Suddenly, Ben turns the steering wheel sharply to the left and, as we judder along over the dirt road, a row of cypress trees appears, their knife-like silhouettes cutting dense shadows against the inky sky. Moments later, lights blaze into view: burning torches dug into the ground that reveal a rough driveway and a long, imposing wall with an arch carved in the middle. It looks like a fortress, the shadows of the trees playing eerily across the stone in the firelight. It’s as though we’ve been dropped unceremoniously into the past.

“No electricity outside the house,” Ben explains, gesturing to the torches. It must be the early hours of the morning now and everything is silent as we trundle through the archway into a sort of courtyard. The car comes to a stop and the weak glow from its headlamps is extinguished.

I take a deep breath; there’s a clinging, heavy scent in the air that’s sweet, like jasmine. Ben steps out of the car and I do the same, slipping out from under the blanket and stretching my cramped limbs.

“We’re here,” I say into the night. I can’t believe it.

Ben picks up my bag and deposits it with a thud at my feet. “What gave it away?” he asks.

I ignore him. My eyes adjust to the velvet darkness, and I make out rough walls and a tall crenellated tower that looms over us like something from a fairy tale.

Ben reaches into the car and leans on the horn for a moment. The short, sharp blast shatters the silence as definitively as a gunshot.

“They’re expecting you,” he says, and then he leaps back in and starts the car, driving away through another archway at the other end of the courtyard, and leaving me standing alone in the dark.

For a second, I let the sensation of finally being here wash over me. I close my eyes and listen to the crickets chirrup into the night and I breathe in that heady, perfumed air, relishing the unfamiliarity of it all. Then I reach down and pick up my bag, deciding that I’ve done quite enough waiting. It’s time to take my destiny into my own hands, and that means finding a way into this building.

Then, as though I have summoned it myself, a light appears, a fine silver crescent carved into the impenetrable wall, widening like a waxing moon.

It is a doorway, I realize, and it is opening to let me in.

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

“Bea!” A figure tumbles through the door and throws herself into my arms. I stiffen for just a moment, unused to such a spontaneous display of affection, and then close my arms around her in a tight hug.

“Hero!” My fourteen-year-old cousin pulls away, and the light from the open door spills across her sweet, pretty face, turned to look up at me.