A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

“Ravens may carry messages to the lairds by day, and the trade cog may glide on the first of the season, but the best time to cross is at night, when the ocean reflects the moon and the stars.” When the spirits of the water are easily appeased, Jack added inwardly.

Miss Becca J. Ross. Your writing never fails to be beautiful omg

A sickle moon hung in the sky like a smile, surrounded by freckles of stars.

Joan drew her dirk and cut herself loose from him—name, vow, spirit, and body, but not her heart, because it was never his. She bestowed a tiny nick upon his throat, the very place where she had once kissed him in the night, when she dreamt of the east.

There were no faerie spirits on the mainland. Only the patina of gods and saints, carved into the sanctuaries of kirks.

In the dark, he opened his eyes and was startled when he saw a woman, darting past him in the water with gleaming scales, her long hair tickling his face. He shivered and nearly forgot to swim.

A mermaid!!

Their couplings were always spontaneous and brief, as if Torin only had a few moments. But he was always gentle and attentive to her, and sometimes he lingered with her in the bed, tracing the wild tangles of her hair.

It had roused strange feelings within him. Adaira had fought as though she knew exactly how he felt, as if they were mirrors of each other. But that was ridiculous, because she had everything he didn’t. She was adored, and he was reviled. She was the clan’s joy, while he was the nuisance. And when he remembered that, he had striven to triumph in the match, pinning her beneath him on the garden path. But he drew back when he saw his fury reflected in her eyes.

They are gonna fall in l*ve I don’t make the rules

Sometimes he imagined becoming a traveling bard who drank lore and spun it into song. He imagined gathering stories and reawakening places that were half dead and forgotten. And he wondered if remaining at the university, held within stone and glass and structure, was more akin to being a bird, held captive in an iron cage.

It must be the isle blood in him. To crave a life of risk and little responsibility. To let the wind carry him from place to place.

“Are you afraid, Jack?” Yes, he thought, desperately. “No,” he said.

He felt the years that had been lost between them now, like a limb torn away. Time that could never be regained, time that had encouraged them to grow apart. Mirin might have given him life and raised him the first eleven years, but the mainland professors and their music had shaped him into who he was now.

Jack’s eyes drifted to Frae’s shawl, which she had knotted crookedly over her collarbones. He noted its shimmer of enchantment. The shawl was green from summer bracken and nettles, with a vein of madder red and lichen gold. Colors of the earth spirits, harvested and crushed and soaked to make dyes. He wondered what secret was woven into that pattern, and for once he was glad of Mirin’s skill.

Honestly I bet Mirim weaves the secret of who the children's father is into their plaids so that they're the most powerful ones she makes. The father is probably a spirit or something

She thought of the two lasses, Eliza and Annabel. Two girls now unaccounted for, and Sidra imagined them being claimed by the folk. She wondered if a girl could become a tree, no longer aging in mortal ways but by seasons. Could a girl become a wildflower patch, resurrected every spring and summer only to wilt and fade come the sting of frost? Could she become the foam of the sea that rolled over the coast for an eternity, or a flame that danced in a hearth? A winged being of the wind, sighing over the hills? Could she be returned to her human family after such a life, and if so, would she even remember her parents, her human memories, her mortal name?

ohh this HURTS

He was swiftly learning ever since he had returned home that he couldn’t live on music alone, that he cared about and needed other things, even if their appearance in his life came as an utter shock, like bulbs blooming after a long winter. He felt his greatest fear come to life within him, a fear that had been born only days before.

Constructed from a willow that had grown beside a maiden’s grave, its wood was light and resilient, its sound sweet, chilling, and resonant. Carvings of vines and leaves had been burned into the sides, simple adornment compared to other harps his fellow students had earned. But this harp had called to him long ago.

“No. I never once thought that. I believed the clan was glad to be rid of me.” “Then we have failed you,” Adaira said. “And for that, I’m sorry.”

he didn’t tell her that he felt the most alive when he played for sorrow.

Knowing he couldn’t play this strange music with such reservations and distractions, he strove to find a calming place within himself. To remember and fall back into a time when he was a boy and Cadence was all he had known. When he had loved the sea and the hills and the mountains, the caves and the heather and the rivers. A time when he had yearned to behold a spirit, face-to-face.

His fingers grew nimble, and Lorna’s notes began to trickle into the air, metallic beneath his nails. He could hardly contain the splendor of them anymore, and he played and felt as if he were not flesh and blood and bone but made by the sea foam, as if he had emerged one night from the ocean, from all the haunted deep places where man had never roamed but where spirits glided and drank and moved like breath.

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. And that could only bring him trouble.

And Adaira had done the most ridiculous thing. She had laughed, and it had felt like birds taking flight within her.

But I confess that the hatred has worn me down—it has made me feel old and brittle, as if I have lived a thousand years—and I want to find another way. Have you never dreamt of peace, Da? Have you ever envisioned an isle that is united again?”

Torin challenged his guards to question even their own fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and friends. To doubt their kin, down to every branch and root of their family tree. To doubt those they loved most, for sometimes love was like dust in the eyes, a hindrance when it came to seeing truth.

By the time they reached the castle courtyard, Jack was certain a few years had been shaved from his life and there were tangles in his hair that no comb would be able to tame.

WHO is this DIVA

He wanted to ask her if she had any news of the Breccans and the trade she wanted to establish. He wanted to ask what she had been doing the past decade while he had been gone. If she had thought of him from time to time. He wanted to ask why she was unwed, because it continued to shock him that she walked alone when there was a horde of eligible partners in the east. Unless, that is, she desired to be alone. Which was fine, but he couldn’t help but wonder. He wanted to know if she was the one who desired him to stay a full year as bard, or if she was merely speaking for the good of the clan. He wanted to know her, and that realization felt like a sting in his side.

That was the life he had envisioned for himself. It was a life with little risk. A life in which every day felt the same and his music was subdued. A life of partaking only of comfortable things and of sleeping alone at night, because it would be impossible to find a lover who would endure all his irascibility and the oddness of his isle blood, year after year. Did he want such a fate?

By day he would belong to the clan, singing beneath the sun. But by night, when the stars burned, he would lie down beside Adaira, and he would wholly be hers, as she would be his.

ouhhhh BECCA...

He swallowed, wondering if she saw the same vision he did. One where the two of them were united, bound, laying claim to the other. But then reality returned, rushing between them like a cold tide.

He had been merely existing for the past eight months. And yet he noticed Sidra’s hands like they were sunlight, burning away the last of his fog.

Sidra wanted to lose herself in work. When she was in the company of her herbs, she didn’t think about Maisie being lost, frightened, or dead. When she held her pestle and mortar, Sidra didn’t think about being assaulted on the hill that had previously held nothing but good memories for her. When she brought ingredients together, she didn’t think of the new strain on her marriage to Torin, because the one thing they had built it on had vanished.

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.

“Let them,” Adaira said. “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.”

“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?” “We’re not going to die,” Adaira said. “But yes, that’s the plan, if I’m not asking too much of you.”

It made Frae feel like she was important, and she wished more than anything she could remain in the room and hear the secret Torin wanted Mirin to weave into the plaid.

I bet Torin knows that his wife visits Sidra. That is probably the secret?

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.

“When is the wedding then?” Jack hesitated before speaking in a very low voice. So deep Frae almost didn’t catch his reply. “Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” Mirin shouted. “Adaira’s decision. Not mine.” “And what are you going to wear?” “Clothes, I suppose.”

CRYING JACK LOL WHAT

Jack stepped through pools of gossip as he walked the thoroughfare of Sloane. He felt every stare like a pinprick. He didn’t falter, nor did he make eye contact, and he let the whispers drip off him like rain.

He was still in shock that she had asked him to marry her, and that he had told her yes. He was beginning to realize more and more that he couldn’t return to the mainland. Not when his mother was ill and he had a little sister and Adaira wanted him and the isle had embraced him despite all his years away. Not when he had played for the spirits of the sea.

They approached their horses in silence, and as Jack mounted, he realized that he was marrying Adaira the following day and he had no idea what to expect. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?” he asked, gathering the reins. “I don’t have a plan,” she replied, nudging her horse into a walk. “I’m making this up as I go.”

If we must drown, let us do so entwined.

He acknowledged it then. She had just accomplished the sweetest revenge. Here he was, about to bind himself to her. To give his vow with a willing heart. And he marveled at her.

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 firelight and shadows danced on her collarbones; her half of the golden coin gleamed like a fallen star at her breast. Her hair cascaded around her in soft waves, the crown of wildflowers a contrast to her fair coloring.

“It felt like I waited an eternity for you.” She fell quiet, his words coaxing a flush across her skin. When he continued to hold her stare, she clinked her glass to his as a distraction. “To you and me and this year and a day that belongs to us.”

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.”

How easy it would be if faith was something tangible like a figurine, something she could hold in her hands, seeing all of the details and how they made the whole. And yet, didn’t the earth prove its faithfulness to her, year after year? Even in winter, when it fell dormant? Sidra always knew the flowers and the grass and the fruit would return come spring.

When Jack removed his plaid, he noticed that a thread in the wool had started to unravel. He stared at it for a disbelieving moment, tracing the pattern with his fingertip. Part of the enchantment was gone, and he could see that the green fabric had lost its luster. He swallowed hard as he sat at his desk. Whatever secret his mother had woven into this plaid was coming to light.

It's the secret of Jack's father. I called it like 200 pages ago

“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.”

“I was,” she said, and her breath caught beneath his caress. “I was glad to feel something stir within me after years of being cold and empty. I just never imagined I would find it in you.” It was like she had stolen the very words from his mouth. And he wanted them back.

And yet, when he looked at Adaira, he realized that the words and affection they had shared were not lost to either of them. The feelings hung like stars above them, waiting for another moment to align, and he felt the anticipation in his bones, humming like a harp string.