Desperate to ignore the deep aching pain in her heart, she walked and walked towards the pale blue horizon. The sky was finally clear, and the further she walked, the clearer the day became. After a few hours of relentless slogging, Lily was rewarded with a magical sight.

The sea.

Flat as glass, and a deeper, richer blue than the beautiful, wide-open sky.

Lily was sure she had never seen anything quite as lovely. After the most horrendous of traumas, the sight was a tonic for her aching heart.

The cobbled road on which she had set out from The Old Silent Inn soon fell away and became little more than a mucky dirt track and Lily suddenly understood why the stagecoach driver had refused to come this far. It was treacherous, even on foot. The ground was slippery with mud and filled with hidden holes, only noticeable once you’d lost your foot in them. Even if Kelseth itself didn’t have a troubled reputation, she imagined that the coach drivers rarely needed an excuse to refuse to travel this way.

It remained treacherous for mile upon mile, until she couldn’t remember what it was like to walk on flat ground. Her legs were half-coated in thick, treacly mud, her hem was soaked through, and her thighs screamed from yesterday’s battering on the back of Morrigan, worsened now by the grief and the strain to stay upright through the quagmire.

Traipsing ever onwards, the path finally peaked and started to head downwards, towards the edge of a crumbling cliff. Then, the path dropped off violently and Lily was rewarded with a sweeping view over the bay, down onto the village of Kelseth.

She took a few moments to rest at the peak of the cliff, no longer caring that the mud would soak through her dress. Dangling her legs over the edge, she breathed in the welcome scent of the sea. The salty air was restorative. She reached into her bag and pulled out a hunk of bread, finding herself suddenly ravenous.

She sat for a while, silently devouring her measly meal, taking sips of water from a leather flagon in between mouthfuls. She felt the wind whip through her hair and lift the cares from her shoulders. They hung in the air for a moment, before a rogue seagull plummeted from the sky to catch them and carry them far away, until she could feel them no longer. A single tear rolled down her flushed cheek.

At the end of this path, on the crumbling rocks, was a lighthouse. And at that lighthouse, this nightmare would end, one way or another.

She inhaled once more, ready to face whatever lay ahead, and clambered back onto her feet.

Chapter Fourteen

Through the mud and moss, Lily spotted another path snaking its way down the steep edge of the cliff. Several sections of it had already fallen away, leaving a precarious track of rumbling rocks, damp, sticky-looking dirt, and scree. Lily felt a morbid sense of relief that Morrigan wasn’t here; guiding the heavy and powerful horse down such a treacherous slope would have been almost impossible. No, she thought, for this one occasion I am glad I am alone.