Alice started to shiver; the dampness from the cloth combined with the chill in the air was uncomfortable. With a flick of a wrist, the girl eliminated the residual water and a warm breeze chased away the shivers.

Alice was overflowing with confused and conflicted emotions. She hated being kept in the dark, literally and figuratively. She was angry, she had been betrayed, and all she wanted was to be home with her best friend, with everything back to how it was.

Up until now, she had had to force thoughts of Lily to the back of her head because it was too painful to imagine Lily’s reaction when she found out Alice was gone. Would she be upset that she’d left without saying goodbye? Would she be angry, or heartbroken? Alice recalled the argument they had had the last time they spoke and felt bile rise in her throat at the thought of her own despicable behaviour.

Then she looked at the girl sat in front of her, who’d spent her own valuable time keeping Alice safe, tending to her wounds, and sitting in a dingy cell just to keep her company. But how could she warm to her when she was a part of the Shadow Sect?

When she was one of the people who had captured her, chained her up, and locked her in a cell.

This girl was her enemy.

Chapter Sixteen

Lily shivered. The temperature had been gradually dropping until her whole body tremored with the chill. In the distance, she could hear the pained whimpering of the wooden boats tied up in the harbour. It sounded like they were tugging with desperation at their ropes, trying to get free and escape the horrible fate of staying there, in that place, at night. Lily understood those boats. Kelseth was an unnerving place.

The path she had just joined sliced through the village, winding around the houses, the taverns, and the shops in a brutal, jagged line. Looking up at the buildings, it was as if a giant had passed this way, wielding an axe to hack a path through the crooked structures. Most of the buildings were unfinished, or they had fallen into disrepair many years ago and the rot had crawled through the wooden beams. The path was lit by flickering streetlamps and, up ahead, she noticed a hunched lamplighter with his long stick, lighting the streetlamps further along the way.

Lily was thankful that she had the light to guide her as the fog began to creep and curl around her legs, but she couldn’t shake the unease she felt deep within herself. It would only be a matter of time until her vision was obscured by the gathering mass of dampness.

Lily noticed the absence of light in the windows of all of the buildings she walked past, and she kept her pace swift, not wanting to be caught loitering. She knew at some point she would have to ask someone for directions to the lighthouse, but the lamplighter had disappeared into the mist. There was no one else around other than the occasional woman lurking in shadowy alleyways and she wasn’t feeling brave enough to knock on any doors. She pushed onwards in the cold and oppressive violet hour, hoping that she would be able to find her own way.