“I want to trust you, Laird. But I still don’t know you.”
Innes was quiet, but Adaira could hear her breathe. Long, steady draws of air. There was a sudden shuffle of boots, betraying Innes’s movement as she said, “Stretch out your left hand. When you find the wall, walk alongside it. You’ll know when to stop.”
Adaira held out her hand, grasping at the darkness until her fingertips grazed the cool, earthen wall. She did as Innes had instructed, walking beneath veins of roots until her toe hit something solid.
“Good,” Innes said. “Now reach down. There is a flint and an enchanted blade before you. Use both to make a flame.”
Adaira’s hands fumbled, feeling the edges of a crate. But it was just as Innes had said: a large, angular piece of flint and an antler-hilt dirk rested on the wood. Within one strike, the tip of the steel ignited like a candle.
The wavering flame cast a ring of light around her. Adaira took in what she could now make of the burrow. It wasn’t as big as she had initially believed; she could see the far end of the structure where two cots were erected, side by side, their straw mattresses covered with piles of folded blue plaids. More crates were stacked along the wall, full of earthenware jugs and flasks. Candles rested on every horizontal surface, strung with cobwebs. In the heart of the room were two chairs. Innes was sitting in one of them, legs crossed and fingers laced over her lap, as she watched Adaira’s observations.
“Come join me,” Innes said when their gazes met. “We need to talk.”
Adaira walked to the center of the burrow and lit the candles that rested on an overturned crate between the chairs. She sat, facing Innes, although her attention was stolen by the enchanted dirk she still held. In the east, they didn’t have blades with such magical abilities as fire-making, although it wouldn’t be beyond the skills of Tamerlaine smiths to forge one. The cost to their health for crafting such enchantment would be steep, though, and not many Tamerlaines wanted to pay it.
Adaira blew out the blade’s flame, then set it beside the candles on the crate. Looking at Innes, she watched the firelight dance over her mother’s lean face. The woad tattoos on her neck looked stark against her pale skin.
“You say you have yet to wholly trust me because you do not know me,” Innes said. “But you are my daughter, and you have nothing to fear from me.” She paused, glancing down at her hands. At the blue ink printed across the backs of her fingers. “You have this moment to ask me anything. I will answer you if I can.”
Adaira was stunned by the offer. There were a few questions that had been smoldering in her thoughts since she had arrived, but she needed a moment to think.
She wanted to know why music was forbidden in the west; if she could understand it, perhaps she could safely invite Jack to visit. But before she could invite Jack, she needed to know where his father was—the man who had secretly given her to the Tamerlaines after Innes ordered her to be abandoned in the Aithwood.
Had they executed him? Did he still live? Adaira had no idea, and she couldn’t face Jack without having an answer. It was another reason why she had slowed her correspondence with him; she lived in daily dread that he would ask about his father in a letter and David, reading it, would realize whose son Jack truly was.
Adaira could only hope that Jack was shrewd enough to read between the lines she was writing to him, that he realized their letters were not private. That he wasn’t taking offense at the distance she was keeping.
But dwelling on it always made her feel ill, as though she had swallowed mouthfuls of seawater.
Tucking a tendril of damp hair behind her ear, she pushed Jack and their stilted correspondence far from her thoughts. Then she delayed a moment more, removing a burr from her plaid. The query burned on her tongue—Where is the man who carried me eastward?—but when Adaira glanced up and found Innes regarding her with a tenderness she had not yet seen in the laird’s face, the words melted away.
She couldn’t ask that question yet. It would put a wedge between them, and who knew when Innes would grant another opportunity like this. Adaira would have to wait a while longer.
“Did you ever think of me?” she whispered. “All the years I was gone . . . did I ever cross your mind, even when you thought I was dead?”
Did you ever regret your decision to give me up?
“Yes,” Innes said. “Although I never thought you dead. I believed you had been taken by the spirits of the air. There were some seasons of my life when I could not pass a day without thinking of you. I would walk the Aithwood and I would listen to the wind, and I would imagine you as a spirit, blowing across the wilds. It was a small comfort, though, and one I did not deserve.”
Adaira cast her eyes down to the dirt floor. She didn’t know how to respond, or what to feel, but she felt speared by her mother’s response.
“I had another daughter, after you,” Innes continued. “Three years after you and Moray were born. She emerged into the world weak and small. Just as you had been, only this time I knew better than to believe her a changeling and give her up to the folk.”
“What is her name?” Adaira’s heart began to pound. She didn’t know what expression was on her face, but it must have been drawn with longing, because the laird glanced away, into the shadows.
“Her name was Skye.”
Was.
“What happened to her?” Adaira asked.
“She was poisoned by one of my thanes,” Innes replied.
“I . . . I’m sorry.”
“So was he, after I was through with him.”
“The thane?”
Innes nodded as she reached into the inner pocket of her jerkin. She retrieved a small glass vial and held it up to the candlelight, studying the clear liquid that moved within it.
“Why do you think I brought you with me today to see the shepherd’s body?” the laird asked.
Adaira shivered. Her mist-dampened clothes were beginning to feel heavy and chafed her skin. The turn of their conversation made her anxious, and she resisted the urge to crack her knuckles. “You wanted me to see that your people are desperate and hungry enough to kill each other for resources.”
“Something you’ve never encountered before in the east, I take it? Since the Tamerlaines have never known true hunger or want,” said Innes. “You’ve never seen how both can drive you to do things you’d never consider before.”