“Oh no,” she said again, her joy disintegrating. She dragged her fingertips down her face. “If you marry Adaira … then you won’t live here anymore.”
Jack knelt before her. His harp was tucked beneath his arm, and his eyes were gentle as he looked at her.
“I’m honestly not sure what to expect in the next few days, sister,” he said. “But I will never be far from you. That I can promise.”
Frae nodded. He tapped her chin, provoking another smile from her.
The back door creaked, and Jack grimaced.
“Now I must fly,” he whispered as he stood. “Before Mum catches me.”
“You shouldn’t run from Mum, Jack,” Frae scolded. She watched, wide eyed, as her brother proceeded to climb on his desk. “Jack!”
He held his finger over his lips and winked at her. One moment he was there, crouched on his desk. The next he was gone, vanishing out the window.
“Frae?” Mirin said, pushing open the bedroom door. “Frae, where did your brother go?”
Frae was still staring at the window, amazed. “I think he went to see Adaira.”
Mirin heaved a sigh. “A wedding. Tomorrow. Spirits below, what is Jack thinking?”
The excitement began to rise again. It tingled at Frae’s fingertips, making her want to dance.
She was thrilled and astonished. And suddenly overwhelmed.
Frae turned, buried her face in Mirin’s side, and wept.
The news spread like wildfire.
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.
Why, the clan wondered. Why would Adaira choose him?
Why, indeed, Jack mused wryly as he was ushered into the hall to wait for Adaira. He sat at one of the dusty tables, thrumming his fingers on the wood, lost in contemplation.
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.
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.
“Have you come to tell me you’ve changed your mind, bard?”
Adaira’s voice was like a hook, reeling in his attention. Jack stood and turned to behold her standing in the aisle. Her hair was tamed into a braided crown that day. A moon thistle was tucked behind her ear like a rose, and there were faint smudges beneath her eyes. It was apparent she hadn’t slept much either, Jack thought, admiring the crimson embroidery on her dress.
“My mind is unchanged, although I did wonder if I dreamt of you last night,” he said, meeting her gaze. He was caught off guard by the defensive light that flickered within her, like moonlight on a steel blade. She had expected him to change his mind and disappoint her. Jack let the affront rise in him for a moment, then felt it fizzle away. This must be a wound within her; someone had once given her a promise and then broken it. Jack added, “I’ll not go back on my word, Adaira.”
She mellowed and stepped closer to him, noticing his harp. “You’re prepared?”
Jack nodded, although he felt a pinch of worry. He had Sidra’s tonic and salve packed away in his harp case, but he didn’t know what to expect. He was both eager and hesitant to play for the spirits again, and he followed Adaira into the sunshine of the courtyard. She led him to the stables, to his great distress.
“Can’t we walk?” he asked.
“This will be faster,” Adaira said, mounting a dapple mare. “And besides, it will keep people from pestering us on the streets.”
She made a good point. Jack still hesitated.
“I chose the gentlest of steeds for you to ride today,” she said, indicating the bay gelding that waited beside her horse.
Jack gave Adaira a flat look but pulled himself up into the saddle.
They rode together to the Earie Stone, the heart of Eastern Cadence, where the hills began to rise into mountains.
Adaira and Jack left their horses safely hobbled by a creek and ascended the hill, where the stone sat jagged and proud on the summit, a ring of alder trees surrounding it like dancing maidens.
“It feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, my old menace,” Adaira said wistfully as she walked beneath the boughs.
Jack knew what she spoke of. He felt it too, the way time seemed to cease on this sacred ground. It was eleven years ago that he and Adaira had fought over the thistle patch, not far from here.
He stood beneath one of the trees, a reverent distance from the stone, and watched as Adaira continued to walk around the perimeter.
“I’m sorry, you know,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I don’t think I ever apologized for shoving my thistles into your face and then abandoning you to your fate.”
“They were never your thistles to begin with,” Jack teased. “You stole them from my secret patch. And you still do, I see.” He nodded at the moon thistle tucked into her braid, and Adaira came to a stop an arm’s length away from him.
“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.”
Adaira held his gaze. She drew a deep breath, as if she wanted to say something to him. Perhaps to acknowledge the electricity that was brewing between them. Jack hoped that she would speak it first. Every time he saw her, he felt it a little more. Felt the tension like a harp string within him, strung from rib to rib.
“Are you ready to play?” she asked.
He heaved a sigh, hiding his disappointment. But this was why he was here. To sing for the earth, not to name his feelings for Adaira.
Jack deliberated about where to sit—facing the stone or facing one of the trees. In the end, he opted to sit on the grass with his face to the stone, his harp arranged on his lap. Adaira only sat after he had settled, a few yards away from him.
As he began to strum on his harp, he filled his mind with images of earth. Old crumbling stones and tangled grasses, wildflowers and weeds and saplings that put down deep roots, growing into mighty trees. The color of dirt, the scent of it. How it felt clutched in the hollow of one’s palm. The voice of branches, swaying in the breeze, and the slope of the earth as it rose and fell, faithful and steady.
Jack closed his eyes and began to sing. He didn’t want to see the spirits manifest, but he heard the grass hissing near his knees, and he heard the tree boughs groaning above him, and he heard the scratch of stone, as if two were being rubbed together. When he heard Adaira’s soft gasp, Jack opened his eyes.
The spirits were forming themselves, gathering around him to listen. He played and sang and watched as the trees became maidens with long arms and hair made of leaves. The grass and pennywort knotted themselves into what looked to be mortal lads, small and green. The stones found their faces like old men waking from a long dream. The wildflowers broke their stems and gathered into the shape of a woman with long dark hair and eyes the color of honeysuckle, her skin purple as the heather that bloomed on the hills. Yellow gorse crowned her, and she waited beside the Earie Stone, whose face was still forming, craggy and ancient.