Adaira didn’t know what to expect from dinner that night. She nearly canceled on her parents—she felt weary and heartsick and wasn’t the least bit hungry—but when she entered Innes’s personal chambers to join them for the meal . . . Adaira was floored to discover Torin sitting at the table beside Sidra. The moment their eyes locked, Adaira felt the past rushing forward, as though a dam had broken. It honestly seemed as if no time had come between her and her cousin—hadn’t it only been yesterday that she and Torin raced through the heather in the east?—and she laughed as he rose and rushed to embrace her.
“When did you arrive?” Adaira exclaimed, leaning back in his arms to look him over.
Torin smiled. “I’m not sure what time. It was storming.”
“We must have just missed each other,” she said. “I’m so happy you’re here, Torin.”
“As am I, Adi. Come, we’ve been waiting on you.”
Adaira thought something about him seemed different as they walked to the table together. Something she couldn’t quite name, but all the same sensed. It was nothing bad—more like he had aged. He seemed softer and yet leaner, as if parts of him had been whittled away. She imagined that being in the spirits’ realm had left a mark on him, and she instantly felt that ache again in her chest.
Adaira found her seat at the table and closed her eyes for a breath, remembering. She could still see Jack vividly in her memory. The sight of him being consumed by flames with stars in his hair and an uncanny light in his eyes. A king among spirits.
“Where’s Jack?” Sidra asked.
Adaira glanced at the empty chair beside her, as if the sound of his name would prompt him to manifest. She stared at the place that had been set for him and then reached for her glass of wine. She took a long sip before making her announcement.
“He’s gone.”
Her words fell like frost on the table. But she felt the attention of her parents, who were bent toward her with concern and confusion, as well as Sidra’s compassion and Torin’s solemn understanding.
“He sang to end the storm,” Adaira explained, “and it required his mortality. The spirits took him.” And because she neither wanted to speak further of it nor be on the receiving end of pity, she began to fill her plate with food.
Torin followed suit, and then Sidra, even though she had gone very pale.
But Innes, who never danced around a conversation, said, “I’m sorry, Adaira.”
Adaira clenched her jaw and almost lost her composure—she could feel the tears stinging her eyes. She couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if she had been with Jack when he sang. If she had stood at his side when the fire burned.
He would have remained with her, this much she knew. He would have remained bound to her by oath and choice and love, three cords not easily broken. Bane would still reign beyond the veil of the world, and the west would have remained shadowed. No, she told herself, shaking away her emotion. This is how it was always meant to be. And she couldn’t fault Jack for knowing it as well, and for leaving her asleep in their bed.
She had been both his strength and his weakness.
“There is nothing to be sorry for,” she said, meeting her mother’s stare. “He was always destined to play for the spirits, to overcome the wind.”
Thankfully, Innes left it at that, and the meal began in uncomfortable silence. Adaira was keenly grateful to her father for changing the subject and getting directly to the heart of the matter.
“We’d like to maintain a relationship with you in the east,” David said to both Torin and Sidra. “And we think the trade would be a good way to build rapport between our clans.”
Torin glanced at Sidra, but Sidra looked to Adaira. It had always been her dream to establish a trade between east and west.
Adaira remained quiet. Of course, she still wanted the trade to happen. She simply felt too empty to guide this conversation, which she had never envisioned happening without Jack beside her. It was one of the reasons why they had handfasted so swiftly: he was to stand with her to oversee the first exchange, and hopefully during future trades. A partner to support her in this new and seemingly impossible endeavor.
Her eyes wandered to Jack’s plate again.
“We would like that as well,” Sidra replied, sensing Adaira’s grief. She turned her attention to David. “Have you given any thought to how you would like to proceed with it?”
“We think it best to hold it once a month,” Innes began. “The Breccans will never forget what you have done for us in our time of need, and most in my clan will be open-minded and eager to exchange their goods with yours. We simply have yet to think of a proper location for it, and I know this has been the crux of the matter, with the clan line dividing us.”
Adaira had walked the clan line only a few hours earlier. She had scarcely noticed anything different about it, but neither had she been paying much attention to the magic that teemed in the ground. Jack had evanesced on the line. He had also ended Bane there. Now Adaira wondered if the curse that had held the isle divided for so long had been lifted. She thought of how the clouds had broken the moment Jack had taken his crown. How the sun had filled the west again.
She had sometimes imagined it—the curse unraveling and the isle becoming united once more.
“Have you felt anything, Torin?” she asked her cousin.
He knew she spoke of the enchanted scar on his palm. The one he received when he had been promoted to Captain of the East Guard.
Torin flexed his hand as he gazed down at the gleam of his scar. “I honestly have felt nothing since I stepped through the portal.”
But the isle had also been in the throes of peril when he returned, Adaira thought. Perhaps the magic of the clan line still held, but everyone had been too preoccupied by the storm to notice.
“Sidra and I need to return to our clan tomorrow,” Torin continued, meeting Innes’s stare. “On my way home, I’ll take a look at the clan line and see if its power still holds. And we’ll continue to deliberate on the trade from our end. I think we can find a good place for it to happen.”
He paused to hold up his goblet of wine, glancing at Adaira. “Most of all, let’s keep in contact with each other.”
Adaira gave him a wry smile. But she clinked her glass to his, agreeing. She hadn’t realized how desperate she was to see the four leaders of the isle united, toasting each other and the trade, until it unfolded before her.
Sidra rode with Torin and Adaira toward the east, with Blair and the rest of her guards following. She was more than ready to return home, to sleep in her own bed and hold Maisie, and yet she was distracted by thoughts of what the future held for the isle, of how the trade would proceed and the next steps they needed to take.