A Fire Endless (Elements of Cadence, #2)

by Rebecca Ross

“Have you touched any of the fruit, Rodina? Or the trees?” “Course not, Laird.” “Has anyone else visited your orchard?” “My hired help,” said Rodina. “He was the one who first saw the blight.” “And who is that?” “Hamish Brindle.”

“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 let go and simply breathe the notes. To melt into the fire of his music. He didn’t sing for the isle or for himself. He sang for what had been and what could still be. He sang for Adaira.

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.

“The other day,” Graeme said, “I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst of experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and we see who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.”

Ice and fire, brought together as one. Sisters divided, united once more. Washed with salt and laden with blood—all united will satisfy the debt you owe.”

“And I must thank you, Rab Pierce,” Jack said. “You believe you have done something grand, something sly. You are quite proud of yourself in this moment but know this: tonight is not my appointed time to die. There are forces at play that you cannot even imagine with your small mind, and one might even say that I was always destined to stand in this moment. You were merely a pawn of the spirits to get me here.”

“Yes. When I lie beside my wife tonight, when she learns of all you did to bring us back together, I’m sure she will personally want to thank you.”

gladly let her pound her fists on his chest if she needed to. She could call him whatever she felt like, because he was with her and that was all that mattered to him. He was breathing the same air as her, standing in the same moment with her.

“You’re assuming Ash sent me here for the mission and the mission alone. 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.”

“We still have autumn, winter, and spring. And nothing—no spirits, no lies, no schemes, no culling—can come between us. I am first yours, as you are first mine.

“You’re staring at me, Jack,” she whispered. He began to move across the bed toward her. “I can’t seem to draw my eyes away from you.”

I love them

“Moray Breccan has escaped from the dungeons.”

Oh shit

“Let our names be the sword in your hand. Let us be your shield and your armor. Fight for us tonight. Because over the clan line, in the shadows of the Aithwood, my mother still waits for you, weaving your story on her loom. My sister longs for you as I once did, wondering where you are and hoping you will one day knock on the door and proudly claim her. 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.”

Crying i love jack

“What if my da is a Breccan?” Frae kicked a pebble on the road, keeping her eyes on the ground. “Would you still want to walk me home?”

“If your da is a Breccan,” Ella began to say, “then yes, I’d still walk you home, and I’d still be your friend, Frae. Do you want to know why?”

“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.”

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.”

“I don’t need autumn, or winter, or spring,” Adaira said, letting the words bloom. “I want you eternally. Will you take the blood vow with me, Jack?”

She had not known her place then. But she would carve it into stone now. She would find it in the stars when the clouds broke. She would trace it in the lines on Jack’s palms. In the cold echo of his scar. In the taste of his mouth.

She let them all go because he was her home, her shelter. Her endless fire, burning through the dark.

“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.”

Iagan had never died. He had sung his way to power and immortality, stealing fragments from the folk to do it. He had become Bane.

I had a suspicion

If Iagan had turned himself into a king of the spirits through music, then surely music could dethrone him.

“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. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered. “By you alone I could be undone.” Adaira raised her hand from the water to trace his collarbones, his golden half coin, flickering in the light. “I know it well,” she replied. “But only because you have done the very same to me.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said. “You have been so brave, Sidra. You have been so strong without me, holding the clan and the east together. Let me help you now, love. Let me carry it with you again.”

Torin cleaned the knife, took up the remedy, and went to David. And Sidra watched in wonder as Torin healed the west with his hands.

Niall fell quiet, but he smiled. And Jack finally saw a shade of himself in his father. The smile he had stolen from Niall.

“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 would never forget the moment her mother opened her eyes and saw the man, sitting next to her. She would never forget how Mirin had smiled, first at him and then at Frae. 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.

She was home with Torin. She may have been in the west, with sunlight streaming in through the window, but she was home in his arms.

“It is not a fate I fear,” Jack said. “What I fear is living for an eternity with a wound that will never heal.”

“Even if I lived a thousand years in the fire,” Jack said, “I would not forget you. I would not allow myself to.”

“I may not be able to play a harp again, or sing for the clan,” he said. “But I have found that this is my song. This is my music.”

I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together. In waking up at your side every sunrise and falling asleep entwined with you every sunset. In kneeling beside you in the kail yard and leading a clan and overseeing trade and eating at our parents’ tables. 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.”

Im crying and its not even 9 am yet

“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.”