Jack stopped abruptly, meeting Torin’s gaze. The laird stood by the hearth, where the firelight caught the silver embedded in his leather jerkin, the hilt of his sheathed sword, the gold of his hair, and the gray that shone like frost in his beard, even though he was still a few years shy of thirty. A ruby brooch gleamed at his shoulder, pinning his crimson plaid.
“Laird,” Jack said, his worries multiplying. Torin couldn’t be here for anything good. He had never been one to pay a social call.
“Jack,” Torin returned in a careful voice, and Jack knew in that instant that Torin wanted something of him, something that Jack most likely wouldn’t want to give.
Jack’s gaze flickered to his mother, who was stepping away from her loom. To Frae, who was rolling out pie dough.
“Is everything well?” he asked, his eyes eventually returning to Torin.
“Yes,” Torin replied. “I’d like to have a word with you, Jack.”
“We’ll be just outside in the garden,” Mirin said, reaching for Frae’s hand and guiding her to the back door.
Jack watched as his little sister abandoned the pie dough, granting him a glance of concern. He gave her a smile and a nod, hoping to reassure her, even as he sought to ease his own mind.
All too soon, with the doors and shutters latched against the curiosity of the wind, the cottage fell quiet. Jack raked his hand through his snarled hair; the color of dark bronze in his fingers, it had grown longer these days. The threads of silver shining at his left temple were a reminder that he had faced Bane’s wrath and lived. After coming so close to death, he’d not soon play for the spirits again.
“Can I get you anything to drink, Laird?” he asked.
Torin hadn’t moved from his place by the hearth. But his mouth was pressed into a firm line, and his fingers twitched at his side. “Just Torin. And no. Your mum made me a cup of tea while I waited for you.”
It was strange to think about how much Jack had wanted to be like Torin in every way when he was a lad, because Torin was brave and strong and an esteemed member of the guard. Now he was someone Jack admired—and found stubbornly irritating on occasion—and, most of all, a friend he trusted.
“Why have you come then?” Jack said.
“I need you to play for the spirits.”
Jack hesitated. He could almost feel a trace of pain in his hands, in his temples, just thinking about singing for the folk. But this was part of his duty as Bard of the East. “I’ve already played for the water and the earth.”
“I know,” Torin said, “but there’s trouble, and I need to speak with the spirits.” He explained about the blighted orchard, and how the sickness had been passed to Hamish Brindle.
“The boy who drowned yesterday?” Jack asked, brows arched.
“Yes,” Torin said. “Which makes me believe there is such unrest in the spirits’ realm that it has bled into ours and is only going to get worse, owing to our ignorance. If you could draw forth a spirit from the sick orchard, perhaps they could tell us what has happened and what can be done to heal it. Then we’d know what we can do to protect ourselves and keep the blight from spreading.”
Jack was quiet as he wondered whether he could play Lorna’s ballad again to call forth the earth faeries or needed to compose his own music. He felt like he had a stone lodged in his throat when he tried to imagine inking notes of his own. He just felt so empty.
As Jack gazed at the blue-hearted fire in the hearth, he felt a sudden warmth at his back, as though someone stood behind him. He heard a voice, so familiar he would know it anywhere, whisper into his hair.
This is your moment, old menace. Play for the orchard.
Jack couldn’t resist: he glanced over his shoulder, as if he would find Adaira standing behind him. But all he saw was a stream of sunlight, sneaking in through a slat in the shutter.
He might have been surprised that she would haunt him at such a moment, but he knew better. Because this was why Adaira had summoned him back to Cadence in the first place. She had asked him to sing the spirits up from the sea, to croon to the spirits of the earth, to draw forth the spirits of the wind. And Jack had done as she asked, as if he were part of the tides and the rocks and the gusts of the isle. He had done it even when he had doubted himself, because Adaira had believed in his hands and his voice and his music.
“I would do this,” Jack said, his gaze returning to Torin. “But I don’t have a harp. Mine was ruined by the northern wind, when I played for the air.”