She faced the Baron, despising him, and curtsied low, as if he were an Emperor and she a slave.
And then she turned and swept out of the ballroom.
She made it all the way across the vestibule and out the front door before her resolve crumbled and the tears came.
Chapter Eleven
SHE WALKED OUT INTO THE RAIN AND was instantly soaked through, the gown clinging to her legs in a mess of silk and ribbons.
But she didn’t care.
She crossed the drive and began to run, her shoes slapping hard against the flagstones as the cold rain stung her face and a chill crept down into her bones.
She ran faster, past a low outbuilding that was probably a stable, then down the slope of the hill and onto the shore. White sand stretched west as far as she could see, scattered with jagged black rocks that looked as though they had been thrown there in ancient times by a god. To the north there was nothing but ocean, waves crawling onto the shore and shrinking back again, yearning always for something they couldn’t have.
She pulled off her shoes and dashed through the sand to the water’s edge, letting the icy sea wash over her bare toes. She stood there, the rain biting hard into her skin, the waves lapping at her ankles and splashing up to her knees.
An eerie music whispered to her out of the storm. She could hear it, as clearly as she’d heard Wen playing in the back of the house: a song, tangled in the rain and wind and sea. It sounded to her like a lament. She shut her eyes and let it fill her up.
The waves crashed higher, breaking against her waist, crawling up to her shoulders, yearning to pull her down into the depths. She had the sudden sensation of fingers, like spots of ice against her neck, and she thought she heard a voice at her ear, whispering words in a language she didn’t know. But she understood it anyway: Come to us, it seemed to say, come to us. The sand shifted beneath her feet and the waves battered her, knocking her to her knees and choking all her breath away. She fought through the water and scrambled up to the safety of the shore, her pulse erratic and too quick.
She stared, shuddering, out to sea, her mother’s words echoing in her mind.
The waves are singing. Can’t you hear it?
Had the sea called to her mother too? Is that why she’d jumped?
She gulped a breath and started running again, westward down the shore. She pushed herself faster and faster, trying to outrun her fear of the sea and her longing for it, the creeping dread that her mother’s madness would become her own.
The ground began to rise steadily to her left, climbing up into sheer bluffs that blocked out half the sky, but the shoreline stayed true. She ran on, between the cliff and the sea, rain at her back and sand spraying up into her face.
She ran until she thought her lungs would burst, and then she dropped to her knees in the shadow of the cliff, sobbing for breath. The world tilted around her.
Only when she raised her head a few minutes later did she realize she’d run partway into a little cove, shells and bits of sea glass scattered over the wet sand. It had stopped raining, though the clouds still roiled uneasily in the sky. The respite wouldn’t last.
Talia stood shakily and paced farther into the cove, hugging the cliff and grazing her hand gently across the rock. In the deepest part of the cove her fingers brushed over a tangle of seaweed and trailing vines that hung from the side of the cliff. Her hand passed through part of it, grasping empty air.
The wind whipped loose strands of hair into her face as she scrutinized the cliffside. There was a hollow cut into the rock, perfectly concealed from anyone who didn’t know to look, and she tugged at the vines, trying to create a hole big enough to climb through.
But the plant was stubborn and impossibly knotted up. She wished Wen had given her a knife instead of a ring.
For the first time since fleeing the house, she glanced down at her right hand. In the moody gray light, the pale gem looked like a drop of the sea, caught just before dawn and bound in silver. She fought the urge to fling it into the ocean and went back to clawing at the vines, managing at last to pull enough foliage away to squeeze inside.
She stepped into a cave that burrowed deep into the cliff. It was much bigger than she had imagined: tall enough for her to stand upright, with room to spare, and wide enough to house two carriages. Fragments of light filtered through the vines and the hole she’d made, and Talia saw that she wasn’t the cave’s first visitor.
Something was half-buried in the center of the cavern, a curve of old wood poking up from the sand. She went to investigate, dropping to her knees and digging around the wooden thing until she could see what it was—the hull of a small boat, obviously old, but not rotten.
She stared at it awhile, rubbing off the dirt to try and make out what had once been written in red letters across the front. But the words were too faded. She felt a pang of ancient sorrow and loss, and she suddenly wished she hadn’t come into this place. It was beginning to feel like a tomb.
Water lapped at her heels as the sea crept into the cove, and she pushed her way back through the tangle of vines before it was flooded entirely.
A thin line of shore was still visible between the cliff and the sea.
She ran back the way she’d come, racing against the rising tide.
The cliff fell gradually away as the shoreline rose to meet the bluff, and then she was dashing once more onto the white rock-strewn sand.
Her breath came shorter and cramps stabbed her sides. She dropped back to a walk.
The rain still held off, the clouds parting in places to show bits of ragged sky turning slowly orange and gold and scarlet. Away behind her, the sun was beginning to set.
She’d come a long way from the house. The gown was ruined, her shoes lost, her hair tumbled loose from its careful arrangement.
The ocean crashed beside her, and she stopped and stared out over the waves. She didn’t let herself hear the distant strain of a song, shivering out there on the horizon, where sky met sea.
She tore her gaze away and saw someone running toward her across the sand.
It was Wen.
She clenched her hands into fists, the pale ring pressing into her palm, and strode forward to meet him.
He pulled up short five feet from her, breathing hard, his cravat flapping loose and his hair windblown. He stared at her. “You’re—you’re all right.”
She thought of the cave and the boat, the sea creeping in, how she could have been trapped. The fear made her angry. “Are you following me?”
“Talia, I—”
“It’s Miss Dahl-Saida!” she screeched at him.
He watched her guardedly and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Miss Dahl-Saida,” he amended. “You’re not allowed to walk down here. The Bar—my father has forbidden it.”
Talia folded her arms across her chest. Wen’s pale face glinted orange in the fractured light of the setting sun. “Forbidden it? Why?”