“Is this a peace offering or a bribe?” he asked, brow arched.
Adaira smiled. It was genuine, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “A bit of both, perhaps? I thought you might enjoy a taste of the isle. I hear mainland fare is quite dull.”
Jack accepted the offering, but then he realized she was waiting for him to make a toast.
He cleared his throat and said, a bit gruffly, “To the east.”
“To the east,” she echoed, clinking her glass with his. And she waited until he had taken his first sip of the whiskey, which curled down his throat like a flame of ancient fire, to add, “Welcome home, my old menace.”
Jack coughed. His eyes watered and his nose burned, but he held himself together and merely winced at her.
This is not my home anymore, he almost said, but the words melted when she smiled at him again.
Adaira moved to sit in a leather chair, pointing to an empty one across from hers. “Have a seat, Jack.”
Whatever she had to ask of him must be truly wretched if she had to ply him with whiskey and order him to sit. Jack relented, sitting on the edge of the cushion, as if he might need to bolt at any moment. He laid his harp across his lap, weary from toting it around.
She was gazing at him again, her fingertip tracing the rim of her glass. He took that quiet moment to study her in return. In particular, her hands. There were no rings on her fingers. But sometimes partners didn’t wear rings to signify their vows. Sometimes they broke a golden coin and each wore a half of it around their neck, and so Jack’s eyes traveled upward. Her dress was cut square, exposing the valleys of her collarbones. Her throat was bare; no necklace hung about it. He presumed Adaira was still unwed, which surprised him.
“You’re exactly how I imagined you to be, Jack,” she said, and his eyes snapped back to hers.
“I haven’t changed?” he asked.
“In some ways, yes. But in others … I think I would know you anywhere.” She downed her whiskey, as if the confession had made her feel vulnerable. Jack watched as she swallowed, uncertain how to reply.
He kept his face poised as he drained the rest of his drink.
“More?” she asked.
“No.”
“Your hand’s bandaged. Are you hurt?”
Jack flexed it. The pain from the cut had faded considerably, thanks to Sidra’s care. “Just a scratch. The folk of the sea weren’t very welcoming.”
Adaira rolled her lips together, as if she wanted to say something else but decided against it.
“Should you tell me now, heiress?” Jack asked. His stomach was beginning to ache, wondering why Adaira needed him.
He wanted to get this over with and be gone.
“Yes,” said Adaira, crossing her legs. He caught a glimpse of her calf, the mud on her boots. “I suspected you enjoyed your life on the mainland since you never visited us here, and as you have many responsibilities at your university … let me be frank. I don’t know how long I will need you.”
“Surely you have some idea,” he said, tamping down his irritation. He lived by a schedule and hated to imagine floating through time. “A week? A month? If I’m not back in time for the autumn term, I’ll lose my position at the university.”
“I truly don’t know, Jack,” Adaira replied. “There are many factors at play, ones beyond my control.”
Jack’s first assumption was that she had called him home to play for her father, since the laird looked gravely ill. Which meant that Adaira was about to ascend as laird herself. Jack felt a pang of awe, imagining her crowned.
His eyes traced the thistle blossoms, tucked within her braids.
“You saw Torin earlier, yes?” Adaira asked.
Jack frowned. “I did. How did you—？”
“The wind,” she said, as if he should remember how it gossiped. “Did my cousin tell you about the two lasses who have gone missing?”
“Yes. But he didn’t provide much detail, other than that he believes the spirits are at fault.”
Adaira glanced across the room, her face solemn. “Two weeks ago, eight-year-old Eliza Elliott went missing on her walk home from school. We searched acres of land, from the school to her family’s croft, but we found little trace of her. Only a few places in the grass and heather, where it looked like she walked, only to vanish.” She paused, her eyes returning to his. “I’m sure you remember the ways of the isle, Jack.”
He did.
He remembered the perks as well as the dangers of straying from Cadence roads. The roads were pathways that resisted enchantments. The spirits couldn’t influence the roads, but they could toy with the grass and rocks and wind and water and trees of the isle. They could turn three hills into one, and one hill into four, but even then, there were ways of knowing the lay of the land, and which parts of it were prone to shift, and which landmarks remained fixed. Many children who didn’t know that secret map had gotten lost for hours if they wandered from the road.