The Kalafran consumed the eastern horizon, too big, too loud, and ever-crashing against the rocky shore below. Her father had romanticized the sea. He’d once told her the ocean meant freedom, but for Anji it was just a giant, mindless mouth that could swallow her whole. No matter how much she fought, the sea would always win. A bay she could handle. A lagoon or a lake or an inlet, all of no consequence. Those were closed, controlled things—harnessed by people. Girls didn’t drown in ponds or streams. A lake wouldn’t drag you screaming into its jaws. But this untamable vastness had always terrified her, much to her father’s disbelief. A fisherman’s daughter should share his love for the sea. She averted her eyes as they followed the sedge-lined path, the tundra a distant, frosted memory at her back. This ocean in particular only meant one thing: the end of her journey.

Don’t forget the torture, she thought, can’t forget the torture. Oh and the execution, that’ll be fun. It’ll be its own kind of torture in itself. The crowds, more insane Wardens shouting in their yellow robes. Looking down at me like they aren’t happy I did it, like they wouldn’t have done it themselves if they’d only—

“There,” Kit said, shaking Anji out of her thoughts. “Just a bit farther.”

Anji blinked and followed Kit’s outstretched hand to a bulbous stone tower perched on a narrow hill facing the sea. Anji could just make out the shape: a pillar of wind-blasted rock, topped with a domed iron roof. A lighthouse, but judging by its precarious tilt and the gaping hole in its side, Anji thought it a wonder it was still standing.

“It’s a ruin,” Anji said. “We’re not going in there.”

Kit flicked the reins, guiding the horse over a slight rise.

A white flash splintered between the distant clouds, thunder drowning out Anji’s exasperated sigh.

The trail spun down until they met the base of the rocky hill. Boulders lay stacked in haphazard piles up and down the slope, any hint of a road or path long obscured by weeds and brush. Scraggly trees leaned in unison with the salt-heavy wind. Kit dismounted, her mask jostling at her belt, swords on her other side clanking as she settled to the ground. She coughed more black spittle into her hand and wiped it on her thigh. The woman’s leathers didn’t seem as tight as they’d been days past. The material was wrinkled and sagging around her hips, at the joints of her shoulders and elbows. The Goat had been right, her hair was falling out. It had been thin when they’d first met, but now there were whole patches of bare scalp near the back of her skull.