“Jack.”
He turned his face to behold Adaira lying next to him. His sight was blurred around the edges, and it took everything within him to find and raise his hand, to rub the throb in his temples.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Are we in the west?”
“The west? No, we’re still in the cave on the mountain ledge of Tilting Thom. You’ve been passed out for hours.”
He swallowed. It felt like a splinter was lodged in his throat.
“Hours?” He looked at her again. “Why didn’t you leave me?”
“Don’t you remember the last thing you said to me? You asked me to remain with you.”
The memories gathered in his mind with an ache as he remembered all that had passed earlier on the mountain. But in the darkness that had followed, there had been dreams. Vivid, stark dreams. He blinked and saw a lingering trace of them, as if Bane had pressed his thumbs against Jack’s eyes, making the colors swarm.
“Do you feel strong enough to sit forward?” Adaira asked him gently, and when Jack floundered, she laced her fingers with his and eased him up.
He saw the mouth of the cave, streaked with rain. The hour was gray, bewitching. And there sat his harp at his feet, warped in the fading light.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” Adaira whispered, mournful.
He stared at the ruined instrument for a moment. It felt like a piece of him had died, broken and fallen away into oblivion, and he struggled to hide the wave of emotion that crested within him.
Adaira looked away. Her hair was unbraided and loose, beaded with mist. She hid half of her face behind its curtain. “What do you make of the wind’s answer?”
Jack hesitated, recalling those piercing words. Bane had made a wild claim about Mirin, one that Jack would have scoffed at had he not recently realized his mother had once been in love with a Breccan.
He didn’t think Mirin knew anything about where the lasses were being held, but she did know something. She had been hiding her knowledge for years, weaving those secrets into the plaids she dressed him and Frae in.
Jack glanced at Adaira. She was pale, her mouth pressed into a thin line. He worried the truth might change the tentative bond they had formed, and his heart dropped. To reveal his suspicions about Mirin would be to reveal his suspicions about his father.
“The wind could be tricking us,” he said. “But either way, I ask one thing of you, Adaira.”
She met his gaze. “Anything, Jack.”
“Let me speak to my mother first. Privately. If there’s something she knows, she’ll most likely be forthright if I’m the one asking.”
Adaira paused. Jack could read the flash of her thoughts—she wanted to go directly to Mirin. She wanted the answers this afternoon. But Adaira nodded and whispered, “Yes, I’ll agree to that.”
They sat for a moment more in silence, until a burst of cold shocked them both. The storm swelled, and the rain drove deeper into the cave, stinging their faces like needles. A voice haunted the gust, a sound of misery. There was a gasp, like a final draw of breath. Somewhere on the isle, life was being extinguished, snuffed by the deadly brunt of northern wind. The hair rose on Jack’s arms as he listened.
Adaira must have heard it as well. She stood and stared into the storm. “Do you feel strong enough to walk down the mountain? I worry that I’ve been away far too long.”
He nodded, and she hauled him up to his feet. The world spun for a moment, and he caught his balance on the cave wall. He watched as Adaira knelt and slipped his harp back into its sheath, strapping it to her back. When she returned to his side and offered her arm, he accepted her assistance.
He leaned upon her shoulder, and they approached the cave mouth together. But Adaira paused before the sheet of rain and said, “Why did you ask me if we were in the west when you woke?”
He suddenly hated that he didn’t know what she was thinking. If it raised suspicions about him now that Bane had tossed Mirin’s name before them like a snare.
But the truth was … his body had been with Adaira in the east, but his mind had been roaming the west.
“Because I saw it,” he said. “In my dreams.”
The descent was slow and precarious, the rain refusing to relent and only beating harder upon them. Adaira kept Jack on her left, between her and the mountain wall, because she worried if he stumbled, she would be unable to keep him from plunging over the edge of the path. They had angered the northern wind, and now Bane was making them pay for it.
When Jack struggled to stay upright, easing to his knees with a groan, Adaira was beside him. She refused to yield him to the storm, to leave him behind so she could hurry.