“The mortal lasses are alive and have been well looked after,” Bane replied. “But you did not have to go through the trouble of summoning me to locate them. One of your very own knows where to find the children you seek.”
Jack took a step closer to Adaira, channeling the Orenna’s power to avoid drawing the attention of the spirits. His pulse was pounding in his ears. He could feel the beat of a hundred wings upon his skin.
Adaira held out her hands. “Who?” she demanded. “Who among my clan has betrayed me?”
Bane leaned on his lance, exhaling his stormy breath upon her face. But then his lambent eyes found Jack.
Jack froze, pierced by the intensity of the northern wind. He could see the threads of gold surrounding Bane’s body, all the many paths the spirit could take in the air. His unsung power. The other spirits were dull in comparison. “A dark-eyed weaver who lives on the edge of the east. She knows where the lasses are.”
Jack felt the blood drain from his face.
“You seek to fool us?” Adaira countered, emotion in her voice. She didn’t want to believe it, and Jack felt a pinch of relief that she would be bold enough to defend his mother. “What evidence can you give to support such a claim, when you yourself have seen fit to bind the mouths of the other spirits?”
“Can the spirits lie, mortal woman?” he countered. “That is why I bound the tongues of my subjects, to keep them from speaking the truth before its time had come.”
Adaira was silent. She knew as well as Jack did that the folk couldn’t lie. They could carry the gossip and lies that mortal mouths had already spoken, but they couldn’t inspire their own in words. Even as they often played games of deceit.
Bane’s full attention returned to her. The king reached out to touch Adaira’s face, and she didn’t resist it. She stood quiet and fixed, a glimmer of light in his great shadow.
“Do you want to come with me?” Bane asked, and his fingers tangled in her hair with a painful jerk. “I will carry you in my arms and take you to the lasses now, but only if your courage can be found.”
Jack’s horror deepened when he realized Adaira was considering his offer. He could see the edges of her beginning to fade, as if she were about to melt into wind, and his fury carved through his fear.
He closed the distance between them, harp cradled against his chest. He reached out and grasped her arm. Is this how she had felt when she had beheld him turning into the earth? A mix of panic, indignation, and bone-aching possession?
“Adaira!” Jack’s voice rent the air.
He was relieved when Adaira glanced over her shoulder, meeting his stare. She took a step back when he tugged, and he realized the Orenna was granting him the strength to draw her away from Bane’s icy hold.
The northern king looked at him again. The other spirits took flight in a rush of wings, dissolving into their natural state. Jack’s heart drummed as he watched them flee. But their king remained, standing firm. Bane’s cloying fingers fell away from Adaira’s hair as his eyes continued to bore into Jack.
Jack’s mortality shivered through him. He felt a vibration in his teeth. The wind from Bane’s wings blew, holding the sting of an axe, seeking to divide him and Adaira. Her hair tangled across her face when she looked at him again, and he saw she was also frozen. Her teeth were bared, her eyes wide.
“I have let you play once, mortal bard, but do not test my mercy. Do not dare to play again,” Bane said as he pointed his lance at Jack, the lightning dancing from it. Even then, Jack didn’t let go of Adaira.
The northern king shot a bolt of white heat at Jack’s harp. The light met his chest like the lash of a whip, hurling him up and away. He slammed into the mountain beside the cave’s mouth and slumped to the ground. The pain echoed through his veins as he struggled to breathe, to see. He could hear his harp’s last metallic note as it died, scorched and ruined.
“Jack!”
Adaira sounded far away, but he felt her hands touch him, desperate to rouse him.
“Adaira,” he whispered in a broken voice. “Stay with me.”
Speaking took the last of his strength. He remembered her cold fingers, lacing with his burning ones, holding him close.
Then he slipped away, deep into the darkness where not even the wind could reach.
CHAPTER 23
Jack woke to the sound of rain pattering on rock. He opened his eyes and slowly gained his bearings: he was lying on the hard floor of a cave, and the air was cold and dusky with the tang of lightning. Beyond the shelter, a storm raged. He shivered until he felt warmth radiate at his side.