CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It might have been midday when Freya found herself outside Catherine’s house. The cottage was still. She stared numbly at the building, which meant so much and so little, Eaton’s lead hanging limply by her side. She knew Catherine had gone, to be as the others in the Forest. She could tell just from looking at the house. Still she walked slowly up the path to the oak wood door and knocked.
She didn’t know quite how old the house was, or how long the Laceys had lived there, only that it had stood for hundreds of years at least. Families had lived out their lives behind the grey stone of its walls; their loves, their hates, their tender moments and cruel words imprinted on that stone for as long as people living remembered. She knew Catherine’s pain when, late for schoo
