Alice thought about reaching out to hold Grace’s hand, as Grace had done for her in the back of the cart, but something stopped her. The sound of scraping metal and heavy footsteps shattered the silence, and they jumped in unison. Grace gestured for Alice to be quiet.

‘They’re coming.’

Chapter Eighteen

Bright light streamed through the open windows. Lily scrunched up her eyes and found them stinging and raw. She came around to consciousness slowly. In her mind, she could see waves and darkness; she had felt death pull at her arm. But … it mustn’t have been death, because here she was.

She had cheated him. Again.

Lily opened her eyes in a panic and shot upright, realising she was in an unfamiliar bed. The warmth, the softness, it all felt wrong. The blood rushed to her head and dizziness overcame her, nausea washing over her like the waves that had wanted to drown her. She tried to gasp and call for help; she had a million questions, most of them along the lines of, where the hell am I? and, how am I alive?

But her voice was gone, and the only noise that escaped her lips came out as a painful croak. The inhalation of saltwater must have ripped apart her throat because each breath felt like raw flesh dragging across sandpaper. Tears leaked from her eyes, partly with the intensity of the pain, partly because she was terrified and confused, and partly because she’d been dreaming of her sweet, innocent Morrigan.

Lily attempted to push through the pain and focused on inhaling and exhaling with deliberate slowness, a method she’d learned long ago when panic would course through her body with such violence that she’d be confined to her bed for days. Even through the pain in her throat, she felt her heart rate slow to a more manageable pace and she could finally hear herself think over the relentless drumming in her ears.

Spinning herself so her legs dangled over the side of the bed, Lily looked around the room for some kind of clue as to her location. She figured that she must be in the lighthouse, but the room didn’t feel like it would belong inside a haunted lighthouse that was home to a coven of murderous witches.

It was small and round, and the walls were painted a warm, bright white that was almost cheerful; there was a large circular window directly across from where she sat, through which tendrils of sunlight shone and dust motes danced like midsummer fairies in the rays. Lily could hear the calm lapping of the waves outside and the cry of seabirds circling ahead. She forced the remaining grogginess from her brain. In that moment, once she had shaken the sleep from her eyes, she realised that she had been tucked into a bed covered in layers of thick, warm knitted blankets, and instead of her woollen dress, she wore a long white nightgown.

Her heart jolted.