He let her guide him over the riverbed, through the yard, and into the house. He was surprised to see how much it had changed. While Adaira rushed to find a spare set of clothes for him from a trader’s stash, he took in the arrangement of tables, some of them covered in goods.
“It looks different here,” he said.
“Yes, a bit. Your father doesn’t live here anymore, in case you were wondering,” Adaira said as she brought him a tunic and boots.
Jack let the cloak fall away as he began to dress himself, his legs stiff. “And where is he?”
Adaira shook the snow from her cloak. “He lives with your mum and Frae. So does your nan.”
Jack glanced to the hearth. A fire was burning, low yet golden. He was lost in his thoughts for a moment, remembering his time with the spirits, until Adaira touched his arm.
“Are you all right, Jack?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Can you tell me how long I’ve been gone?”
“I can, but sit first,” Adaira said, drawing him to one of the tables. “Let me brew us a pot of tea.”
He sat on a bench, watching as Adaira reached for a tin of dried leaves on the shelf.
“You’ve been gone for one hundred and eleven days.”
He swore, raking his fingers through his hair. When Adaira glanced at him over her shoulder, he drawled, “I’m pleased to know someone’s been counting.”
She only smiled and turned her back to set the kettle over the fire. “I take it your time with the spirits was not so terrible?”
“No,” he replied. “But I was not happy amongst them.”
She was quiet, and he watched as she served the tea, then settled across the table from him.
“Tell me what has happened while I was gone,” he said. “Tell me how this came to be a place of trade, and how that silver circlet came to sit across your brow, Heiress.”
Adaira covered her mouth for a moment, as if she didn’t know where to start, but then began to tell him everything. Listening to her, Jack loved the light in her eyes as she told him how the river became a road, and how his father’s house became a meeting ground between the clans. How well that had turned out and how the most unlikely of friendships had been made. How Adaira had decided to take up her mother’s mantle as Laird of the West.
Jack smiled. His tea had gone cold by the time she was done speaking, and yet he had never felt such warmth within him before. Not even when he was King of Fire.
“And so you turned your fear into something else,” he said. “You reached the place you thought you would never find, and you claimed it as your own. Well done, my love.”
Adaira was silent, remembering their conversation in the cavern. But then she smiled, her face flushing, and Jack suddenly couldn’t bear the distance between them, even if it was merely the length of the table.
“Will you come closer to me?” he whispered.
Adaira rose and walked around the table. He turned on the bench to face her, and she settled close to him, their gazes aligned and their hearts in tune.
“I missed you,” he said. “I felt as if half of me had been torn away. I had swiftly realized that I made a mistake, leaving you behind that morning. I thought that if you stood at my side while I played that I would be divided, that I would choose you over the spirits. But now I see that I should have had you beside me, because when the fire claimed me, they took only half a mortal. They took my mortality and my body, but my heart stayed with you in the mortal realm.”
Adaira exhaled, closing her eyes when Jack tucked a loose thread of hair behind her ear.
“I was so worried,” she breathed, looking at him once more. “I was so worried you had forgotten me in your new realm, and the time we shared here. That if I ever saw you again, you wouldn’t remember me.”
“Even if I lived a thousand years in the fire,” Jack said, “I would not forget you. I would not allow myself to.”
A smile tugged on Adaira’s mouth. “Is that the beginning of a new ballad, old menace?”
Jack returned her smile, but he felt the truth scrape through the hollow places inside him that his music had once filled. Thinking of that loss hurt for a moment, but then Adaira traced the back of his hand and he felt flooded by light and hope.
“Your harp survived, by the way,” she said. “After the fire took you, the harp was left behind. In perfect condition, I might add. It’s in my room, waiting for you.”
“It was good of you to look after it,” Jack said. “But I don’t have a need for it anymore.”
Adaira frowned. “What do you mean, Jack?”
“My music became my crown. And I gave my crown away to return to my mortal life.”
She was silent, but her countenance had gone pale. She was mourning his loss, perhaps even more than him, and Jack wanted to ease that pain.
“I may not be able to play a harp again, or sing for the clan,” he said. “But I have found that this is my song. This is my music.” And he framed her face in his hands. “Months ago, I told you that I was a verse inspired by your chorus. I thought I knew what those words meant then, but now I fully understand the depth and the breadth of them. I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together. In waking up at your side every sunrise and falling asleep entwined with you every sunset. In kneeling beside you in the kail yard and leading a clan and overseeing trade and eating at our parents’ tables. In making mistakes, because I know that I’ll make them, and then restitution, because I’m better than I once ever hoped to be when I’m with you.”
Adaira turned her face to kiss his palm, where his scar from their blood vow still shone. When she looked at him again, there were tears in her eyes.
“What do you think, Heiress?” Jack whispered, because he was suddenly desperate to know her thoughts. To know what she was feeling.
Adaira leaned forward, brushing his lips with hers. “I think that I want to make such music with you until my last day when the isle takes my bones. I think that you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.”
Jack kissed her softly. The taste and feel of her was familiar, beloved, and he let himself fall into the comfort of her. In weaving his fingers into her hair and drawing out her gasps and feeling her cling to him. He had never felt so alive, not even when he had played his harp and sung for the spirits. He had never felt such wonder, and it reverberated through his soul like the final note of a ballad.
Soon, Adaira broke away and leaned back to smile up at him. He hadn’t even realized how much time had passed, or how low the fire had burned. The frosted light beyond the windows was blue, and he sensed it was evening.
“Should we go to Mirin’s, and see if she can set an extra place for us at her table?” Adaira asked.
Jack’s heart quickened, overflowing. “I would love that.”
“Come, old menace.”