Sidra wheezed and tried to rise. She didn’t know how much time had passed, because it felt as if everything had stopped around her. The wind, the moon’s descent. Her own heart.

The shadow arrived, standing over her. She heard a whimper and her gaze snapped up. Maisie was in its arms, struggling.

“Maisie,” Sidra rasped.

She held out her hand, willing to give anything. But she never had the chance to speak. She felt a blow to the side of her head.

She folded into the darkness.

When Sidra woke facedown in the heather, she thought she was dreaming. The sun was just about to rise; it was bitterly cold, but the eastern horizon was swelling with light. A bird was trilling nearby, as if urging her to open her eyes. To get up.

She slowly pushed herself up to her knees. Her chest ached. There was blood dried on the front of her chemise, and she stared at it, her mind reeling as she tried to remember.

And then it hit her. The realization struck her harder than the spirit’s boot to her chest.

“Maisie!” she screamed, her voice hoarse. “Maisie!”

She stumbled to her feet. The world spun for a moment—melting stars and a vermilion sunrise and the flap of a bird’s wings.

“Maisie!” She began to tear through the heather. Her hands were so cold she could hardly feel them. “Maisie, answer me! Where are you? Maisie!”

Where had the spirit taken her?

She swallowed a sob as she frantically searched.

“Sidra? Sidra!”

She heard Graeme shouting for her in the distance. She winced as her chest throbbed, and she glanced up to dimly see Torin’s father appear at the crest of the hill.

Overcome, she couldn’t speak. Graeme hadn’t left his house or his yard in all the years that Sidra had known him, and the emotion caught in her throat as he began to run down the hill.

“Sidra!” Graeme saw her. “Sidra, is that you? Are you all right, lass?”

“Da, I . . .” She didn’t know what to say. Her blood was still pounding when Graeme finally reached her. She must have appeared far worse than she realized, because Graeme’s face tensed. His eyes went wide as he looked at her.

“Daughter,” he whispered. “What happened?”

“A spirit took Maisie,” she said, struggling to keep her hysteria at bay.

His mouth went slack. “A spirit did this to you?”

“A spirit came for her, and I fought it, and it took her . . . we have to keep searching. She might still be here . . .” Sidra returned to the heather, even though every movement, every breath was like a knife in her chest.

“Maisie!” she shouted, over and over, seeking a trail, a spirit door, a scrap of clothing. Anything that would guide her.

Graeme firmly took her arm, drawing her close. “Sidra? Where are you wounded? We need to tend to you first, lass.”