“What is it?” Adaira asked, studying the hill with narrowed eyes.
“Come closer so you can watch how I find the door.”
Adaira moved forward as Innes touched a large stone protruding from the hillside. A blue light flared in the rock, winking like an eye, and the stones on the ground began to vibrate in response. Adaira stepped back, alarmed as the stones rose and gathered into a lintel on the hillside. A door appeared next, made of smooth pale wood, and Adaira almost laughed, disbelieving.
“Is this a spirit portal?”
“It’s a burrow,” Innes replied. “A wind shelter made with tools forged over magical fire. There are ten spread out across the west. Most are easy to spot, with their south-facing doors, but some are meant to be difficult to locate. This one is such a burrow. My grandmother personally built it in her time as laird, and if you’re ever stranded by a northern storm, or perhaps need a place to hide, you should come here.”
Adaira was quiet. They didn’t need wind shelters in the east, and the idea was strange but intriguing to her. She nodded, sensing Innes wanted some physical reaction from her.
The laird turned and opened the door. She stepped into the burrow, but Adaira hesitated, stiff with reservation. How did she know Innes wasn’t fooling her? How did she know that Innes hadn’t brought her to an underground lair to be imprisoned?
Adaira couldn’t deny that she had been expecting imprisonment as soon as she arrived in the west. Her twin brother was shackled in the Tamerlaines’ fortress, so it was natural to assume Innes would do something similar to her. Adaira had, after all, agreed to be the Breccans’ prisoner, and they could do with her whatever they saw fit as long as peace was upheld.
But her time in the west hadn’t gone quite in the way she expected.
Innes had given her a comfortable bedroom in the castle that overlooked the “wilds,” a term for land that was under protection and that no one could claim. No hunting and no building and no harvesting whatever grew there. Breccans who wanted to travel across the wilds had to remain on deer trails and approved pathways. It seemed a strange list of requirements to Adaira, but for a land that struggled to thrive, it made sense that the laird would need to enforce laws to protect it.
In her first week, Adaira had scarcely left her room. She had stood before her windows, watching the mist descend over the wilds and listening to the bell that chimed in the castle turret every hour, keeping time. She had thought the west beautiful in a strange, sad way. Its lines were harsher, its colors muted, and its overall feeling was one of desperation. The landscape reminded Adaira of a dream, or a lament. It was both familiar and new, and she found it difficult to draw her eyes away from it. She wondered if that was part of the land’s few but compelling charms—its brutal honesty, as well as its untamed aura.
When she realized that Innes wasn’t going to lock her in her chamber, Adaira had begun to test her new boundaries.
She learned that she could move through the Breccans’ castle without a guard. Some places, however, were off-limits to her. She could bathe in the underground cistern so long as she told Innes when she planned to go, and Adaira had come to love the dark, warm waters of the large cavern. But the cistern, though a communal place, was always deserted when she went, making it apparent that Innes didn’t want her meeting other clanspeople. Adaira swam alone, save for a female guard who watched over her. As if Adaira might attempt to drown herself.
She could also read in the library. She could visit the gardens and the stables, but she couldn’t leave the castle grounds without Innes or David, Adaira’s father and the laird’s consort. She couldn’t wander to the southern or eastern wings of the fortress, or down to the hold, where prisoners were kept. She was permitted to take her meals in the privacy of her chamber or with her parents in theirs. She could write letters, but she always had to deliver them to David first, and he also brought the letters that arrived for her.
It hadn’t taken Adaira long to notice that the wax seals on Torin’s, Jack’s, and Sidra’s letters had been tampered with. Her father was reading her post before he gave it to her, which meant he was also most likely reading the words she sent east. She wanted to be angry at this revelation and knew that her fury would have been justified.
But she was no fool.
Of course they would read her letters to ensure that she wasn’t plotting their demise with her eastern family. Of course they didn’t trust her yet. It was best for her to pretend that she didn’t know about the interference with her mail, and also to keep her correspondence as nonthreatening as possible.
Every week had been full of small tests, quiet assessments to challenge her ties to the east and her future in the west. Innes and David were measuring how pliant she was as they tried to determine if it was possible for her to fully adjust to their way of life.
So far, Adaira had been extremely pliant. But she couldn’t deny the constant ache in her body, as if she had aged a century in one night. She felt cold and hollow every morning when she woke alone to the gray light of the west.
“Follow me,” Innes said. She had melted into the burrow’s darkness and was waiting. “And shut the door behind you.”
Adaira exhaled, her thoughts breaking into fragments. She sought to calm her heart because this burrow was merely another test. She didn’t need to be afraid, even though she couldn’t deny the tension that was gathering in her body. Limning her choice to flee, or to fight.
And yet where will you go if you run? her heart asked. The east cannot take you back. And what would you fight with? Your hands? Your teeth? Your words?
“Cora.” Innes spoke again, sensing her hesitation.
It was the name Adaira had been given at birth. A name bequeathed to a small, sickly child who Innes had thought belonged with the spirits more than with the west. Years later, the name still refused to fit her. It rolled off her like rain.
Adaira stood in the meager light of the burrow’s threshold, staring into the darkness. She couldn’t see Innes, but it sounded like she stood to the right. There was no way to discern how vast the enclosed space was, or what hid within it.
She took her first step into the burrow. Her hand shook as she latched the door, fully closing herself into the shadows with Innes.
“Why do you think I’ve brought you here?” Innes asked softly.
Adaira was silent. Perspiration began to bead her palms as she weighed her answer.
“You want me to trust you,” she replied at last.
“And do you trust me, Cora? Or do you still fear me?”
It was strange how easy it was to speak the truth with darkness as a shield. Adaira didn’t think she would have had the courage to say the words if she had been holding Innes’s gaze.