Chapter 6 The Shepherd's Path

She slipped into the servants’ corridor. The manor felt different at night. Less like a home and more like a sleeping animal. Every creak sounded deliberate, and every shadow seemed to watch her. She moved down the narrow stairs, passed the linen room, and climbed through a small window onto the rear roof. Rain slicked the tiles. Jessie crawled on her hands and knees until she reached the kitchen eaves.

Below, the courtyard lay empty. She lowered herself onto a wooden awning and dropped to the ground. Her boots struck mud. She froze. No alarm. No shouting. 

Jessie kept close to the wall and crossed toward the orchard. The stable lantern glowed to her left. A guard stood beneath the shelter of the main doors, hunched against the weather.

He never looked her way. She passed through the orchard, where bare branches clawed at the sky. At the far wall, she found the broken section she had discovered years before. She pushed through a tangle of dead ivy and dropped into the field beyond. For the first time that day, no wall stood in front of her.

Jessie ran.

Mud pulled at her boots. Rain struck her face. Her lungs burned, but she did not care. The old chapel rose ahead, a black ruin against the clouds. She reached it, slipped behind the crumbling stone, and found the narrow track leading toward the cliff. The path was worse than Clara had feared. Water streamed across the ground, and loose stones shifted beneath Jessie’s boots. To her right, the land fell sharply into darkness.

She moved slowly, one hand pressed against the cliff wall and the other holding the rope she had taken from the chapel shed. Halfway down, she heard horses. Jessie froze. 

Lantern light moved between the trees below. Two riders. No. Three. Baron Maddox’s men. They were not on the marked roads. They were patrolling the shepherd’s trail. Jessie backed against the rock. The riders slowed, and one lantern lifted. Light swept across the slope. Jessie dropped behind a cluster of thorn bushes. Branches tore at her cloak.

A man’s voice drifted through the rain. “Check the path.”

“She won’t come this way.”

“Orders are orders.”

Jessie pressed both hands over her mouth. Boots struck wet ground. Someone had dismounted. A lantern bobbed toward her hiding place, moving closer with every step. Jessie’s hand moved toward the knife in her boot. The light stopped. For one terrible moment, the entire world seemed to hold its breath. Then thunder rolled across the hills. One of the horses reared, and the man cursed before turning back. 

“Forget it,” he said. “The path will be washed out before midnight.”

“What if she already crossed?”

“Then the cliff will solve the Baron’s problem.”

The men laughed. Jessie stayed motionless until the lanterns vanished. Her fingers had gone numb around the knife. She waited several minutes before crawling from the thorns.

The trail ahead was blocked, not by the riders, but by the storm. Part of the path had collapsed into the ravine. Mud and stone continued to slide into the darkness below. Jessie stared at the broken ground. She could try to climb above it. She could use the rope. She could risk the drop. Freedom lay on the other side. So did death.

Behind her, faint and distant, a bell rang from the manor. Once. Twice. Then again. An alarm.

They had discovered the deception.

Jessie looked at the broken trail. She had no time. Lanterns would soon appear behind her. She tied the rope around the trunk of a twisted tree and pulled hard. It held. Jessie wrapped the rope around her wrist. “One cliff,” she whispered. “One cliff, and then freedom.”

She stepped over the edge. The tree cracked. Jessie dropped. Her shoulder slammed into the rock, and the rope tore through her palms. She screamed. Above her, roots ripped from the wet earth. The tree began to slide. Jessie looked down. Nothing waited below but darkness.She kicked against the cliff, searching for a foothold. Her boot struck stone, and she pushed upward. The tree shifted again. Soil rained over her face. Then a voice shouted from above.

“Jessie!”

Captain Rowan. A second rope fell beside her.

“Take it!”

Jessie clung to the first rope as lantern light flooded the cliff edge. Rowan lay flat above her with one arm extended. Behind him stood two guards. The cage had found her.

“Take the rope!” he shouted.

Jessie looked toward the darkness below. For one mad heartbeat, she considered letting go. Not to die. Only to fall far enough that they could not follow.

Then the tree roots tore loose. Jessie grabbed Rowan’s rope. The first rope vanished into the ravine with the tree. The guards hauled her upward. Her hands bled, her shoulder screamed, and mud covered her face and dress. When they pulled her over the edge, Jessie collapsed on the path.

Rowan knelt beside her. “Are you hurt?”

She laughed, but it came out broken. “You caught me.”

His expression twisted. “Thank God.”

Jessie looked past him. More lanterns moved through the rain. Baron Maddox’s men. One of them approached on horseback, his black cloak shining with water. He looked down at Jessie without sympathy.

“The Baron said she might try the cliffs.”

Jessie’s blood went cold.

The man smiled. “He knows his bride well.”

Rowan rose. “She returns with us.”

“Of course.” The rider’s gaze traveled over Jessie’s torn dress and muddy cloak. “Lord Maddox wants her unharmed.”

“How considerate,” Jessie whispered.

The rider leaned down. “Do not mistake patience for kindness, my lady.”

Rowan stepped between them. “That is enough.”

The man laughed but turned his horse away. Jessie allowed Rowan to help her stand. She could not feel her fingers, and her knees shook beneath her. The manor bell continued ringing. 

Her escape had failed.

The roads were watched. The trails were watched. Even the cliffs had been anticipated. As the guards led her back through the rain, Jessie looked toward the dark shape of the manor. Every ordinary door was closed. Every ordinary road ended in chains. She thought of the forbidden collection beyond her father’s library. Books no priest would bless. Books her mother had called dangerous. 

Jessie wiped blood from her palm.

If ordinary freedom was impossible, then she would need an impossible kind. By the time the manor gates opened, Jessie was no longer thinking about roads. She was thinking about the locked library.

The manor gates closed behind Jessie with a heavy iron clang.

Captain Rowan escorted her through the courtyard while rainwater streamed from her cloak and blood dripped from her palms. Servants watched from sheltered doorways, their expressions caught between concern and curiosity. No one approached her. No one dared.

Her father waited beneath the entrance arch.