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{ Chapter 1 }
Badenoch, Scotland
December 1822
She was sinking now. Sinking up to her knees.
Every step her feet descended deeper into the fluffy, bitter torture—the snow crusting about the top edges of her boots, rings of ice around her calves.
One more step.
It had to be only one more step.
When Karta had set out into the storm after the barn door wouldn’t open for the drift in front of it, there’d still been daylight cutting through the greyness of the thick clouds blanketing the land with freezing snow.
It had seemed possible.
Make it to Kirkmere Abbey. It was only an hour walk on a sunny day.
Maggie’s life depended upon her making it there.
But now…
Karta’s look shifted up from the undulating waves of snow, searching through the pellets of ice searing into her skin—each one a freezing pinprick. An eerie white glow from the moon had taken over the land as the snow had stopped falling from the sky, but now the wind whipped across the glen, vicious, blinding her to her own hand in front of her face.
If she could just make it to the woodlands that lined the eastern border of Kirkmere land, the wind would be broken. Broken enough for her to see the path again. Broken enough that her legs could move through the snow without battling the drifts that made every muscle in her body scream against the torture.
Keep forward.
The only choice now. She’d gone too far to even consider turning around and trying to make it back to the dower house. Death was surely waiting if she tried to retrace her footsteps through the drifts.
Her breathing had been slight ever since she’d stepped out into the howling winds, afraid to let the freezing air too deeply into her lungs. But exhaustion had set into her muscles and she needed air.
Real air.
Needed to stop her head from swaying.
She sucked in a gulp of frigid air. It chilled her from the inside out, the cold seeping even deeper into the marrow of her bones.
Keep forward.
The only option.
She tucked her chin back down, sinking it behind the edge of the wool cloak she held clasped at her neck and she tugged the edge of the hood far over her forehead.
Thirty more steps—each one a struggle as the snow devoured her legs, holding tight to her feet as she tried to lift them from the heavy drifts—and she felt no farther along than she had been minutes ago.
She stopped, hunched over against the bitter wind and gasping for air. Her breath now so cold it no longer puffed into cloud crystals as she exhaled. Each muscle in her body railed against her, demanding she yield, demanding she stop. Lie down.
Maggie. Maggie was dying. There was no time to stop.
With a screech, she yanked her right foot from the bank of snow it was wedged in. Five more steps and her shoulder knocked into a tree she didn’t see.
The forest.
Almost there.
She just had to make it through a hundred yards of woods and then across the sheep fields and help would be at hand.
