Soon, Torin told himself. That word kept him stitched together and kept him going. Soon she will see you again. Soon you will be home.
Torin trailed Jack and Adaira to a dark-watered loch. He halted to stare at the strange place. There was a dilapidated cottage on a small island in the center of the water, but stranger than that was the air, which felt cold and empty. He swiftly realized that no wind blew here. Adaira and Jack seemed to have stepped into a rift of time, a place where the past still burned.
“Is this Loch Ivorra?” Jack said.
Adaira’s head turned to him. “What is Loch Ivorra?”
“A place where the last Bard of the West lived, before music fell out of favor,” Jack explained.
An incredulous but pleased expression passed over Adaira’s countenance. “How do you know this, old menace?”
“Rab,” Jack replied simply. “He thought I had stolen my harp from here.”
Adaira said nothing, rolling her lips together instead. She led Jack across the narrow earthen bridge to the cottage, Torin close behind them. He didn’t like the way this place made him feel, and he glanced down into the quiet, still waters of the loch. There was no sign of its corresponding spirit, but Torin sensed their presence. An old, dangerous being who lurked in the depths.
“Should I be wary of what you’re about to show me, Adaira?” Jack said as they approached the cottage door. The kail yard was a disaster. Thistles bent, sharpening their needles, and weeds stretched out their pollen-drenched tendrils, as if to capture both Adaira and Jack. Torin was swift to follow, frowning at the spirits until they minded themselves and dutifully retreated.
“No,” Adaira said, but then she proceeded to slice her finger on the edge of her sword.
“What are you doing?” Jack hissed as she held up her bleeding hand and laid it on the door.
There was the unmistakable pop of a lock turning.
“An enchanted door,” she said, nudging the wood open.
She passed over the threshold first. Jack followed.
Torin trailed them into the cottage, impressed by the door’s lock. He took note of how rotten the air smelled. A sweet rot, like honey and moldy paper, covering a grave. But he soon forgot all about the smell when he saw what was within the walls.
A spirit of the wind was sitting on the edge of a palliasse, her indigo hair pooling on her shoulders. She was thin and lean, her skin the shade of the sky at springtime. She was clothed in silver linked armor, and she slowly rose to her feet, tattered iridescent wings dragging on the ground behind her.
Torin merely stared at her, overcome with worry. He didn’t realize that Adaira and Jack could also see the spirit until his cousin said, “Jack? This is my friend Kae.”
Jack released a long, deep breath. He was just as surprised and awed as Torin was to find a spirit in the flesh here, and Torin’s mind reeled. He longed to know what had happened for this wind spirit to be manifested in the natural realm. Was this a common occurrence?
And then the most extraordinary thing happened. The spirit’s attention drifted beyond Jack and Adaira to the shadow where Torin stood. He waited, expecting to feel her gaze slice through him like Sidra’s, like Maisie’s. He was getting accustomed to this feeling, as if he had always been a phantom. But the spirit’s eyes traced his broad build. The contours of his face.
His breath caught when her gaze united with his own.
Chapter 27
Jack sat across from Kae at the well-worn kitchen table, watching as Adaira set out a small spread of food. Dark brown bread, pickled onions, a wheel of soft cheese, and wild cherries. She was pouring them each a small cup of gra when Jack glanced at the musical composition scattered across the far end of the table. The brittle sheets of parchment were the color of honey, with ragged edges, and the inked notes were fading and smudged.
He let his eyes drift to the skeleton on the wall. To the harps that were still whole and hanging from nails, to the ones that were broken and scattered along the floor. To the quiet remnants of a hermit’s life or, more likely, a bard in exile. A cracked kettle on a shelf, an odd collection of cups, a dented tin of tea leaves, jars of preserves that had gone milky with age. The lumpy bed in the corner, the shutters locked in place by creeping vines, and the herbs whose leaves had crumbled into dust, their stalks still hanging from the rafters like long, unearthly fingers.
He both liked and disliked this place.
He thought it would be a good home for a bard to live and compose ballads, surrounded by water out in the wilds. No one would bother you here, interrupt your work. And yet this place had a sad, strange ambiance to it. It almost felt like a sinister dream that you wanted to wake from and couldn’t.
Jack stifled a shudder, sensing Kae’s attention.
He let himself return her gaze, full of questions he didn’t know whether he should ask. What had happened to her and her wings, and why was she locked in her manifested form? Why did she look at him with a warm light in her eyes, as if they were old friends?
“Kae was wounded by Bane and banished from his court,” Adaira said, sitting on a stool next to him. “I saw her fall from the sky and was lucky enough to track her down in the wilds.”
“May I ask what happened, Kae?” Jack asked. “Why were you banished?”
Kae was silent.
“He also took her voice,” Adaira said. “But we found a way to communicate.”
“How’s that?”
Adaira exchanged a look with Kae. “Do you think you could show him what you showed me?”
Kae nodded. She stretched out her hand to Jack, her long, blue-tipped fingernails translucent in the light. He just stared for a moment, confused, until Adaira told him to take her hand.
He did, unable to fully hide his wariness, glinting like steel. The moment his palm touched Kae’s—when his mortal warmth met her everlasting ice—his mind was flooded with colors and images that were overwhelming. He drew air through his teeth, trying to orient himself.
He saw Bane’s court, and Kae’s banishment. Her fall through the clouds. He saw himself sitting on a hill in the dark, playing his harp, and he startled. It was odd to see himself through another’s eyes. Dizzily, he spun from one memory to another, until all the pieces came together and he could hardly breathe, he could hardly think. He hardly knew where he was, and he—
Kae released him.
Jack continued to reel, keeping his eyes clenched shut and leaning forward on the table. He felt Adaira’s hand touching his hair. When his heart had found a steady beat once more, he opened his eyes and looked at Kae in wonder.
She was already watching him, beads of golden sweat shining on her skin. She looked taxed and anxious, as if she didn’t know what he would think.
“You’ve been protecting me—my music—all this time?” he said.
Kae nodded.