost time,’ I say, in my best breezy nothing-to-see-here tone. ‘I missed so much with the coma and the recovery and all the stuff that happened. And I’ve got that charity thing for Cardy.’

Disey sits on the edge of my bed. ‘Not just here. I know you’ve been playing at school too. Nearly every lunchtime, and most of your free periods as well.’

I blink. ‘Have you been talking to the school about me?’

‘I’m a journo. I have my sources. It’s not important what they are. You’ve been hurting your hands.’

‘They’re fine, Dise,’ I say. ‘Look.’

I show her my newly healed hands, front and back, but she doesn’t seem very impressed. ‘I watched you,’ she says. ‘After Miller’s Creek, I watched you hurl yourself at that keyboard like you were drowning and it was a life raft.’

FFS, Disey, did you have to use the word ‘drowning’?

‘I know playing is your way of working things out sometimes, so I didn’t say anything. I watched you practically smash your own hands up, but I didn’t say anything, because I thought you would work through it, and then you’d be better,’ she says. ‘And I thought you were getting better, I really did, but . . . this isn’t healthy, Pearlie.’

‘No,’ I insist. ‘Before it wasn’t, Disey. After the creek . . . that was bad. That was definitely not healthy. But this is different. Mr Hunter and I have been talking about a new direction, and it just – it just seems right. This is exciting. This is good for me.’

‘You’re going to hurt yourself again.’

‘I’ll ice my fingers,’ I say. ‘I’ll play less at school. But I need this, Disey.’

‘Is it Tam?’

‘What do you mean, is it Tam?’

‘It’s been worse since he got here,’ she says. ‘And it hasn’t exactly escaped my notice that you two can’t stand each other.’

I guess those death glares over the dinner table were not exactly subtle.

‘No, it’s not Tam,’ I say. ‘Just . . . please don’t worry about me.’

‘Kid, you can’t stop me. I know when you’re not okay, and you’re not okay.’

I want to protest. I want to tell her that I’m fine.

But I promised myself I wouldn’t lie.

‘No more music tonight,’ she says, when I don’t answer. ‘Drink your tea and go to bed. And tomorrow I’m starting you on a ration. No more than two hours a day in front of that keyboard.’

I nod.

‘I mean it, Pearl. Bed. Now.’

She unplugs the keyboard at the wall before she leaves the room.

It’s hard not to just plug it back in, but I resist the urge. The bridge of the song is unfinished, and it hurts me to walk away, but I do it, even though I can almost hear it coming together in my head.

I get into bed. I take three iron tablets, think about it, then take another one. I look at my phone. No messages.

I grit my teeth. Hey Finn – I text, a dash, not a comma. We need to talk.

I ask him to meet me in the music room at school at lunch. I’m almost certain he’s not going to show up, but he’s there when I arrive, sitting in the corner, picking out a tune on a guitar, some of his hair falling loose in his eyes.

I recognise the song almost at once. It’s not quite there – not quite it – because how could you match something like that with just a single guitar? But it’s so close, and the fact that he could come so close to the Seelie music when I nearly broke my own fingers trying to get it right hurts.

‘You’re pretty good,’ I say instead.

‘Not really,’ he says, not looking at me.

‘That sounded pretty good.’

‘I’m not like you,’ he says. ‘I can’t write songs like you. I can only mimic what I hear.’

‘Did you ever have lessons?’

‘No. Self-taught. I used to steal my dad’s guitar and mess around when I was little.’ His voice catches a little on the word ‘dad’s’.

‘You could learn to write your own,’ I offer. ‘It’s only practice.’

He shakes his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

Now he looks at me. ‘You’re sorry.’

‘Yes.’

He sets the guitar aside. ‘You’re apologising to me.’

‘I thought I was being pretty clear about that, yeah.’

He laughs, a humourless hollow sound. ‘All I do is ruin people’s lives and you’re apologising to me.’

I roll my eyes. ‘For God’s sakes, Finn, are you still on this woe-is-me-diva trip? “Oh, look at me, I was born and a bunch of stuff happened when I was a baby that I had no control over, I’m so terrible.” Get over it. Grow up.’

‘You are such a bitch,’ he groans.

‘Sure, yeah, fine, whatever, I’m a bitch. I don’t care. Suck it up. I’m trying to apologise here and you’re making it all about you and your pity party.’

‘I’m making it all about me? It is about me! In case you missed the last three months, I’m the reason Marie is dead. I’m the reason you were in a coma. I’m the reason Cardy and Phil got kidnapped. I’m the reason Emily came to town and started threatening everyone. And I’m the one who stole Tam’s life! You’re the one that keeps trying to stick yourself in the middle of it and make it all about you!’

‘I am in the middle of it! They put me in the middle of it! They moved Tam into my house, for God’s sake!’

‘They’re going through you because they think I listen to you. They’re doing all this to you because of me!’

‘Then let me help you!’

‘I’m trying to keep you safe!’

‘I don’t want to be safe if it means they take you away from me!’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means – it means –’

I rip the iron rings off my fingers, throw them across the room. And then I don’t know if he grabs me or I jump him, but we’re crushed together, tangled, entwined, messily, angrily, hungrily kissing.

He lifts me onto the piano lid and I wrap my legs around his waist tightly, twist my fingers in his hair and pull his mouth to mine. His body is hard against mine, hard and lean and strong, and I rip his shirt over his head, desperate to be closer to him, desperate to feel his skin against mine, desperate for him, desperate, desperate, breathless, desperate. Then my shirt’s gone too, flying across the room, his lips against my jaw, my neck, my collarbone, and he’s kissing me, consuming me, my Finn, long fingers fumbling with the catch of my bra until I tear the damn thing off myself.

I feel like I’m flying. I feel like we’re both soaring, high above the earth.

I can’t get close enough to him. We cannot press our bodies together tight enough. I want to sink my teeth into him, climb inside his skin. He is setting me on fire and if he moves away then I will burn myself out – oh oh oh Finn, don’t stop don’t stop please don’t stop. His hands are on my legs, hiking my skirt up, and my fingers are scrabbling at his belt buckle and I press my mouth against his neck, his chest while he gropes for his wallet, and –

‘Oh my God.’

Thud.

‘I knew it,’ Julian says, a vicious undertone in his voice. ‘I knew you two were in it together.’

And then, before I can blink, he whips out his phone and takes a picture.

‘And now I have proof,’ he says.

‘Julian,’ Finn says, and I can hear the edge in his voice, the edge of irresistible fairy command. ‘You’re going to delete that photo. You’re going to walk away. You’re going to forget what you saw here.’

Julian just smiles.

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ he says, and walks away.