More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
But there was something about sudden death that shook a heart down to its roots. Especially when death had stolen someone so young.
Adaira had called music his first love, and now it was stirring again inside him, like a flower blooming beneath frost.
“If I am weak for wanting you, then let me embrace that weakness and make it my strength,” he said, his gaze fixed on the west. “And if you must haunt me, then let me haunt you in return.”
To be loved by Innes was to dwell behind her shield in a land where thanes poisoned daughters.
She had loved him enough to let him go. And yet she did not feel stronger for it. Not when she realized her decision had been fueled by fear.
“You’ll soon learn that if we halted our lives every time it storms, there would be little life remaining to live. We make the most of what we have here.”
“But sometimes we have to make do with the hand fate deals us.”
“I know I should be afraid. But I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I’d soon become miserable if I forfeited my fate in order to remain ‘safe.’”
But perhaps he knew that I need you, more than I need air and warmth and light. That if I were to go on living as I had been in the east without you, I would soon be worn down to nothing but dust.”
He knew that icy feeling of self-preservation, the instinct to cut away something good for fear of it wounding you later. He knew about having no choice but to protect yourself when you feel like you’re on your own.
I am first yours, as you are first mine. Before all others. But if we are going to make this work, we need to be together. We can take our time to become what we want to be. We can take it day by day if you’d like me to remain at your side.”
It is a cruel fate, for you to die before me.”
“You don’t have to be a ‘good’ man,” Jack said. “You simply need to be an honest one.”
And I would love nothing more than to bore you with mainland stories day after day and sing for you until your guilt sheds like old skin and you choose the life you want, not the one you think you deserve.”
“Because your heart is good and brave and kind,” Ella said. “You are thoughtful and smart. And those are the people who I want to be friends with. Not the ones who think they are above everyone else. Who scowl and judge things they don’t understand and throw mud and have cowardly hearts.”
Tonight I write my mind and my heart into this letter because I will never send it. There is heady power in such a thing, I’m learning. To write without constraints. To write what you truly feel. To turn a memory immortal. Into ink and paper and the unique slant of your hand.
And I would tell you to sing up a hundred storms, if only to hear such beauty and truth again. To feel it settle in my bones and warm my blood. To know it is mine and mine alone to claim. I love you, more than these humble words and this everlasting ink can say. I love you, Jack.
“You and I have faced many things alone,” Jack murmured. “Between the mainland and the isle, the east and the west, we’ve carried our troubles in solitude. As if it were weakness to share one’s burdens with another. But I am with you now. I am yours, and I want you to lay your burdens down on me, Adaira.”
But she sensed that her reticence stemmed from her pride, hammered into steel, and the duty she had been raised to uphold. To faithfully guard herself and appear invincible, as a laird had no other choice but to be.
“May you be strong and courageous,” he said. “May your enemies kneel before you. May you find the answers you seek. May you be victorious and spirits-blessed, and may peace follow as your shadow.”
Can peace be won by spilling blood?
You look to the past, where there is nothing but bloodshed. You chart your present by what has been done and what has happened, as if you can never rise and break away from it.”
“To live your life you have forged yourself to be as strong as possible,” Adaira said. “You have made yourself like a blade that is hammered over fire and quenched in water. Day after day. But there is nothing weak in being soft, in being gentle.”
“Give your fear a name,” Jack said, remembering that Adaira had once said this very thing to Torin. “Once it is named, it is understood, and it loses its power over you.”
He marveled at how his own heart could exist outside his body.
“Sing us to peace, Jack,” his grandmother said, laying her weathered hand on his cheek. “If there is anyone strong enough to do so, it is you.”
because I see the mark of a higher calling within you. A flame that will always burn, no matter where you go.”
“But I cannot let you go without telling you that I was proud to call you mine then,” Niall whispered, “even if only your mother and the spirits could stand witness. And I am proud to call you mine now.”
Frae had always wanted to know what magic felt like. She imagined she had grasped it in her hands sometimes, when she harvested wildflowers from the valleys or drank from one of the trickling pools. When she looked up at the stars on a moonless night. But now she knew. She felt the magic, gentle and soft, when she took Mirin’s hand and grinned.
“Long ago, I wanted my daughters to be like me. To be my mirror.” Innes paused, as if lost in her memories. “I am relieved, now, to know you are nothing like me. You are your own self, and I had no part in shaping or molding you. How ironic to know my enemies made you greater than I ever could.”
You will turn into dust and rot in a grave.” “It is not a fate I fear,” Jack said. “What I fear is living for an eternity with a wound that will never heal.”
“I don’t want my deeds to be sung of,” Jack replied. “I would rather live them.”
“And I would rather live a short breadth of days, working with my hands even if they can no longer play a harp, and living with those I love.
“And so you turned your fear into something else,” he said. “You reached the place you thought you would never find, and you claimed it as your own. Well done, my love.”
“Even if I lived a thousand years in the fire,” Jack said, “I would not forget you. I would not allow myself to.”
In making mistakes, because I know that I’ll make them, and then restitution, because I’m better than I once ever hoped to be when I’m with you.”
“I think that I want to make such music with you until my last day when the isle takes my bones. I think that you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.”
