A Fire Endless (Elements of Cadence, #2)

by Rebecca Ross

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

“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.”