He breathed, slow and deep, and focused on the trees again.
Ever since he had first learned of the blight, standing in this very spot with Rodina, Torin had known not to touch it. He had kept his distance, his fingers curled into a fist, safe at his side. Even in the spirits’ domain he had been careful.
But to heal them now he would have to stretch out his hand.
He approached the closest tree. A young maiden sat amidst its roots, apple blossoms wilted in her long green hair. She had been struck in the chest, and the violet sap, threaded with gold, oozed from her heart.
Torin knelt. He dipped his fingers into the remedy and laid them against her wound. He felt the power travel from him to her, the cold snap of the salve sinking into the fever of her blood. He watched as the light branched through her, chasing away Bane’s curse. She bled and bled, until her blood was no longer rotten but pure again, shining like gold as her wound knit itself together.
Torin moved to the next spirit. He stretched out his hand and set it upon another wound, and then another, and the remedy’s radiance burned through the blight, spirit by spirit. Hap walked through the orchard. The wind was strengthening, and the boughs were creaking in the gale, threatening to split and crack. Apple blossoms rained down like snow.
“Stand firm!” Hap shouted, and his voice had shifted, rising from the earth, from the grass and the loam. Torin felt the words reverberate through him as he continued to heal the orchard. “Do not bend to him. Do not yield. Stand against him. This is the end.”
Torin healed the last spirit of the orchard. His head was throbbing, his mind reeling. But when he met Hap’s gaze, he rose and waited.
“There are more who need you here,” Hap said.
Torin hesitated, divided between his desire to return home and his obligation to the spirits. He thought of Sidra and Maisie. He thought of Adaira and Jack. Eventually, making his choice, he stepped closer to Hap.
“Take me to them.”
It was almost dark when Jack finally reached the bridge that led to the castle.
When he emerged from Loch Ivorra, it had been raining. The temperature had dropped, as though winter had come early, and hail littered the bracken. Jack found his horse beneath the shuddering trees, stomping his hooves with ears pressed flat. Whatever rolled in from the northern horizon promised to be deadly, and Jack was shaky and breathless as he pulled himself up into the damp saddle.
All he could think about was Kae’s memory. It flashed through his mind again and again.
As he had ridden along the wilds, the clouds had started to bruise, veined with lightning. The wind had howled and the light had faded quickly. Jack hunched low to his horse’s neck, urging the gelding to go faster.
He finally understood why Bane forbade him to play, particularly in the west. Why Bane so vehemently opposed Jack’s music and was threatened by it.
If Iagan had turned himself into a king of the spirits through music, then surely music could dethrone him.
By a stroke of luck, Jack had found the road, which even in the gloam would not shift or deceive him. He and the horse flew along it, kicking up mud. They had reached the city gates just before they were closed as a safety measure against the storm.
Jack trotted along the deserted streets, wending his way closer to the castle on the hill. He noted that every door was locked, every shutter bolted. There was no sign of life anywhere as the Breccans laid low in their homes, even as the wind tore at the lichen and the thatch of their roofs. He suddenly wondered what he would do if the portcullis had been lowered, preventing him from entering the castle courtyard. Where would he go?
Crossing the bridge on horseback during a storm was foolish, but Jack risked it.
The wind was so powerful that he felt like he and the gelding could be swept away, over the side and down into the moat, at any moment. Jack could feel the rattle of death in his teeth as he bared them, urging the horse to keep going, keep going. Soon he could see the portcullis looming in the dimness, a shadow against the dusk. And standing beneath it—preventing the gate from lowering—stood Adaira, limned in torchlight.
She looked furious.
Her expression fueled Jack long enough to canter past her, into the safety of the courtyard, before he dismounted in a heap, his legs collapsing under him. A groom rushed forward to take the horse, and between peals of thunder Jack heard Adaira give the command to drop the portcullis. The chains cranked, and the gate began to lower.
Jack turned and felt her hands on him, desperate and angry, seizing fistfuls of his tunic. Adaira was drenched, her clothes clinging to her body, her hair tangled down her back. How long had she stood in the storm waiting for him?