Chapter 15
Chapter 15 — The Cliff Where It Began
Lyra, Elias, Celia, and Elara sail north aboard the Merrow toward Thorne Point, where they must perform the final ritual at the cliff where Aldric betrayed Elara four centuries ago. During the voyage, Elara struggles with her returning human memories and the horror of what she became as Morwen. Celia reads her father Robert Ashford's final journal entries aloud, which reveal the precise instructions for breaking the curse: the ritual must be performed at the exact spot on the cliff where Aldric stood, using seawater drawn from three different depths and the voices of all three cursed women speaking in unison. Lyra's voice continues to return in fragments, each word costing blood from her seventeen cuts. Elias and Lyra share a quiet moment of intimacy that is interrupted by Morwen's residual power manifesting through the water in the boat. They arrive at Thorne Point and climb to the cliff as dusk falls. Elara recognizes the place and nearly collapses from the weight of memory. The chapter ends as they reach the cliff's edge at sunset and see something impossible: the lighthouse light has begun pulsing on its own, and a figure stands at its top.
The Merrow had opinions about carrying four people.
She'd been built for one, maybe two on a generous day—Elias at the tiller, a passenger wedged against the bow locker if the passenger didn't mind sharing space with a coil of rope and a bucket of bait that should have been thrown out weeks ago. Four adults pushed the waterline dangerously close to the gunwales, and every time someone shifted their weight, the boat responded with the petulant rocking of an animal asked to carry more than it signed up for.
Celia sat in the bow, Robert Ashford's bones wrapped in oilskin across her lap like a sleeping child. She hadn't let go of them since the beach. Her fingers maintained a constant, absent pressure against the wrapping—the grip of someone holding onto proof that something real existed outside of her own experience. Her father had been a story for most of her life. Now he was weight in her arms, calcium and memory, and she held him with the particular tenderness reserved for things that cannot be held tightly enough.
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