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“Ireland? You’re sure?”

I stared down at the ancient skeleton key in my hand and then the castle before me, perched right on the edge of the cliff. I eyed the turrets, the arched windows, the unrelenting sea slamming into the rocks below, and gulped.

“Little late for that,” I replied hoarsely, knuckles whitening around the key.

It’d been left for me taped against the front door, my name scrawled in harsh, slanted writing. Inside the envelope there’d been a list of instructions, a wifi password, and a key.

Nothing else.

“You’re there?” Marissa’s voice cracked over the phone.

I could almost imagine her sitting up in bed, upsetting her coffee over those pristine white sheets she spent a year’s salary on. Her silk pajamas would be ruined but no matter—she had another ten pairs squirreled away for incidents such as this.

“Av? You’re there? You never do anything impulsive!”

My boots shifted over the rocky soil, another blast of sea air tangling in my hair. She was right. I never did anything impulsive. I planned carefully—diligently.

It was what landed me my second book deal, a sweeping romance about second chances and grief. Once the book was turned in, the edits completed—all perfectly color-coded and organized by severity—I’d taken a few weeks off to rest.

Only those weeks turned to months, and I was now one month late on my newest deadline for my next book. Marissa, my agent, has seen me through all the ups and downs of this process. We’d been together for five years now and most days, she felt more like a sister than an agent.

She’d fought to give me extra time, promising them I had something in the works, but the well inside me had shriveled up and gone dry. I searched for the words, but there was nothing there. An aching hollowness remained, something I had tried hard to push back down.

“I know,” I finally said, scuffing the ground. “I just thought—the castles, the villages, being near the sea. I thought inspiration would strike.”

“You don’t write historical fiction!” Rustling came from her side of the phone and I imagined her sauntering across her apartment on the Upper East Side, throwing her windows open and staring down at Central Park like a merciful overlord. “They won’t want it.”

“I’m not writing it,” I insisted. Somewhere in a window above my head, a shadow moved. “I’m just…hoping for something to wake me up.”

No pot of coffee or early morning walk had managed to do it yet. I tried yoga, too. I went every morning at sunrise. I cleaned up my diet and gave up ice cream. I started meditating before bed. I went for weekly massages and aura cleansings. I’d done everything over the last three months to piece something together, but everything that went down on the page resulted in me dropping my head into my hands and groaning.

Travel was the only thing I hadn’t tried. I had a picture of the Cliffs of Moher tacked up in my room as a child. I used to stare at it as I fell asleep, dreaming about standing on the edge of the world.

It was only after eavesdropping on the two ladies next to me at a little coffee shop in the city that the idea to travel came.

“Well, you know as well as I do that a trip is good for the soul.”

I’d packed up my stuff, ignored my empty word document, and sprinted back home. It was a frantic phone call to a travel agent that was delivered in fits and starts. Words like ‘break’ and ‘quiet’ and ‘distance’ spilled out of me. Along with ‘inspiration’ and ‘life.’ She’d laughed, asked me calmly if I’d ever been to County Clare and I almost cried.

My book tour took me all over the states, but I hadn’t managed to make it international yet. That was a dream that was slipping further and further out of my reach.

She asked me when I wanted to leave and the words, “right away” came spilling out of me. She clucked and clicked around, sighing in absolute wonder as she told me about a listing for an ancient castle, now open to rentals for the season.

She emailed me the link and I clicked through the photos, marveling at the stone floors, the wide, expansive kitchen, the cozy study with its fireplace, and the jaw-dropping view of the sea from nearly every room.

“Ask them if I can stay for two months,” I’d said, biting my nails down to the quick. “I’m working on a book.”

It all happened rather quickly after that. The family confirmed, I paid over the phone, and then somehow a plane ticket was sitting in my inbox after a few glasses of white wine that made the world feel fuzzy.

And now, here I was.

Standing outside Kilmorran Castle with nothing but a key and a few of my bags.

“Avery!” Marissa called my name over the phone and I came back to myself with a sharp breath. “Do you have any ideas? The publisher sent an email this morning.”

“I’m…circling something,” I hedged.

“That means no,” she lamented.