The prince threw another log onto the fire, and I watched as the flames licked around it, dancing blue and green for a moment as they encountered wet bark, before they commenced to consume the wood entirely.

Two dogs, huge and sinewy, lolled at the prince's feet. They yawned happily, tails thrashing their enthusiasm, as and when he'd reach out to pet them.

'So,' he said, as the firelight played across his features, 'what is it the old crows want to tell me?'

I was shocked mute for a second. I had thought bad things about my elderly guardians in the past. I had called them far worse names than 'crows', but only ever in my head. Hearing someone say those words out loud - even with the women far away in their remote little cottage, even knowing that the someone in question was a prince - I felt the blood drain from my face.

He grinned at my stupefied expression, and I laughed too, suddenly amazed by the thrall that three old women could have held over me, for such a long time.

'What of these important tidings then?' he asked.

I did my best to sound grown-up. 'The Grey Women think something bad is coming,' I said. 'They felt it, and they divined it with extispicy*. Danger heading in from the north: they believe it may have something to do with the wolf-clans.'

'The wolf-clans...?' One eyebrow arched.

'Hunger comes on four legs and on two,' I continued. 'That was what the entrails said.'

The prince stared into the fire for a long time and was silent. The air of joviality there had been, moments earlier, had gone, replaced by one of sombre anticipation. The firelight cast strange flickering shadows. The flames' crackle was the only sound in the room.

Eventually, the prince spoke. 'It was always just a matter of time,' he said. 'I had hoped, rather selfishly, that it would be later rather than sooner.'

'What are you going to do?' I asked.

The prince's face was set: grim but resolute, and the flames' dancing light played oddly across his features. 'Whatever I must,' he replied.

Twin embers glowed in the centres of his green eyes. In spite the warmth of the fire, I shuddered.

It was decided best that I stay at the castle. The prince insisted. The winter, which had barely broken its teeth when I had set out that morning, had suddenly closed in in full force. By nightfall, icy gusts were tearing across the lands, and the snow started to fall in earnest, mute and blank and smothering. It was too hazardous to attempt the journey back to the cottage, the prince said. The elements alone made it perilous enough: a person could lose their way in a blizzard like that, freeze to death and not be found until spring.

If the message in the entrails was accurate, this would be the least of one's concerns.

Instead I was to remain at the castle, a guest of the prince, for as long as I was happy there. Four armed riders were despatched, to go to the cottage and confirm to my guardians my safe arrival in Nimmersdorf, and avow the prince's pledge to protect his people from whatever danger may be threatening from the north. They were charged to stay at the cottage and keep watch over the Grey Women. For all their charms and mysticism, the prince pointed out, they were still elderly and frail, and the wolf-clans were merciless.

Over the following days, maybe weeks (for in the castle, time seemed to pass differently to how it did outside), barons, generals, men of note from the realms all around Nimmersdorf passed through the great wooden gates to talk with the prince. I would sit at his side during these meetings, and repeat, when prompted, the message my custodians had sent me to deliver. I saw men the size of bears fall silent at the words. Faces, ravaged by years of war, knotted with the scars of violent conflicts, turned sickly and ashen upon hearing the solemn warning.

'I am the first to admit,' the prince would say, 'that I am no warlord. My reign has been blessedly peaceful. I have not had to face the trials and hardships that my forefathers had to brave. It has been many years since I stood, knee-deep in death, on the field of combat. Some of you may respect me less for that.

'But I would ask you, for the sake of your people as well as mine, to put such personal feelings aside. If the Grey Women are right, and I do not doubt that they are, we must stand united if we are to have any hope of survival. We must look beyond the petty grudges of our past, or else there will be no future.'

Hasty alliances were formed. One thing was unanimous. Defeat was not an option.

All the while, all around us, there was the sense of the kingdom preparing itself for battle. The armouries were manned day and night. The kingdom itself seemed poised and ready to spring.

I spent a great deal of time in the prince's company. His reputation for kindness was well-founded, and I felt content and at ease in his presence. He in turn seemed happy enough to pass quiet hours with me. He said that being near me made him feel young again. I reminded him, he told me, of simpler, happier times.

When affairs of state took him away, the castle offered a multitude of distractions for me. There were horses in the stables, sleek and powerful, muscle and sinew rippling under gleaming coats. Their hot breath would tickle my palm when I gave them spoiled apples from the castle kitchens.

There was a library. There had been few books in the cottage of the Grey Women. They had been distrustful of the written word and Anicula had professed to have little time for the scribblings of fools. Nonetheless, I had taught myself to read, as best I could, and now set about the task of working my way through the entirety of the library. I was utterly indiscriminate in what I read: consumed volumes of poetry, dense tomes of historical treatise, books of fables and fantastical tales, written in ornate italics with lavish illustrations: ghouls and goblins, witches and werewolves, pixies, cambions, bicorns, creatures of dream and stardust.

For the first time in my life, I had a room of my own, with a bed. The ceilings were high and vaulted, the walls hung with rich tapestries. A leaded window looked out over the whiteness of outside. I'd leave the room each morning and when I returned in the evening, the bed would be made, a fire lit in the grate, new clothes laid out for me - not the patched hand-me-downs I was used to, but fine, pristine garments of all different colours. Silks and velvets felt very different against my skin to the coarse wools and hessian I had worn before.

Every night, the prince and I would take dinner together in the winter banqueting hall. There was another hall, he told me, in a different wing of the castle, larger and grander than this. It was also, however, colder and draughtier, so the prince had thought it best to forgo pomp and grandeur in this case, in favour of eating somewhere easier to heat.

It was on one such evening, a month or so after my arrival in Nimmersdorf, that the prince asked me a question I had never thought to ask myself.

The cook had brought through the dishes of steaming food, and the royal tasters had taken tiny bites of each, short sips from the flagon of dark red wine. They had professed that all seemed to be as it should, and had slipped discreetly away.

'Are you...' the prince paused for a moment, as though searching for the right words. 'Are you happy living with the Grey Women?'

I considered this, long and hard, stared at the knots and whorls of the oak table. I thought about the cottage, about the old women's bickering, about the wet-goat smell that permeated the wiry blankets on which I used to sleep. I thought about Anicula and the way her stone cold silences could make the whole cottage echo.

'I... don't know,' I replied truthfully. 'I don't suppose I've ever given it much thought.' Something more was needed. 'I wasn't unhappy.'

We ate for a while without speaking.

'I'd like for you to be more than 'not unhappy'�,' said the prince. 'And I've come to enjoy your company.' The words sounded stilted, alien in his mouth. He seemed uncomfortable. 'I was wondering if, when all of this is over,' he gestured vaguely towards the world outside and whatever dangers might be heading our way, 'you might like to stay here, with me, for good...'

I looked up at him. He didn't meet my gaze. His lovely features were creased in consternation.

'I think I'd like that,' I told him.

He exhaled a long, shaky breath. 'So would I,' he answered.

I pushed my plate away and rose from the table. Without knowing precisely what I was doing or why, I pressed my lips against his. I had never kissed or been kissed before.

I tasted the wine he had drunk, felt the ripe softness of flesh, the gentle play of his breath on my skin. I thought of the horses in the castle stable.

Then I turned on heel, and wordlessly walked out of the hall.


Later that night, as snowflakes spiralled past the darkened window, a soft white hush, the prince came to my room. He asked if he might lie with me. I smiled and told him no. He asked me another question, and I told him yes.

The following day, the message spread around Nimmersdorf: their prince was to be married.

If this were any other story, it would end here. If that is the kind of story you want, then stop reading now: here is your happy-ever-after. The young peasant girl marries the handsome prince. The people of the kingdom rejoice. There is a banquet, and probably dancing.

There is your story. Read no further. You won't like what happens next.


* extispicy = divination using entrails

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