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No trousers, but not many men of the isle bothered with them.
Even though the lass was not made from her own flesh and blood, Sidra imagined Maisie had been spun from her spirit.
Torin had killed him and dumped his body in the ocean.
Woah
No, he hadn’t told anyone of that night. Not even Sidra.
Double woah
When Torin pushed the door, it creaked inward, but he remained on the threshold. He had never seen a spirit manifested.
“Come inside. I’m not a spirit, if that’s what you fear.”
His fears had only pertained to himself and his own performance. Now he realized how self-absorbed he had been all those years.
Constructed from a willow that had grown beside a maiden’s grave, its wood was light and resilient, its sound sweet, chilling, and resonant.
But all the tears had broken free the moment he set his daughter into his father’s arms and confessed his ineptitude.
“Then I have fooled you all. I fear that I am riddled with flaws, and there is far more shadow than light in me these days.”
Jack didn’t like this, the different angle on his history.
One day she would push herself too far, too hard, and the cough she tried to hide would morph into a claw, ripping her up from within.
“Beware, mortal woman. Beware of blood in the water.”
He drew a tendril of golden algae from her hair and begrudgingly acknowledged it then. He disliked her a little less than he had yesterday.
It wasn’t a spirit stealing the girls. It was a man.
It hadn’t been a spirit who had taken Maisie, but a man, moving with impossible speed and stealth. She didn’t fully understand it, but she felt how precious time was.
but it flared every now and then, like old bones in wintertime.
She expected him to protest or rush her along—he was such an impatient man—but he was silent, and when she at last came to a stop before him, his eyes, inscrutable and deliciously dark, were fixed on hers. Almost as if he knew why she had come.
As his eyes remained on her, she knew he realized the magnitude of her bending a knee to him.
Give me your vow and be my husband for a year and a day, and thereafter should we both desire it.”
And when it fades . . . it will be you and me and the truth.
But in some deep, hidden place she had found that she wanted her husband to be him.
Jack was like stone. Adaira must have miscalculated. He must still detest her and the clan. When she made to rise, he stretched out his hand, as if to touch her, but then he hesitated, just before his fingers could caress her hair. “Wait, Adaira. Wait.”
“Then my answer is yes,” he whispered. “I’ll marry you by handfast.”
Jack was silent for a beat. But his eyes held hers, and he whispered, “I think it’s fair enough to say that I won’t be returning to the mainland, Adaira.”
“So we’ll play for the earth tomorrow,” he said, listing their tasks on his fingers. “The next day we’ll marry. And the day after that we’ll go to our deaths at the clan line for a trade?”
Now his skin was darkening from the sun, his eyes were brighter, and his presence was strong, as if nothing could bend him.
“I’m done with teaching.” The words slipped out of him in a growl. “I don’t want to go back.”
Jack was silent for a beat, and then he said, “No. I don’t want half of anything. Only all of it.”
He eased himself up to his feet. He felt drained, and a bit peculiar, but then he had nearly turned into the earth itself. Play with caution, Lorna had said. He understood now, and he offered his hand to Adaira, drawing her upright.
Her eyes were cast down to the heather as she ascended the hill, stoic as if she were walking to her death.
Listening to Jack’s music . . . Frae’s hope was restored. She didn’t quite understand how, but her brother’s music was going to save them.
“But I’m rambling. The moral of this long-winded tale is that I realized music would always be more important to her, so I tried to turn myself into stone. To not feel anything. But now I realize that it is better to live, to feel and have a clean break than be half-dead and cold, cracked from resentment.”
Adaira only laughed. It was surprise and joy, mingled into one. Jack discovered he loved the sound of it.
He knew that he would never ask his mother again about the name of his father, but there was now another way for him to learn the truth.
“He is afraid of losing you, first in heart, then in body. And if you follow me to the grave, he will not be far behind you. His soul has found its counterpart in yours, and he belongs with you, even after Death’s sting.”
Jack frowned. “Which one?” She met his gaze and held up the Orenna again. “Moray Breccan has lied to me.”
If they crossed secretly now, perhaps they had done so then, long ago when Jack’s mother lived alone on the edge of the border.
He had always wondered why his father had never claimed him. He now knew why. His father was a Breccan.
A weed is just a plant out of place, her grandmother had once said to her. Treat them kindly, even if they are a nuisance, for they can make a faithful ally amongst the spirits.
There was a shot of silver in his brown hair now, gleaming at his left temple, as if he had aged years in a day.
The weight of each word he uttered, and how his words unfolded in the air. He was far more mindful of them now, understanding that most of them were worthless.
We soon realized it was not just the river but blood within the water that made it possible for him to cross unnoticed to meet with me.” Jack remembered the night of the raid, how he had seen the Breccans ride along the river valley, undetected. The words of Ream of the Sea rang in his ears. Beware of blood in the water.
I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.”
“You belong to both,” he replied. “You are the east as you are the west. You are mine as I am yours.”
“It is her,”
“Let me look at you, my heart.”
