‘Maybe your parents have gone back to the Floating Forest,’ Flax said to the pup. ‘Maybe they climbed out a door in the dragon’s side and escaped. Maybe they’re in the den, right now, wondering where you are.’

The pup looked at her pitifully. ‘Dragons don’t have doors in their sides. You said so yourself.’

‘Yes, but maybe—’

‘We have to keep searching.’

‘But where?’ said Flax.

‘I don’t know. I don’t knoooOOOOOoooow!’

‘Hush, not so loud!’ Flax’s nose itched, which meant the can’t-see-us-can’t-hear-us-can’t-smell-us magic was still working. But it was best to be cautious.

The pup’s howl subsided to a wordless whimper. Flax put her head in her hands and wondered how on earth she was going to get him back to the Floating Forest.

Have you ever heard a dog howl with sadness and loneliness?

It is a heartbreaking sound, is it not?

Now take that sound and double it.

Triple it.

Quadruple it.

The howl of a Spellhound pup is like nothing else on earth. If you wish to pause for a moment and weep, I can be persuaded to wait.

But not for long. We are at a crux. A vital moment. A point where two halves of the story might come together – or might not.

So wipe your eyes and pay attention.

The moonlight slid off the dress covering the fish tank and touched Felicia’s toes. In the royal park outside her window, something howled.

‘OooooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo!’

It was such a desolate sound that Felicia scrambled to her feet and poked her head out the open window.

The howl turned to a whimper.

‘It’s a dog,’ whispered Felicia. ‘A puppy. What’s it doing in the royal park? It must be lost.’

She imagined a puppy with sorrowful eyes crying for its mother.

She swallowed. ‘A queen is not disobedient,’ she reminded herself.

But surely a queen should be allowed to have a puppy? Even if it was just for one night?

It would disappear in the morning, of course, just as the tapestry and the dragon book and the dressmakers had disappeared.

But morning was hours away …

Felicia felt a fizz of excitement in her tummy, and automatically pushed it down. But a tiny bit of it crept back again. Enough to make her feel brave. And rebellious.

She took her oldest shoes from the secret drawer (the ones she wasn’t allowed to wear).

She took her oldest coat (which Aunt Delilah thought she had thrown away).

She removed the gold hairpins and tied her hair back with another ribbon.

Then she checked her pocket for her emergency supply of green jellybabies, slung her leg over the windowsill, and clambered out.