Sidra broke the spell.
“That was beautiful,” she said. “Thank you, Jack.”
He nodded and began to put his harp away. “I appreciate your help, Sidra.”
“My door is always open to you.” She watched as he rose and approached the threshold. Adaira angled her body so he could slip past her, and they still said nothing to each other, even as the air crackled.
Now that Jack was gone, Adaira entered the house, shutting the door. Sidra knew she had come to be with her, to keep her company, and to help create the guards’ tonics.
Adaira glanced over the table and rolled up her sleeves. “Tell me what to do, Sid.”
Sometimes this was what Sidra loved best about Adaira. Her willingness to get dirty, to learn new things. How direct she was.
She was the younger sister Sidra never had but always yearned for.
“Crush this stack of herbs for me,” Sidra said, edging the pestle and mortar toward her.
Adaira began to work, crushing with intensity. Sidra understood it, that nagging feeling: I need to do something. I need to do something that has meaning.
“What did you help him with?” Adaira eventually asked.
“Who do you speak of, Adi?”
“Jack, of course. Why was he here?”
Sidra reached for an empty bottle. She began to pour the tonic within it. “You know I can’t say why.”
Adaira pressed her lips together. She was tempted to draw it out of Sidra, and as the future laird, perhaps she could. But Sidra held her patients’ secrets like her own, and Adaira knew it.
The women fell silent, working together in tandem. Adaira was corking the bottles when she finally spoke again, her tone heavy.
“I need your advice, Sid.” She hesitated. “I don’t want to burden you with this. Not when you’re going through so much yourself. But time is not on my side.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind, Adi,” Sidra said gently.
She listened as Adaira spoke about the confidential trade, the letters she had been writing to Moray Breccan. The invitation to visit the west, and the first trade exchange, both of which were to be done alone.
“Sometimes I worry that I’m choosing the wrong path,” Adaira said with a sigh. “That my inexperience is going to doom us. That I’m foolish to yearn for peace.”
“It’s not a foolish dream,” Sidra was swift to respond. “And you are right to seek a new way of life for our clan, Adaira. For too long we’ve been raised on fear and hatred, and it’s time for things to change. I think many of the Tamerlaines inwardly feel the same and would follow you anywhere, even if that means a few difficult years of rethinking who we are and what this isle beneath our feet should become.”
Adaira met Sidra’s gaze. “I’m relieved you agree, Sid. But I still have a problem with the trade.”
“Tell me.”
“The Breccans need our resources, but what do we need from them? Their enchanted plaids and swords that they use to attack us with? Do I dare ask for such things, knowing it’s counterproductive for this notion of peace I’m working to establish between us?”
Sidra was quiet, but her mind was racing.
“This is what my father and Torin persist in asking me,” Adaira continued. “The Breccans have nothing we need. This trade will favor them at our expense, and it may not even halt their raiding ways. Torin predicts this will happen—the trade will be good for a season, and we’ll give our stores to them. But come winter, the Breccans will decide to raid. Such an action would tip us into war.”
“There’s a chance Torin is right,” Sidra said. “It’s a possibility we must prepare for, as much as I wish to reassure you peace would be easy and bloodless to obtain.” Her gaze swept the table, absently passing over her herbs. Her eyes caught on the last Orenna flower, which she was storing in a glass vial. A chill coursed through her, and she rubbed her chest. Her bruises were aching today as her body began to heal. “But what if the Breccans have something we need?”
Adaira frowned. “What do you mean, Sid?”
Sidra reached for the vial. She held the Orenna flower up to the light and realized her hand was trembling. She hadn’t dared to think along these lines yet because Torin was determined to find her assaulter in the east, having felt no one crossing the clan line. But neither had he found a graveyard, peppered with small crimson blooms.
“Has Torin told you about this flower?”
“Briefly,” Adaira said. “He believes it may be aiding the kidnapper.”