Jack wanted to know why. Why had she taken scars for him? What did his music fully mean to her?
But he withheld those questions. There would come a time for him to learn their answers. Now he simply whispered, “Thank you.”
They ate the meal together. Jack listened as Adaira told Kae about the culling, and how she had barely reached the arena in time to save his life.
“If it hadn’t been for the fire . . .” she trailed off, glancing at Jack.
Jack was already looking at her. It was only then, with Adaira’s mention of the flames dying in her hearth, that Jack thought of Ash again and remembered him unfolding from Mirin’s ashes.
The answers, Ash had said to him, are there if you seek them.
He looked at Kae, who was studying Adaira with a tenderness that Jack would have never thought possible on a spirit’s face. The sight made him dwell on immortality. He thought about how it would feel to never age or die. How did something timeless fall in love with something subject to time?
“What do you know of Laird Ash, Kae?” Jack said.
Kae’s attention snapped back to him, with one of her brows arched. He couldn’t tell if she had benevolent feelings toward Ash or not, and he wondered if he had erred by mentioning the weakened Laird of Fire to her. But then he remembered the feel and slant of Kae’s memories, and how she had used her prowess to shield him, time and time again.
He didn’t fear her. Not as he did most of the other spirits he had sung to and encountered face-to-face.
Kae extended both of her hands across the table. One for Adaira and one for him.
Jack accepted, just as Adaira did. The moment the three of them were connected, Kae summoned her memories.
She was soaring over the isle.
Jack didn’t recognize the land beneath her watch. The hills were lush with bracken, red sorrel, and gorse. Wild berries grew in thickets, and white flowers bloomed from the cracks in rocks. A river babbled, clear and cold from a place between two mountains. Jack suddenly realized what he was seeing.
The west before the clan line had struck the ground. It had been beautiful.
Kae dipped lower, her wings stirring the morning mist that eddied in low places. She was carrying gossip in her hands, preparing to release it to a croft below when the faint strum of music caught her attention.
She paused, let the words slip from her fingers, and turned.
She located the bard in a valley, sitting beneath the boughs of a rowan tree. Her emotions were instantly conflicted when she saw him. She felt a little angry and repulsed, but she was also irresistibly attracted to him and the music he plucked from his harp. And he wasn’t even singing for air. He was summoning fire.
Kae hid in a shadow, watching Iagan play.
His hair was long and flaxen, drawing the eyes when it caught the sun. His face had sharp-cut features, and his pale skin was flushed from the summer heat. His long fingernails wrung notes from a harp that glistened in his embrace, and his voice was darkly resonant as he sang.
Ash manifested slowly, as if he were weary. He arose from a flurry of sparks, drawing himself into a tall, imposing figure. But when he stood before Iagan, there was no wonder in his expression, no admiration in his gaze. He glared at the bard and hissed, “Why are you summoning me again? What do you want?”
Iagan ceased playing. He remained where he was sitting, beneath the branches of the tree, and replied, “You know what I want.”
“And I refuse to give it to you.”
“All I ask is for you to give me a portion of your power, so I may never die,” the bard said. “So I may grow renowned amongst my clan, and amongst your kind. If you do, I will sing of your prowess forever.”
Ash stared at him and bared his sharp-edged teeth. “No. You are not worthy of it.”
Iagan’s face turned red. But his voice was cool when he said, “How am I unworthy? Do I not sing for you? Do I not play for you? Is my music not good enough in your eyes?”
“I see your heart when you play,” Ash said. “I see your essence and how hungry you are. And you play for yourself and your desires alone. You do not give. You only want to consume. For that reason alone, I cannot grant you what you want. It would fit you poorly.”
Iagan’s eyes glittered with ire. “I won’t ask again, Ash. Next time, I will simply take it.”
“You can try, Bard,” the spirit said in a haughty tone before he vanished beneath his cloak of sparks and embers.
Iagan rose, but his anger was palpable. He threw down his harp, sending it clanging into the bracken. He unsheathed the sword at his side and began to hack at the rowan tree, cutting down leaves and branches and clusters of red berries. Birds fled from the boughs. A rabbit scampered away from its roots. Even the shadows on the ground trembled.
Kae shuddered.
Having seen enough, she melted into the wind.
Her next memory wasn’t as sharp. It was blurred around the edges, and Jack struggled to fully see it, to take in all the details. The west looked sparse now, the clouds a gray shield in the sky. This memory was from after the clan line was formed, Jack realized. He saw Iagan walking along the road, harp tucked beneath his arm. He looked older, harder. Silver laced his blond hair, and his eyes were full of pride, shining like blue gemstones in the gloomy light.
“Iagan!” a voice called, clipped with fury.
Iagan stopped and turned, watching as three Breccan men caught up to him on the road.
“We know you’re playing,” one of them said. “And you need to stop. None of us can wield our magic when you do, and our families are going hungry.”
“Are you afraid of a little ballad then?” Iagan countered with a laugh. “You once asked me to play at your daughter’s wedding, Aaron. I vividly recall how you sang and danced until you were too drunk to stand.”
“That was before,” Aaron said. “We don’t live in those days anymore. And your music isn’t harmless. It’s causing trouble, and you’ve been ordered to cease playing.”
“All of this,” Iagan said, waving his hand to the thin bracken, the wilting heather, the cloudy sky, “is not my fault. It’s Joan and Fingal’s doing.”
The memory began to waver. Jack clung to it, trying to hear what the men were saying. Iagan seemed defiant as they continued to argue. But Jack knew a portion of Iagan’s dilemma. He knew how music was in the blood of a bard, simmering and pulsing through every vein. How it settled into bones and organs, aching to be released in the only way it could. Through songs and strings and voice.
When the Breccans began to beat Iagan, Jack felt something cold and slippery wend through him. They struck him, again and again, until he collapsed on the side of the road, bleeding into the grass, his harp broken beside him.
Iagan lay there for a while. It began to storm, the wind howling overhead, tearing through his hair. The rain seemed to make him stir finally, and he began to crawl home. It wasn’t his love of music, however, that drove him. It was his anger, a sharp, glittering blade in his heart.