My Old Menace,
Tonight I write my mind and my heart into this letter because I will never send it. There is heady power in such a thing, I’m learning. To write without constraints. To write what you truly feel. To turn a memory immortal. Into ink and paper and the unique slant of your hand.
Tonight I heard you sing for me. I heard you play for me.
And you will never know how much I needed your music. How desperate I was to hear your voice, over kilometers of mist and rocks and bracken and barrenness. You will never know because I cannot bear to tell you, so I will tell it to the paper here instead.
I drank poison tonight, and it turned me into frost and ice. I drank poison, and at first I felt like I was made of iron and confidence and all the sharp edges of the realm, until I wasn’t. And I writhed on the floor of my room with blood-spun jewels in my hair. I writhed and I wept and I have never felt such pain—the pain of loneliness, of emptiness, of grief. The pain of a poison I shouldn’t have drunk.
It was so heavy within me I could hardly crawl. But then your music found me on the floor. Your words found me at my weakest, at my darkest hour. You reminded me to breathe—to inhale, to exhale. You reminded me of all the gleaming moments we shared, even if it had just been for a season. You reminded me of what could still be if I was brave enough to reach out and claim it.
And I would tell you to sing up a hundred storms, if only to hear such beauty and truth again. To feel it settle in my bones and warm my blood. To know it is mine and mine alone to claim.
I love you, more than these humble words and this everlasting ink can say. I love you, Jack.
—A.
The words began to swim on the page. Jack blinked away his tears, but a sound escaped him. A sound of overwhelming relief and astonishment. To see her words, to feel them unfold within his chest like wings.
He stood, her letter still clutched in his fingers.
Through the haze of his tears, he looked at the floor, imagining her writhing and in pain. Why had she taken poison?
The mere image brought him to his knees.
He crawled closer to the hearth and lay down. He sprawled on his back, overwhelmed by all that was good and all that was uncertain. All that the night still promised to bring.
Jack stared up at the ceiling.
He relived her words, a hundred times.
When Adaira returned to her bedroom, the last thing she expected to find was Jack lying on her floor. A searing bolt of panic went through her, making her forget all about Moray and the plot to assassinate Innes, until Jack raised his head, saying, “I’m all right. Come lie down with me. The view is impeccable from here.”
Adaira locked the door, brow arched. “And what view is that, Bard?”
“You have to come closer to see it, Adaira.”
She did, easing down beside him on the rug. That was when she saw the letter on the floor, her dark-inked words on parchment. The pinch of concern she felt was quickly overruled by relief.
She sank fully to the floor at his side, staring up at the rafters.
“You’re reading my post, I see.”
“A post addressed to me,” Jack was swift to retort.
“Hmm.”
A lull came between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but Adaira could only wonder about Jack’s inner thoughts, about what her words might have roused in him. Sometimes he was still difficult for her to read.
He turned on his side to look at her, his hand fanning over her stomach. “Why did you take the poison?” he asked softly.
Adaira sighed. “At the time, I took it because I needed to have a place at the nobles’ table. I wanted to prevent another raid, because I believed it would spark a war between the two clans. But now? I think I took it because I was desperate to show my mother that I have a place here. That I am strong enough to thrive among the Breccans, even poisoned.”
Jack was quiet, listening as she began to tell him everything. About Skye, about the jewel effects of Aethyn-laced blood, about Innes’s worry that Adaira was fated to suffer the same painful death as her younger sister.
“There’s a good chance Innes will ask me to dose myself again soon,” Adaira said. “She might even ask it of you, Jack.”
He was quiet, but his hand moved along her ribs, coming to rest over her heart. “I won’t be able to take it.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to be able to play my harp and sing at a moment’s notice. It would be foolish of me to ingest something that would prevent me from doing that.”
“You plan to play even though my mother forbids it?”
Jack’s hand drifted from her heart, down to her ribs again. As if measuring her breaths. “Yes. When the time comes. It could be an hour, a day, a month from now.” He paused, watching her. “Do you want to take the poison again?”
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. She worried that he might press her about the matter, and she was about to ask him how his dinner with Niall went, when he spoke.
“You and I have faced many things alone,” Jack murmured. “Between the mainland and the isle, the east and the west, we’ve carried our troubles in solitude. As if it were weakness to share one’s burdens with another. But I am with you now. I am yours, and I want you to lay your burdens down on me, Adaira.”
She could hardly breathe, listening to his words. She turned to face him, and his arm came around her, strong and possessive. She savored his warmth as he held her tight against him.
Adaira remembered being lost earlier that day, wandering the wilds. If she had never come home, if the land had devoured her whole and stolen this moment from her, she would have perished from regret. She would have fallen apart, thinking of all the things she had wanted to say and do and yet had not, for reasons that felt tangled as vines within her. But she sensed that her reticence stemmed from her pride, hammered into steel, and the duty she had been raised to uphold. To faithfully guard herself and appear invincible, as a laird had no other choice but to be.
“I don’t need autumn, or winter, or spring,” Adaira said, letting the words bloom. “I want you eternally. Will you take the blood vow with me, Jack?”
He was silent, but his dark eyes glittered in the firelight. Adaira’s pulse was thick in her throat when he reached down to unsheathe the dirk at his belt, his old truth blade. They had once cut themselves with it, baring their hearts to each other. Adaira still had that faint scar on her palm, and she shivered as Jack sat forward, drawing her up with him.
“I thought you’d never ask, Adaira.”
She countered with a sharp smile, “Is that a yes, Bard?”