She had depicted three sticklike humans, but Torin recognized them. Adaira had drawn herself, standing between Alastair and Lorna and holding their hands. A horse hovered in the sky above them, as only a child could imagine happening. Thistles claimed one corner of the paper, and stars another. Beneath the illustration was her name, written with the R backwards, and Torin smiled until it felt like his chest had cracked open.
It all happened so quickly, he thought. When the truth about Adaira’s origins had come to light, Torin had scarcely had time to think about how that news affected her, so absorbed had he been in trying to sort through his own emotions. And then it had simply been easier to wallow in the denial. It was easier to suffocate the memory of her last days in the east.
But now he imagined it.
He wondered what Adaira had felt when she realized that she had grown up under a lie: that she wasn’t the blood-born daughter of the parents she had loved, as Alastair and Lorna had led everyone to believe, but the offspring of the western laird, their greatest enemy. That she had been stolen over the clan line and secretly laid in Lorna Tamerlaine’s arms as a bairn. What had she felt when the clan that had once adored her turned on her, relieved when she exchanged herself for Moray?
Torin shut the book, unable to look at her drawing a moment longer. Before he could stop himself, he said, “Do you think she’ll return to the east, Jack?”
“I don’t see it happening.” Jack plucked another sad note from the harp. “Not until she believes Moray has paid his penance in our holding.”
That would be a decade. Adaira’s twin brother had committed a terrible crime against the Tamerlaines, stealing their daughters away in a cruel act of vengeance. That the east had withheld Adaira from her blood family justified Moray’s actions—in his mind—as he kidnapped Tamerlaine daughters, again and again. All in the hope that the kidnappings would spur Alastair to reveal the truth about his daughter—a revelation that would give Adaira the chance to return to the west on her own.
“Has Adaira ever said anything to you in her letters that gives you a sense of alarm?” Torin asked next.
“No,” Jack replied, but his eyes narrowed. “Why? Has she written something to you that makes you think she’s in trouble?”
Torin traced the gilded spines of the books on the shelf. “She’s hardly written to me at all. Just one letter, shortly after she departed, to let me know she had settled in and was doing well. Same to Sidra.” He paused, wiping the dust from his fingertips. “But she hasn’t responded to any of the letters I’ve sent to her since. Sidra believes it’s only because Adi is trying to bond with her parents and needs the distance from us to do so. But I wonder if they’re intercepting her letters and my words are never reaching her to begin with.”
“I’m currently waiting for her next reply,” Jack said, rising with the harp tucked beneath his arm. “But she’s given me no reason to believe she’s in danger. I think Sidra is right, and Adaira is choosing to put distance between us. I have a hard time imagining Innes Breccan wanting to harm her, not when her heir is shackled in our dungeons. But neither would I be surprised if Innes still regards us as threats—to both Moray and Adaira—and so maybe the western laird finds your letters unsettling. Maybe she feels she has no choice but to interfere, as you say. And yet what can we do about it?”
Nothing.
They could do absolutely nothing, short of starting a war with the Breccans, which Torin did not want to do.
“Will you write to her again, Jack?” Torin asked. “And let me know when she replies?”
Jack was silent for a moment, but his countenance had gone pale, and his cheeks had a strange, hollow look, as though he were holding his breath. Jack was worried about Adaira too then. He was trying to maintain a sense of calm for Torin’s sake.
“Yes, I’ll let you know,” the bard said. “I should be going now, to prepare the orchard’s song.”
Torin nodded his gratitude, but he lingered in the room a few minutes after Jack had quit the wing. Eventually, Torin returned to the main bedroom. He stared at the shrouded furniture, the bed his uncle had died in.
There was a vast difference between someone dying and someone leaving. Alastair was dead, but Adaira had chosen to leave. And while Torin knew she had done so to keep peace on the isle, to prevent winter raids, to enable the Tamerlaines to imprison Moray without conflict, her decision still roused a medley of feelings in him. He couldn’t help but dredge up the familiar, icy resentment toward his mother. His own flesh and blood who had abandoned him without a backward glance when he was a boy.
But the truth was . . . he was angry at himself, for letting Adaira strike such a terrible bargain with Innes Breccan and exchange herself for Moray. For letting Adaira surrender her right to rule and become a prisoner of the west. He was angry at the Tamerlaine clan for turning on her so quickly when she had done nothing but sacrifice for them. He was angry that he had no idea what was happening to her on the other side of the isle.
What sort of laird was he?
He dragged the coverlet off the bed, then the sheets and pillows. He ripped away the blankets that covered the furniture until he exposed a desk with stacked parchment, quills, and a tall bottle of whiskey that threatened to overturn. Torin caught the glass bottle in his hand, knowing it was Alastair’s favorite. He stared at it, tempted to hurl it against the wall and watch it shatter into hundreds of iridescent pieces. But he sighed instead, and the blistering ice within him melted into melancholy.
Surrendering, Torin sat on the floor. Dust motes spun in the air around him. He listened to his breaths heave, filling the lonely room with uneven sound.
He knew what a laird should be.
A voice for the clan. Someone who listened to individual needs and problems in order to help meet and solve them. A leader who strove to improve all aspects of life, from education to healing measures to croft acreage to building repairs to laws to resources to justice. Someone who knew their people by name and who could readily greet them by such if they passed on the road. Who ensured that the east remained in balance with the spirits, and who likewise was a shield against the Breccans and their raids.
Adaira had carried out all of these responsibilities, effortlessly, and Torin wished he had paid closer attention to how she and her father had done it. Even now, kilometers away, Adaira was the shield for the east while he sat on a floor, trying to wrap his mind around all that had gone wrong.
There was a firm knock on the iron-latticed door.
Torin winced. But he was too weary to speak, too weary to drag himself up to his feet. He watched as the wood creaked open and Edna appeared.
“Laird? I heard a noise,” she said. This wizened woman had seen it all in her many years of caring for the fortress, yet her eyes went wide as new moons when she saw Torin sitting on the floor. “Is everything all right?”