Jack began to feel the cold creep into his skin. He was remembering the taste of isle-bred fear, how it felt to be lost when the land shifted. How storms could break at a moment’s notice. How the folk could be benevolent one day, and malevolent the next. How their capricious natures flowed like a river.

This place had always been dangerous, unpredictable. Wonders bloomed alongside dreads. But nothing could prepare him for what Torin said next.

“It’s our lasses, Jack,” he said. “Our girls are going missing.”

Chapter 2

Sometimes Sidra saw the ghost of Torin’s first wife sitting at the table. The visits occurred when one season ended and another began, when change could be felt in the air. Donella Tamerlaine’s ghost liked to bask in the morning light, dressed in leather armor and plaid, watching as Sidra stood in the kitchen by the fire, cooking breakfast for Maisie.

Sometimes Sidra felt unworthy, as if Donella were assessing her. How well was Sidra caring for the daughter and husband she had left behind? But most of the time Sidra felt as if Donella was simply keeping her company, so fastened was her soul to this place, to this ground. The women—one dead and one living—were connected by love and blood and soil. Three cords that were so interwoven that Sidra was not surprised that Donella appeared to her and her alone.

“I have to send Maisie to school this autumn,” Sidra said as she stirred the parritch. The cottage was quiet, dusted with dawn, and the wind was just beginning to howl its morning gossip. When Donella was silent, Sidra glanced at her. The ghost sat in her favorite chair at the table, her tawny hair flowing down her shoulders. Her armor was incandescent in the light, a breath away from being wholly translucent.

Donella was so beautiful it sometimes made Sidra’s chest ache.

The ghost shook her head, reluctant.

“I know,” Sidra said with a sigh. “I have been teaching her letters and how to read.” But the truth was, all of the isle children were required to attend classes in Sloane when they turned six. Which Donella knew, despite being dead for the past five years.

“There is a way to delay it, Sidra,” Donella said. Her voice was faint, a tendril of what it had once been when she was alive, although Sidra had not even been an acquaintance to her then. The two women had taken very different paths in life, and yet it had strangely led them both to the same place.

“You think I should begin teaching her my craft?” Sidra asked, but she knew it was what Donella was thinking and it took her by surprise. “I always assumed that you would want Maisie to follow your legacy, Donella.”