As the day wore on and the temperatures dropped, they passed through a holloway, where skeletal trees bent over the road, their branches clasped like gnarled fingers and their knotholes watching her like crusted eyes. Everything looked the same as what had come before. They could be driving in circles for all she knew, and it was too easy to imagine getting lost in this world of endless, drifting white and gray. She trusted Basil, but after her time at the inn, anxiety dogged her every thought.

Wren unlatched her window and asked, “How can you possibly know the way?”

Basil cast her a knowing look over his shoulder. “There’s only one viable way between Danu and Cernos this time of year, since they close down most of the mountain roads in winter. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. How else do you think our borders held for the past thousand years?”

By nightfall, the tree cover broke, and the lights of a town glowed in the distance. Far above it, the jagged lines of an estate loomed. The spire atop its cupola jutted from the eddying snow like broken bone.

“Is that where we’re headed?” Wren called to Basil over the wind.

“It is,” he said, his voice much grimmer than before. “We’ve a bit farther to go now.”

How could anything be lonelier and more isolated than this? Already, she longed for the smog and sprawl and noise of Knockaine. Wren wasn’t a girl made to be alone; solitude armed her with too much to worry about.

She pressed her face to the window, and the cold glass bit into her forehead as she searched for any signs of life. But this late, everyone in town was likely holed up in their homes and holding their loved ones close. Tonight, Wren would be trapped with a dying man and his employer. She only prayed Lowry would be as entertaining a proprietor as his reputation promised.

“What’s Lord Lowry like?”

Basil hesitated. “Eccentric.”

“In a good way?”

“I like a more ordinary sort of folk.” He cast his gaze to the snow-wreathed estate in the distance. “I think myself a sensible man, Ms. Southerland, but the stories one hears about that house…”

Wren frowned. “What kinds of stories?”

“No good ones,” Basil said. “Some call it foul luck. Some folk would tell you it’s haunted.”

Haunted.