The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) by Rebecca Lochlann

want me to leave the inn? To live with you?” She could hardly believe it. After a lifetime of bondage, two tenuous avenues of escape had been broached in a matter of days.
    “You’d be a great help to me, though it’s a shame you’ve never learned to make a straight seam, and your mending is…” she shook her head. “A sight is what it is.”
    Morrigan hated sewing. Delicate, painstaking work appealed to Ibby, but Morrigan invariably snarled the thread, broke the needles, and ended up wanting to set fire to the whole mess.
    “It was different when Nicky was here,” Ibby said, low. “He watched out for you. I knew he wouldn’t let things go too far.”
    “You really mean it?”
    “D’you want me to ask?”
    “It’s useless. He’ll never agree.”
    “We can try, isoke .”
    The pet name was one Ibby used only when they were alone, and when asked, she’d laughed and shrugged. “I don’t know where it comes from,” she’d admitted, “or when I first thought it. But its always there, every time I think about you.”
    When the chickens were basted and roasting in the oven, Beatrice asked Morrigan to go to town and buy a sugarloaf so she could make fruit pastries, adding that maybe on the way home she could pick some wildflowers for the dining room table. The invitation to dawdle was kind and rare. Perhaps Ibby had suggested it. Morrigan seized gloves and a bonnet and ran before her aunt could reconsider.
    After she’d made her purchase, she strolled to the seafront to watch the gulls soar, marveling as she always did at how much their cries sounded like sad, lonely babies. A half-buried shell twinkled at her. She brushed it clean and listened to the surf inside.
    Fresh wind teased from the west, carrying an earthy fragrance of bracken, gorse, and open moorland. She followed eagerly, coming soon to the edge of town, where she turned inland, climbing the hill that would give her an unobstructed view of Loch Ryan and Stranraer. At the summit she watched the Princess Louise glide up to the wharf, and the tiny black figures swarming down the pier like ants emerging from an anthill. The way the light struck the humped isle of Ailsa Craig to the north made it appear closer than it was, nearly close enough to swim to.
    She rambled on into undulating moor that soon hid all evidence of Stranraer, giving an impression of vast, uninhabited expanses. Up and down over rough ground she clambered, taking off her boots and stuffing her stockings inside them so she could wade through a burn. Away in the west, a lochan sparkled in a froth of blue-green, and the only living things she saw were grazing sheep and an eagle, gliding joyously. Roving wind stirred about her feet, sparking an urge to dance, blowing away fear and sadness and all dark things, away into the wild, empty land she loved.
    The wind sharpened, billowing her shawl. She removed it and folded it over her arm; her gloves and bonnet soon followed, so she could feel the warmth of the sun on her hair.
    Remembering Beatrice’s suggestion, she picked bluebells, campion, coltsfoot, and yellow rattle. Then she spotted a patch of tormentil and farther on, purple mallow. It was too bad there was no heather. Beatrice would be dissatisfied with this pitiful cluster, and would no doubt inquire why she hadn’t gone to the meadows and woodland, where wildflowers of every type and hue abounded.
    As she shaded her eyes, searching for color, she spied a figure approaching from the direction of Stranraer, and with a jolt of surprise recognized Curran Ramsay, the Highland gentleman who had gone to Ireland days ago to acquire a puppy. His golden hair, being blown about by the wind, gave him away.
    He waved and quickened his step. “I saw you from the pier,” he said, “standing on the hill like a statue.”
    “You’ve good eyesight, Mr. Ramsay.” Morrigan held out her hand. He appeared highly pleased; it seemed cruel to wish he hadn’t spotted her. She’d so wanted some