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“Annie,” Liana interrupted, “you know you’re not supposed to go over there by yourself. It’s too far, and the house isn’t safe.”

“I didn’t go alone! I took the stable boy with me. We were only gone an hour.” She drummed her fingers against the table. “But that’s not my secret.”

“I’m going to speak to the stable boy,” Bowen muttered.

“Yes, please do,” Liana agreed. “No more early morning rides.” She turned toward me and aimed her fork in my direction. “This is your fault, Gavin. You take her over to that crumbling manor so often she thinks she can come and go as she pleases.”

I lifted my coffee like a shield. “In my defense, your daughter is a mischief-maker.”

Liana jabbed the fork closer. “And where do you think she gets that from?”

Annie groaned. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear about the pretty lady who broke into Uncle Gavin’s house and gave me the sea glass?”

I choked, inhaling coffee into my windpipe. Bowen slapped me on the back as I coughed, asking the question I couldn’t get past my spasming throat.

“What lady?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “ Finally! As I was saying. I went back for my book and found her snooping around the hallway. I told her she wasn’t supposed to be there and that the house belonged to my uncle.”

“What did she look like?” I sputtered, finally able to speak.

“Oh, she was lovely. Blue eyes, like mine. Shorter than mama. Long dark hair… though part of it was strangely colored.” She blinked. “Can I color my hair?”

“Not until you’re older,” Liana said firmly. “Did she say anything?”

“Yes. When I told her who my uncle was, she got a strange look on her face, and then she cursed and called him a bloody thief!”

I went still. The air stalled in my lungs. It wasn’t possible. And yet, who else would do that? And the sea glass? A gut punch of hope mixed with dread wrenched my stomach.

What if it’s just a coincidence?

Life can’t be that cruel.

Annie kept talking over the roaring in my ears.

“Then she asked if I could keep a secret.” Annie nodded sagely. “I’m very good at secrets.”

“We know, dear,” Liana replied, but her voice sounded strange.

“I have to go.” I pushed out of my chair, hardly aware of it falling backward and slamming to the floor.

Bowen grabbed my arm, his grip tightening until pain forced me to listen. “It’s not her, Gavin. It’s been three years. You saw Marin fall, and we all searched. We spent hours combing the sea. Let me go to the house. I’ll check it out. Don’t do that to yourself.”

I shook off his grip. “I’m going. Stay here with your family.”

Liana scraped her chair back. Her voice followed me as I headed for the door.

“Let me speak to him.”

She caught up to me in the hall, and I slowed so she wouldn’t have to run.

I flinched when she reached for my hand.

I didn’t want to be touched. Every fiber of my body vibrated with the need to see for myself, to tear the seaside manor down stone by stone until I found proof Marin had been there. That it was real.

“Gavin,” Liana said softly, “we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I know what it’s like when someone you care for is missing. It eats you alive. You question whether you did enough to find them. But listen to me. Marin isn’t lost. She’s dead. Don’t chase a ghost.”

I let out a harsh laugh that scraped across my throat. Ghost or not, I’d been chasing Marin for years, ever since I first saw her perched on top of a boulder outside a ruin.

The setting sun had turned her unbound hair into liquid gold, waves spilling down her shoulders.

Her eyes, blue like the sea, shifted with her moods.

Dark and stormy when I’d challenged her to pick my pocket.

A brilliant turquoise when she’d smiled in triumph, revealing a jewel that appeared dull beside her.

Marin was beautiful, but beauty wasn’t rare. She was. Her reckless spirit. Her sharp wit. The way she clung to kindness in a trade where greed stripped away everything else.

It was laughable! Me? Gavin Blackwood, pining after a woman? It defied logic. And I would have denied it, except it was so painfully accurate. I would've gone to my knees for one of her teasing smiles. Gods, what I wouldn’t have given for a single taste of her lips.

After that day, I made sure our paths crossed again. And again. Until the girl with the jewel became my partner. My compass no longer pointed to my past, but to her.

But I never crossed the line. Marin always said you should give more than you take. And I was a thief—if I stole her heart, I knew I wouldn't give it back.

And that was the problem. Wanting her had never been the issue. Walking away had been.

She deserved better than a thief with a name he’d stolen for lack of a real one. Better than a man who'd seen too many fights, and whose morals were flexible at best, and nonexistent if anyone threatened someone he cared about.

But even my excuses didn’t change the truth.

Marin was my treasure.

I’d always want her—search for her if there was even the slightest chance she lived. Against all odds. Until there was nothing left of me.

Liana must have seen it in my eyes because she backed away.

“Just come home when you’re ready. We’ll be waiting for you. ”

She left the rest unspoken, but I still heard it in the silence, whispering around me.

Don’t push us away. Don’t sink into that dark pit. This time, you might not come out.

I nodded and spun on my heel. Marin’s shout rang in my mind again, the dream spilling into daylight.

“Don’t let me go!”

And I ran, driven by the clawing need to make this time different. To catch her before she slipped through my fingers again.