I can’t explain this thing between us, why I keep showing up when she needs it most, but it’s real and I’m a slave to follow the instinct.

I’ve been trying my best to keep our unusual connection low-key, but she never makes it easy. She seems to find herself in the most unlikely places at the most unfavorable times.

I groan as she picks her way along the edge of the seaside cliff. The mist clings to her pale nightdress; the soft fabric is almost sheer as the silver moonbeams cut across her form. My heart is so rattled by her presence, it takes everything in me to resist going to her. My instincts tell me to wrap her in my arms, lock her in the keep of Leith Hall and throw away the key if that’s what it takes to keep her safe, but I know that won’t work. Not this time. Fable is headstrong; it’s what landed her in the loch without breath in her lungs. It’s what brought me to her the first time, and it’s what brings me to her now.

She’s determined to find the truth; I’ll give her that. I imagine she’s just spent the night reading more of the books Keats recommended, the ones I insisted she start with if she has any hope of solving Skye’s oldest cold case. Fable’s great-aunt’s disappearance is famous around here, but they all are. The girls who vanish from this island are all of a type—young, naïve, headstrong, and heart-stopping in their beauty.

Fable fits the mold perfectly, and it terrifies me.

Spending time with Harris won’t end well. I can already see the epic crash and burn in my mind’s eye. She doesn’t know it, but I can sense it coming from a thousand years away. Fable, on the other hand, seems unable to sense anything. Her senses are dulled to the force this island has on people, the way the mist bends the perspective and twists the thoughts. Humans aren’t meant to be so isolated, and Fable is already suffering the effects. Leith is a rambling, imposing monster of cobbled-together ruins and dark, damp corridors. It’s no place for a woman as soft and sweet as she is, but then, there’s nothing I can say that will convince her of that.

Only that I’ll take care of her if she can’t do it herself.

She must hate me for being so abrasive, but I can’t think of another way to make her understand that she’s playing with fire when she asks for the truth.