The Watchwood Chronicles did not begin as a series. It began as a way to get a houseful of children to hold still at the end of a long day. There was an old oak in it, and five cousins, and a war you could not see, fought over the small choices grown-ups make without thinking. Some nights I made it up as I went. Some nights they caught me changing a detail and would not let it stand, and that is how I learned the story already belonged to them. What started as a stall against bedtime turned into seven books, because the questions underneath it, whether the ordinary is really ordinary, whether anyone is ever truly unseen, would not let me go either.