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.”

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.

I will bring the two halves together, he thought, even though it seemed so impossible he could have laughed. I will play for peace in the west, and I will see my family made whole.

“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.”

“The riddle goes as follows: 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.”

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.”

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.”

And nothing—no spirits, no lies, no schemes, no culling—can come between us. I am first yours, as you are first mine. Before all others.

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.”

You reminded me of what could still be if I was brave enough to reach out and claim it.

A desperate expression was on his face, and Adaira knew he was unguarded. She was seeing him whole, down to his very heart. She let him see the same in her. The hunger, the longing, the scars. The words she wrote but never sent. The shape of her soul that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. For once, she wasn’t afraid to surrender those pieces of herself, to let them twine with Jack.

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

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered. “By you alone I could be undone.”

The only one he wanted to hold the shape of his soul, even with his thorns and dreams and wounds. He trusted her entirely. And he had never trusted anyone like that before.

“I’ll be there with you, Jack. No matter what comes, I’ll be at your side when you sing.”

And Sidra watched in wonder as Torin healed the west with his hands.

“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.”

But somewhere between the notes he played and the words he sang was a woman with eyes blue as the summer sky, and hair the shade of the moon. A woman with a scar on her palm that matched his own, whose smile made his blood quicken.

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.

“Half of me and half of you,” Sidra insisted. “Until they become their own person.”

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. She had never felt safer, or more deeply known and loved as he whispered her name.

“That is where your brother is. He is the fire and the light of the isle. As long as the stars shine, he will always be with you.”

“If two people from each clan made this boundary with blood and curses, then I believe two can undo it with blood and a benediction.”

“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.”

I cannot be the king you hope for, as I am incomplete in your realm.”

“I’ve returned to you.”

“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.”

“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.” And he framed her face in his hands. “Months ago, I told you that I was a verse inspired by your chorus. I thought I knew what those words meant then, but now I fully understand the depth and the breadth of them. 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.”

An isle united. His hand in Adaira’s, their scars aligned.