The western heir was dead. The Breccan clan was silent as they watched Niall remove his helm and kneel before Innes.
“You have regained your honor, Niall Breccan,” she said, her voice carrying throughout the arena, deep and strong, as if she had not just lost her son. “The sword has spoken for you, and you are absolved of your crimes. You may walk freely amongst the clan once more, for the spirits have found you worthy of life.”
Niall bowed his head, his lank copper hair dangling in his eyes.
Around him, the torch fire flickered as the wind began to blow. Shadows crept long and thin over the sand. The clouds knit themselves back together overhead, swallowing the stars and the moon. The mist descended, gathering like dew on hair and shoulders and plaids.
The clan began to leave, dismissed.
Jack couldn’t move. He stared at Niall, watching him rise. He thought his father would glance his way, but Niall unbuckled his breastplate and let it fall. He left his armor and sword on the ground beside Moray, then fled through one of the arena doors.
“I need to speak with him,” Jack murmured to Adaira.
She said nothing, but her cheeks were rosy, her eyes gleaming. She let her fingers unwind from his as he turned. Innes had already departed, slipping away without a sound. Jack hurried through the castle corridors, his heart striking against his breast.
He got turned around twice and had to backtrack, but he eventually found his way to the courtyard. It was teeming with people heading home, and Jack felt caught up in a river as he frantically searched for Niall. There was no sign of him. Eventually, Jack had no choice but to wend his way through a gap in the crowd, beside a forge that was boarded up for the night.
He stood in the shadows, absently gazing at the Breccans as they filed through the courtyard.
“If you’re looking for your father,” said a voice, “then you won’t find him here.”
Jack jumped, glancing to his left. It was David Breccan, standing four paces away and leaning against the stone wall.
“Did you see him?” Jack said.
“Not me, but the guards at the gate did,” David replied, indicating the raised portcullis. “He was the first one to walk across the bridge.”
Jack dwelled on these words until they burned like salt in a wound. He didn’t know what it meant that his father hadn’t wanted to see or speak with him. Maybe Jack had been wrong to assume Niall would want to build a new life with him in it. Maybe he just wanted to be left alone to live in peace.
Jack stared into the mist.
Somewhere, his father was walking the hills in the dark. Alone but free.
And there was only one place he would go.
Home to his cottage in the woods.
Chapter 35
Torin went home.
Not to the cottage that he had once built with Donella and then made into a refuge with Sidra. He walked through those empty, stone walls and ascended the heather-clad hill to his father’s house and lands. The croft he had grown up on.
He paused in the kail yard. Once, he had seen a glamour every time he came here, but his eyes had been closed then. He had seen nothing but disrepair and neglect in Graeme’s garden and cottage, and the sight had annoyed Torin. But now he saw the life dwelling beneath the magic, incandescent with goodness. The many threads that came together, all playing their part to make the whole.
He knelt in the dirt.
The yard spirits were young and shy, but the longer he remained among them, the bolder they became. Vines and flowers and weeds and blossoms and stones, their blinking eyes brimming with curiosity. Torin wasn’t sure how much time passed—there was no way to truly measure it in the spirits’ domain—but eventually a child made of vines drew close to him. The spirit reached out a small, woven hand and touched Torin’s forearm, a soft touch to break his reveries. He tried to give the vine child a smile, but there was no joy in him that he could offer.
“Try again,” said the vine child.
Torin shook his head, too weary to even speak.
“Try again,” the child persisted in a sweet, hopeful voice.
Torin didn’t want to try. The blisters on his hands were still ripe, and he had never felt so lonely and afraid in all his life. Not even when Donella died. Not even when his mother abandoned him, decades ago. Torin had been only six years old, but he remembered how he had struggled to understand her sudden absence. How he had waited at the door for her to return.
It was quiet in the garden, and Torin thought he would sink down into the earth from the countless woes he carried. But he soon heard Graeme. His father was singing inside the cottage. His voice, strong and deep, was escaping through the cracked window, and it prompted Torin to rise. He walked to the window and gazed into the cottage. He could faintly discern his father through the cracked shutter, sitting at his kitchen table, singing as he worked on a new ship-in-a-bottle.