Another peal of thunder shook the walls.
“Will the nobles be able to hunt tomorrow if it’s storming?” Adaira asked.
“It will make things very difficult.” Innes set down the brush. “And it cannot happen again, Cora.”
Adaira stiffened. “You heard him play?”
“Yes. His music has provoked this storm, and there is no telling how long it will now last.” Innes walked across the room, opening the wardrobe to find a clean chemise. She laid it over the foot of the bed.
“I don’t understand why the west is suffering if Jack was playing in the east,” Adaira said. “It was a mere play of the wind that brought the notes here.”
“I’ll tell you what my grandmother once told me,” Innes replied. “Music in the west upsets the northern wind. The spirits are drawn to a harp when it’s in the right hands, and the songs can make them stronger or weaker, depending on the intent behind the bard’s ballad. A bard could sing them to sleep or compel them to war against themselves. Given the curse of the clan line, I imagine there is a steep cost to a bard when they sing for the spirits in the east, but in the west it makes a bard incredibly powerful. There are no checks upon the bard, and so the northern wind has become that boundary, driven by the fear that the spirits could be controlled by a mortal.”
Adaira was quiet, but she thought about all the times Jack had suffered when he sang for the folk. The aches and pains he felt. The blood that often flowed from his nose, the way his fingernails would split and his voice would turn hoarse. He could play for only so long before the magic debilitated him.
But after listening to Innes’s explanation, Adaira couldn’t resist imagining Jack singing in the west. Hearing him play to the spirits at no cost to his body.
She shivered, unable to hide the warmth that coursed through her.
“The Breccan clan has survived this long under the northern wind’s constant watch,” Innes continued, “but only because we fear and heed it and have locked away our music and our instruments. And I have not reigned this long only to turn foolish and challenge Bane when my winter stores are running low and my people are hungry. That is why your bard must not sing for you again even if he is in the east, nor must he come here with any intent to play. Do you understand, Cora?”
Adaira thought of the last time she had seen Jack. The last time she had spoken to him.
Sometimes she relived that blistered moment in her dreams, only to wake curled up on her side, weeping into the darkness.
She had loved him enough to let him go. And yet she did not feel stronger for it. Not when she realized her decision had been fueled by fear.
She had often imagined what her life would be like if she had let Jack accompany her into the west. He would be stripped of his music, forbidden to play. He would be in a land teeming with enemies, first because of what he was, and then because of whose blood ran through his veins. He would be separated from his mother and sister, who he had just reunited with in the east.
And Adaira, who had been crushed by her first love and still carried deep wounds from it, hadn’t been able to see Jack being happy with her. Not if the price was giving up the essence of who he was. Eventually, he would want to leave. He would leave her, as all the people she loved inevitably did.
But the words he had sung to her earlier that night, words that had drifted over a dark expanse of kilometers . . . he longed for her, even after she had put such a distance between them. Even with all her fears and mistakes and scars.
He still wanted her.
“I’ll write to him,” Adaira said quietly.
Chapter 7
Jack didn’t see Adaira’s letter until sunrise, when he was walking through the kail yard. The fire still refused to burn in the hearth that morning, and he was weary from a night laden with strange dreams when he saw the raven perched outside his window, patiently waiting at the shutters. Wondering how long the raven had been there, Jack approached the bird. As soon as he retrieved the pouch fastened to its breast, the bird took off with a caw and a flap of iridescent wings.
Jack opened the leather flap, which was beaded with rain, and withdrew a crinkled letter. He recognized Adaira’s handwriting on the front, where she had spelled his name in big, flourishing letters. He was about to break the seal but paused when he noticed something strange. There was a slight red stain beneath the circle of wax. Almost as if a previous seal on the letter had been removed and replaced with this one.
Chills swept through him.
Surely not, he thought as he carefully opened the letter. Yes, he could tell there was a scratch on the parchment. Someone had removed the first seal and tried to replicate it with a second.
His heart was pounding as he read:
My Old Menace,
I hate to be the bearer of wonderfully bad news, but I fear to tell you that the song you played for me last night was carried on the wind, making its way into the west. Can I even begin to tell you how much I savored the sound of your voice? I don’t think I can, so read between the lines of this letter and imagine it.
Regretfully, due to the storm your music roused, I must now ask you to please refrain from singing for me or doing so in a way that would cross the clan line. I realize this letter might be alarming, but please don’t let it distress you. I am doing well, finding my place here more and more with each passing day. I’ve been busy, as I mentioned to you in past letters, and I apologize again if my correspondence is lacking.
Of course, I miss you, and am (yes, quite selfishly) pleased to know at the very least, storms aside, that you are singing and playing again.
Give my love to Mirin and Frae.
—A.
Jack could hardly breathe.
She had heard his music. The eastern wind had carried his voice, his notes, over the clan line. He glanced upwards and fixed his gaze on the western sky, which looked darkened by storm.
The Breccan territory was known to be a gray land, heavily sheltered by clouds. But Jack was worried now—worried that he might have caused trouble for Adaira.
He reread her letter and studied the strange seal again. A suspicion was creeping over him, and he couldn’t shake it off. It drew him back into the dim, fireless cottage, where Mirin was weaving in the shadows, patiently waiting for sunlight to spill in through the windows to fully light her loom, and Frae was still sleeping. Jack merely nodded to his mother and slipped into his bedroom, where he found Adaira’s two other letters tucked into the leaves of a book.
He studied them closely and saw similarities between all three wax seals. It wasn’t as noticeable on her first letter, but it was on the second.