Ravensblood Forest The village school is cold and still.

The approach of another does not bother the ravenclad dancer; he is swift and strong, and if he is also polite and crafty, he knows he has nothing to fear.

No, it is the appearance of the stranger that strikes Dagfinn still and dumb, a cold lump forming in his chest and then quickly melting away to flood his lungs and well in his eyes. Lotte, he breathes, and knows that this must surely be another apparition. He had looked too closely at her once-kingdom, and now she had come to him again after being banished for so long.

But the man speaks, and Dagfinn knows he is mistaken; that this is someone else, but perhaps not someone else altogether.

Syntymästä, he replies, still choked. Who are you?

He knows who it is — except he knows it could be either one of them; he had only seen them on the day of their birth, once, and then never again. Ceallach? Roarke? He has imagined meeting them so many times, but long since, has given up hope. They are as lost to him as she is —

Or they were.