He let his eyes drift to the skeleton on the wall. To the harps that were still whole and hanging from nails, to the ones that were broken and scattered along the floor. To the quiet remnants of a hermit’s life or, more likely, a bard in exile. A cracked kettle on a shelf, an odd collection of cups, a dented tin of tea leaves, jars of preserves that had gone milky with age. The lumpy bed in the corner, the shutters locked in place by creeping vines, and the herbs whose leaves had crumbled into dust, their stalks still hanging from the rafters like long, unearthly fingers.
He both liked and disliked this place.
He thought it would be a good home for a bard to live and compose ballads, surrounded by water out in the wilds. No one would bother you here, interrupt your work. And yet this place had a sad, strange ambiance to it. It almost felt like a sinister dream that you wanted to wake from and couldn’t.
Jack stifled a shudder, sensing Kae’s attention.
He let himself return her gaze, full of questions he didn’t know whether he should ask. What had happened to her and her wings, and why was she locked in her manifested form? Why did she look at him with a warm light in her eyes, as if they were old friends?
“Kae was wounded by Bane and banished from his court,” Adaira said, sitting on a stool next to him. “I saw her fall from the sky and was lucky enough to track her down in the wilds.”
“May I ask what happened, Kae?” Jack asked. “Why were you banished?”
Kae was silent.
“He also took her voice,” Adaira said. “But we found a way to communicate.”
“How’s that?”
Adaira exchanged a look with Kae. “Do you think you could show him what you showed me?”
Kae nodded. She stretched out her hand to Jack, her long, blue-tipped fingernails translucent in the light. He just stared for a moment, confused, until Adaira told him to take her hand.
He did, unable to fully hide his wariness, glinting like steel. The moment his palm touched Kae’s—when his mortal warmth met her everlasting ice—his mind was flooded with colors and images that were overwhelming. He drew air through his teeth, trying to orient himself.
He saw Bane’s court, and Kae’s banishment. Her fall through the clouds. He saw himself sitting on a hill in the dark, playing his harp, and he startled. It was odd to see himself through another’s eyes. Dizzily, he spun from one memory to another, until all the pieces came together and he could hardly breathe, he could hardly think. He hardly knew where he was, and he—
Kae released him.
Jack continued to reel, keeping his eyes clenched shut and leaning forward on the table. He felt Adaira’s hand touching his hair. When his heart had found a steady beat once more, he opened his eyes and looked at Kae in wonder.
She was already watching him, beads of golden sweat shining on her skin. She looked taxed and anxious, as if she didn’t know what he would think.
“You’ve been protecting me—my music—all this time?” he said.
Kae nodded.
Jack wanted to know why. Why had she taken scars for him? What did his music fully mean to her?
But he withheld those questions. There would come a time for him to learn their answers. Now he simply whispered, “Thank you.”
They ate the meal together. Jack listened as Adaira told Kae about the culling, and how she had barely reached the arena in time to save his life.
“If it hadn’t been for the fire . . .” she trailed off, glancing at Jack.
Jack was already looking at her. It was only then, with Adaira’s mention of the flames dying in her hearth, that Jack thought of Ash again and remembered him unfolding from Mirin’s ashes.
The answers, Ash had said to him, are there if you seek them.
He looked at Kae, who was studying Adaira with a tenderness that Jack would have never thought possible on a spirit’s face. The sight made him dwell on immortality. He thought about how it would feel to never age or die. How did something timeless fall in love with something subject to time?
“What do you know of Laird Ash, Kae?” Jack said.
Kae’s attention snapped back to him, with one of her brows arched. He couldn’t tell if she had benevolent feelings toward Ash or not, and he wondered if he had erred by mentioning the weakened Laird of Fire to her. But then he remembered the feel and slant of Kae’s memories, and how she had used her prowess to shield him, time and time again.
He didn’t fear her. Not as he did most of the other spirits he had sung to and encountered face-to-face.
Kae extended both of her hands across the table. One for Adaira and one for him.