When night fell, Flax and the pup left the tree behind and went looking for somewhere safe to sleep.

But nothing about this town felt safe.

Not until they found the stone wall.

On the other side of it were hundreds of trees. Flax could smell their leaves. She could hear their branches, rustling in the night breeze.

It almost sounded like home.

But when she scrambled up the wall, taking care not to let the sheath of her sword bang against the stone, it didn’t look like home.

The trees were set in neat rows, instead of growing in wild confusion. There was no soft green moss for lining nests, and no thorny undergrowth for hiding from mor-kits. No fallen branches for sitting on while the grandpas told stories, no rotting logs, no beetles or ants or horned globs. And in the middle of it was a human building, ten times as grand and important-looking as any Flax had seen so far.

But she didn’t care about buildings. Not when there were trees (even though they were nowhere near as nice as the trees of the Floating Forest).

She slid down the far side of the wall and dashed across the grass. She heard a thump behind her, and she and the pup reached the shelter of the trees at the same time.

There they stayed.

In a small forest, which was good.

With no idea what to do next.

Which was bad.

Meanwhile, Felicia was lying in her big, lonely bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin.

The gold crowns embroidered on her royal nightdress scratched her arms.

The gold hairpins, set in her royal hair every night to hold it in place, scratched her scalp.

Moonlight filtered through the windows, and shone on a brand-new fish tank, which sat on top of the royal chest of drawers.

‘Why won’t anyone talk to me about my parents?’ Felicia whispered to the fish. ‘Why didn’t they tell me about the dragon?’

The fish glared at her. Its little mouth opened and shut, as if to say, ‘A queen does not ask questions.’

‘I can’t help it,’ whispered Felicia. ‘I want to know the answers.’

But the fish kept glaring. So Felicia crept out of bed, picked up her dress from the chair where her ladies-in-waiting had left it, and draped it over the tank.

Then she knelt in front of the royal wardrobe, opened the secret drawer at the bottom, and reached into the back corner.

Her fingers closed around an ancient pair of pyjama pants. She took them out and pressed them to her cheek.

The pyjama pants had crowns embroidered on them, too. But they were so old that most of the gold thread had worn away, and now they were soft and comforting.

Extra comforting because they used to belong to Felicia’s mother, Queen Alyss.

Extra extra comforting, because no one except Felicia knew she had found them in a pile of polishing rags and sneaked them up to her bedchamber.

She took off her scratchy nightdress and pulled on the pyjama pants. They were too big, so she rolled up the legs and tied a ribbon around her waist to keep them from falling down.

Then she sat on the floor (which queens were not supposed to do), and whispered, ‘What happened to you, Mother? Were you and Father really taken by a dragon?’

She wished she could ask Mansie Undercroft or Dashy Slove, the new dressmakers. But they had disappeared the same day they arrived, while Felicia was walking up and down her bedchamber with The History of Hallow in Five Volumes balanced on her head.

You are probably thinking that even one disappearing dressmaker is strange. Two is even stranger.

But any number of things had disappeared from the palace in the years since Felicia was born.

Her parents.

Her nursemaid.

Her Uncle Edwin, who was Regent for a year and a half after her parents died.

A book about dragons that Felicia had found on a forgotten shelf of the palace library. (A book much older than all the other books about dragons.) A tapestry with an enormous black dog in the bottom left-hand corner.

Laughter.

Love.

Happiness …

You get the idea. The royal palace of Hallow was not the sort of place where you should take your eye off anything you valued.

Because when you looked again, it might not be there.

‘Family emergency,’ Aunt Delilah had said, when Felicia asked her about Mansie and Dashy. ‘No, they will not be coming back. Why not? A queen does not ask pointless questions, Your Majesty. And a queen does not sulk.’

‘I wasn’t sulking,’ Felicia whispered now. ‘I was wondering.’

She stroked the worn material that covered her knees. She hugged herself, and wished there was someone she could talk to. Someone who would understand how lonely she was.

Someone who would tell her the truth.