She smiled, sorting through a stack of books. “I don’t think I can allow that to happen.”
“No, heiress?”
She didn’t reply, nor did she need to. Jack saw the determined gleam in her eyes as she brought a book to him. It was only a matter of time before she would have him astride another horse.
“Here. The music is tucked within the leaves,” Adaira said, extending the slender volume toward him. “I know you might feel pressured to rush because of Torin, but if you need several days to study the music, then take them, Jack. I would prefer that we be prepared when we approach the spirits.”
“I think I can be ready in two days, at the soonest,” he replied, accepting the book. He admired its illuminated cover before opening it to find the loose parchment, hidden in the pages. He could not deny that a part of him was eager to learn this next ballad of Lorna’s. Anticipation shivered through him.
Jack had what he needed. He should go now. But he found that his feet were rooted to the floor, reluctant to leave so soon. His eyes lifted to meet Adaira’s steady gaze.
“I know you have many things to do,” she said. “But you should at least stay for tea. Let me feed you. Are you hungry?”
He hadn’t eaten that morning. He was famished, and he nodded. It was strange to think back to how this day had begun with Torin searching his room. It was strange to think how it was coming to an end, spending the last, golden hours of afternoon with Adaira in her study.
A servant brought in a tray of tea, scones, small mince pies, wedges of cheese, and oatcakes with cream and berries. Jack joined Adaira at the table, watching as she poured them each a cup of tea. He accepted it and filled his plate, his mind racing.
He was sharing a private meal with her. He could ask her anything, and the silence between them felt tender, as if Adaira would honestly answer whatever he felt brave enough to voice.
His thoughts brimmed with possibilities.
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.
The longer he stayed here on the isle—the longer he slept beneath the fire of the stars and listened to the sighs of the wind and ate the food and drank the water—the more muddled his fancies became, until he couldn’t see the original path he had carved for himself. The safe path, the one that gave him purpose and place on the mainland.
He took a sip of tea, dismayed.
A piece of him still craved that dependable life, the one in which everything could be predicted. He would become a professor. He would grow old, gray, and even more crotchety than he already was. He would teach younger generations the secrets of instruments and how to write music, watching his students transform their sullenness and hesitancy into confidence and prowess.
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?
“You’re unnaturally quiet, Jack,” Adaira remarked, lifting the teacup to her lips. There was a speck of cream at the corner of her mouth, and he was staring at it. “In the past, that meant you were plotting mischief.”
Jack blinked. He would ask her the safest of his questions—ironically, the one pertaining to their raid-loving enemies.
“Have the Breccans agreed to your notion of trade, heiress?”
“They have,” Adaira replied. “But they’ve made a request of me.”
“And what is that?”
She finally licked the cream from her lips. “They want me to visit the west.”
Jack thought she was jesting. He laughed, but it was a cold, bitter sound.
“I fail to see the humor in this,” she said in a sharp tone.
“As do I, Adaira,” he countered. “Perhaps I should sing you the ballad of Joan Tamerlaine and how she was doomed the moment she stepped foot in the west. How Fingal, her sulky husband, and his bloodthirsty clan drove her to a premature death.”
“I know the story of my ancestor,” Adaira replied through her teeth. “There’s no need for you to sing it to me.”
Jack quelled his sarcasm and drained his tea for courage. He wanted her to understand why her answer had upset him. He set a softer gaze upon her, only to find that she wasn’t even looking at him. She was flushed, angry. She was pushing her plate aside, about to rise.
“Adaira,” he said, gently.
She became still, her eyes flickering to his.
“So they’ve extended an invitation to you,” he said. “Perhaps it is a wise thing to accept. You’d be the first Tamerlaine to behold the west in nearly two hundred years. Perhaps peace is indeed something attainable, and you are the one destined to bring the isle back together as one. But perhaps it’s unwise, and the Breccans plan to harm you. You are the sole heiress. What would happen to the Tamerlaine clan if you perished?”
Adaira was silent.
Jack studied her face. She was still so much of a riddle to him. He asked, “What does your father think? Have you spoken of it to him yet?”
“About the visit? No. But I imagine his advice would strangely align with yours.”
“Can a bard not give sage advice then?”
Adaira almost smiled. “Perhaps you can be both to me? Bard and adviser?”
“Does it pay twice as much, heiress?”
She was quick and drawled, “Does that mean you are choosing to accept the role of Bard of the East?”
“I am in the midst of deliberations with myself,” he said. “But that’s not what we’re discussing at the moment. I just presented you with the possibility that the Breccans are devising to harm you, Adaira.”
She released a deep breath. “I don’t think the Breccans plan to harm me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m offering them something they can’t refuse. They need our winter stores. They need our resources when the ice comes. Why would they harm me when I am the first Tamerlaine to give that to them?”
“And yet they simply take what they want when winter comes,” Jack argued. “They don’t need you to grant them access.”
“But perhaps they are weary of it,” Adaira replied. “Perhaps they dream of a different life, one where the isle is united again and the two halves are restored.” She stood and walked to the window. Jack could see her reflection, shining in the glass. “In five days’ time, I am to meet Moray Breccan on the northern coast for a trade-by-trial. It’s a test, both to see what the west has to offer us and to measure their trustworthiness before I visit them.”