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Sidra opened her eyes and saw the front door was agape. Adaira stood on the threshold, frozen by Jack’s music as it continued to trickle through the cottage. Sidra studied her friend closely; she had never seen this expression on Adaira’s face before, as if all the longings within her had gathered into one place.
Adaira pressed her lips together. She was tempted to draw it out of Sidra, and as the future laird, perhaps she could. But Sidra held her patients’ secrets like her own, and Adaira knew it.
“It’s not a foolish dream,” Sidra was swift to respond. “And you are right to seek a new way of life for our clan, Adaira. For too long we’ve been raised on fear and hatred, and it’s time for things to change. I think many of the Tamerlaines inwardly feel the same and would follow you anywhere, even if that means a few difficult years of rethinking who we are and what this isle beneath our feet should become.”
She smiled but delayed answering him while she meandered around his chamber, studying it. Jack was quiet, suffering through her examination of his things. 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.
“Let them be appalled, let them talk. Let them say whatever they want. It will soon fade, I promise you. And when it fades . . . it will be you and me and the truth. And that is all that matters in the end.”
He’s being ridiculously logical, Adaira thought. She wondered how to reply to him. She wanted to tell him that she could see through him—he was holding to logic in order to keep his emotions at bay. But then she saw the glint of doubt in him. She saw the hurt in his eyes. He was hiding a wound. He had never felt claimed; he had never felt as if he belonged here. She vividly remembered him saying those words to her.
“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?”
Frae stood beside Mirin, watching her weave on the loom. It was an ordinary plaid, one that didn’t hold a secret because Frae wasn’t to learn that skill until she came of age. And yet Frae’s eyes felt crossed amongst all the threads. No matter how she tried, she didn’t see what her mother did. She couldn’t see the possibilities, how to make a pattern come to life, but she dutifully watched Mirin work.
He glanced up at her. His hair was tangled, his face sunburned. He looked so different now, Frae thought. The first night she had met him, she had thought he looked sad and pale, as if a breeze could sigh through him. Now his skin was darkening from the sun, his eyes were brighter, and his presence was strong, as if nothing could bend him.
“I feel like you have always been here with us,” she said. “It’s hard to remember what it was like before you came home.”
He had changed, and he looked at his hands, now dirty from repairing the byre. He would have never attempted to rethatch a roof, or shovel manure, or reset stone walls in his academic life. His hands were his livelihood as a harpist—as vain as it sounded, he couldn’t afford to break a nail—and yet he was pleased to know they had also made repairs on the byre. His hands could offer more to others than he had once thought or even wanted to give.
“Shall we split the patch equally now? Would that make you happy, bard?” Jack was silent for a beat, and then he said, “No. I don’t want half of anything. Only all of it.”
“I’m trying to make sense of your reasoning. To withhold something this vital from me.” Jack didn’t know how to answer her. Was it his pride? His fear that she might forbid him from playing? The realization that he was a hypocrite? The desire to find the lasses, no matter the cost he had to pay?
Conversations and laughter rose, loud as the thunder that rattled the windows. It was warm and muggy and damp and boisterous and joyful, and Jack felt overwhelmed by how suddenly his life had become woven tightly with so many others.
The moment his music touched the air the hall seemed to wake. Frae noticed the tapestry colors becoming vibrant again, and the carvings in the timber beams seeming to stir with sentience. The fire burned higher in the glazed hearth and in the torch sconces, and the shadows danced low and gentle. The isle was stirring, coming to life. Frae was transfixed by its awakening, and she could almost swear that she felt a rumble beneath her feet, as if the stones were basking in the sound of Jack’s music.
They drank to each other. Adaira felt her weariness burn away, and she imagined it was Jack’s fault, for being so attentive and for standing in her room, as if awaiting orders from her.
“You’re afraid of losing me. I understand your fear because I have also felt its many shades. But while I may be your imminent laird, I am not yours to lose. I belong to the clan as a whole, and my choice to participate in the trade today is for the good of all the Tamerlaines.”
Sidra glanced up. She wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear from her. And then she realized it wasn’t what Torin was asking for. He yearned to know her truths, even if they were sharp and difficult for him to fathom.
“Everything I’ve built with my hands is about to come undone,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “I’ve been charged to protect the east, to give up my own life for it if necessary. It’s how I was raised. It’s why I have this scar on my hand. I’ve given all of myself to this endeavor. I’ve surrendered so much of my time, so much of my devotion, that I often feel as if I can give you and Maisie nothing more than scraps of me, when you both deserve so much more.”
She realized she and Torin stood on two different mountains, with a deep valley between them. They saw the world from opposing sides, and she didn’t know if they would be able to find a middle ground. Their differences could be enough to break their vows, despite her feelings for him.
Slowly, he sank to his knees, overcome with the bewildering realization. A missing girl had been found. Eliza Elliott had come home on the heels of a raid.
“I tell myself I should remain guarded against you, even as we are fastened together. And yet another side of me believes that you and I could make something of this arrangement. That you and I are complements, that we are made to clash and sharpen each other like iron. That you and I will stay bound together by that which is nameless and runs deeper than vows, until the very end, when the isle takes my bones into the ground and my name is nothing but memory carved into a headstone.”
Walking the hills, Jack unsheathed his dirk. The only tangible legacy he now possessed, for he had been given no name, no lands. He had been granted nothing but a lone blade enchanted with truth, as if Jack’s father had anticipated all of the lies and secrets his son would be raised beneath.
She knew if she passed beyond this threshold with him, that unknown change would ignite in the air. For a moment she feared it, because she sensed the path ahead would be hard. It would be forged through tears and heartache and patience and vulnerability. She couldn’t see the ending, but neither did she want to remain, stagnant and passive, in the place where she had begun.
Adaira was silent. She knew as well as Jack did that the folk couldn’t lie. They could carry the gossip and lies that mortal mouths had already spoken, but they couldn’t inspire their own in words. Even as they often played games of deceit.
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. She didn’t know if it was from the magic or from Bane, but it worried her.
Ever since he had lost his voice, Torin had begun to notice things that he would have missed before. Weeds in the garden, the difficulty of making parritch, how empty rooms felt without Sidra and Maisie.
He would have said anything to fill the roar of such silence, but now he understood it better. 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.
“They’re in the Keeper of the Aithwood’s cottage.” Adaira noticed that Jack shifted. He was standing near his bedroom door, but he glanced at Mirin, who continued to stand with Frae before the hearth. The weaver looked pale as she stared at her son, and Adaira made a note to ask Mirin about this later.
For years my family and my clan believed what he told us: one of the folk of the wind took my sister into their kingdom and raised her there, knowing she would not survive the mortal realm. And we found painful peace in the thought, and we bowed to the wind, believing she was within it.
I determined to keep stealing lasses until someone in the east gave up the secret and spoke truth. I simply didn’t think it would take so long, that the Tamerlaines would be so tenacious and stubborn. I didn’t think the laird would pass away during my attempts, taking his secret to the grave as you rose in his place. I didn’t think that I would have to be the one to speak your story, to behold your face when you heard it for the first time, Adaira.
She wanted the truth. She wanted to feel it brush against her skin, wanted to claim it with her hands. She wanted honesty, even if it felt like claws raking across her soul.
A tall man stood in the chamber. He was dressed like the other Breccans, but there was something different about him. His face was softer, kinder. His hair was red like fire. Like copper. Like her own, Frae realized, and grabbed the end of her braid. His hands were bound behind him, and Frae wondered what he had done to become a prisoner of his own kind.
“You’ve looked upon them both,” a Breccan with a scar on his face said to the red-haired man, “as per our agreement. And the legends will remember you not as a keeper, not as a man of valor and strength, but as a fool. They will call you traitor to your clan, Niall Breccan. Oath breaker.”
Their gazes met. Everything around them melted into obscurity as Adaira studied Innes and Innes studied Adaira, the emotion rising like a wave coming to shore. Adaira swallowed it down, holding it deep in her chest as she began to see all the features she had stolen from her mother. Her hair, her sharpness, her eyes.
“If you will see that the three Tamerlaine lasses are safely returned within the hour, then I will follow you into the west. You can take me as a prisoner if you prefer, or as the daughter you lost. I will agree to remain with you and serve you and the west, so long as Moray remains shackled in the east. He won’t be harmed in his time of service, but the Tamerlaines will be the ones to determine how long he is to remain imprisoned, and when he is to walk free again.”
Years had been lost between them. Years that could never be regained. And yet who would Adaira be if she had never left the west? If her birth parents hadn’t surrendered her to the forces of the isle? She caught a glimpse of herself, marked in blue and blood. Cold and sharp. Adaira shivered. Innes noticed. Their hands fell away, but the world had changed between them.
The parents thanked the guard for bringing their daughters home safely, but they didn’t even glance at Adaira. It was as though she had already departed from the east, and Adaira tried to swallow the hurt she felt.
“It was Joan Tamerlaine’s book,” Torin said, drawing Adaira’s eyes. “My father gave it to me, and we thought . . . we want to give it to you. He claims the other half is in the west. Perhaps you will find it there?”
Jack moved forward to stand beside her, and that’s when Adaira noticed that a change had come over Innes. The laird was regarding Jack with cold, narrow eyes.
Jack was silent, but his thoughts churned. He knew magic flowed brighter in the hands of mortals in the west, to the spirits’ demise. The opposite of life in the east. He thought about how playing for the folk here had cost him threads of his health. He had never considered what it would be like to play for the spirits on the other side of the isle. Not until this moment, when he realized he could strum his music and sing for the west without cost. What power would spill from his hands.
He was angry at her, for her words held a faint ring of truth. He wanted to be with her, and yet he didn’t want to be away from Mirin and Frae. He didn’t want to surrender his music, all those years of discipline on the mainland going to rot, and yet he couldn’t imagine surrendering Adaira.
She stared at him a long moment, and he thought she might change her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t as firm in her beliefs as she sounded. Perhaps she could also taste the sour tang of regret and remorse that would haunt them from this decision, for years to come.
She gave herself up to a hungry land where music was forbidden. The place where she had taken her first breath. A gust rose, drawing its cold fingers through her hair. “Welcome home,” the north wind whispered.
