Five miles under the Alps, where the pressure was so intense and the darkness so fertile that it managed to squeeze a life out of nothingness, Eve woke up, and knew exactly what she was.

It was strange to wake in such a state of certainty, especially as she didn't know where she was, or what had happened to her. But her heart told her that there were more important things, and one of the most important was Mr Danvers.

It was her first instinct to reach for him. She groped around in the darkness, but her fingers couldn't find anything except jagged splinters of rock. Pieces of the china doll, she thought. They were littered around her like eggshell. As if she'd just hatched.

And suddenly, grief flared up from the pit of her stomach and burned at the back of her throat. It pitched her forwards, driving her chest against what she assumed were her knees. She was curled up alone in the dark somewhere, and Mr Danvers was dead. Her palms were icy from the absence of his hand.

And yet she wasn't alone – not while there were things to hear and feel around her. The sound of her breathing was a companionable voice in her ear, even if it was dry and throaty with panic. And something was twitching under her blindfold.

She pulled it off, and was almost driven backwards by the wave of light and colour that washed over her. It twisted her stomach into knots. It wouldn't stop moving. And all the colours were jostling for her attention, queueing up to be noticed.

She pressed her face against her knee and wished it was Mr Danvers's jacket. That faint scent of tweed and starch that outlined the shape of him in her mind. She wished so hard that she could almost smell it. It almost took the place of that bewildering torrent of light.

But this was not how Elsie Danvers, the intrepid truth-seeker, would deal with things, she reminded herself. The light was here, and Mr Danvers wasn't. So she gritted her teeth against the nausea and reached up to feel her face.

Something feathery-light brushed against her fingertips. Eyelashes? She had felt them on dozens of faces, and they were just like that – just as small and wayward and tickly, like ants crawling over your skin.

She pushed them down and felt her eyelids. They bulged outwards now. What was the word for that? Convex. As opposed to concave, which you could remember by thinking about caves. She repeated the words 'concave' and 'convex' over and over, until the shock and nausea eased enough for her to realise that she had eyes. They were twitchy and none-too-happy about being pressed down like this.

Elsie pursed her lips together, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or sob. She had eyes. And her chest wasn't on fire with pain like before – just aching with the background throb of loss.

What she needed to do now was take slow, calming breaths and try to persuade her eyes to work. This blurry wall of colour wasn't getting her anywhere.

And it would help to stop thinking about Mr Danvers and imagining his scent, her truth-seeker thoughts prompted. Just until we can work out where we are.

So she sat among the shards of china doll and breathed slowly, until the colours began to separate. They were not gentle, background colours. Black and red and orange didn't like to be ignored. But they took on shapes and places, and had the decency not to move around – especially once she realised where she was.

She knew this place. It was one of thousands of similar-looking places in the demon realms, but Elsie knew every hill, every pebble, every outcrop of black rock. She was sitting on a ledge of loose stones, like a pebble beach, looking out over a valley of dark, twisted thorns. There was a volcanic lake to her left, steaming but crusted with black rock. Its surface was rumpled, half-hard and half-soft, like the skin on a bowl of custard.

It was just like the day when she had opened that door for Ellini, and they had removed their shoes and stockings, paddling their feet in the air of another world.

And that was when she realised how quiet it was in her head, except for the roar of colours. She looked down at her arms and just saw skin – no spangles of light, flaring, dying, or switching places. She couldn't feel the tug of the demons' thoughts, like millions of little hooks embedded in her mind, urging her in different directions.

She supposed that was a good thing for a seeker of truth, but it still made her ache with loneliness. She prodded the cold spot on her palm, where Mr Danvers's hand usually warmed it, and wondered if it would ever defrost.

Hadn't Mr Danvers been lying beside her when she – when everything went dark? Did that mean he would be here now? Or anyway, his body?

She shook her head and shut her eyes, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. What did it matter? She had no power over human lives or deaths. His neck had been snapped before they had fallen down here. Even if his body was somewhere to be found, she had no way to reunite it with – with whatever had departed from him.

So why did it feel like he was all around her? Just behind those mountains, or under the crust on that volcanic lake? Why did this feel like a complicated game of hide-and-seek instead of a final, fatal separation?

Elsie thought about that for a while. It helped to take off her shoes and stockings, and bury her feet in the pebbles of her old kingdom. She wasn't the queen anymore. She knew that in her bones. Did that mean there was a new queen? Or had this world gained its independence, just like her? It would be fascinating to find out.

It struck her that the world was important in solving this conundrum. This world was alive, and Mr Danvers had helped to shape it. The demon realms took impressions and made them flesh. She might not be the goddess of this place anymore, but she knew it was still teeming with magic, heaving with possibilities.

Whether Mr Danvers was a real, bodily presence or a thousand scattered pieces, he was here somewhere, waiting to be uncovered.

And she was the truth-seeker.

She would find him.

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