It was silent.
Adaira could feel the weight of that silence, and her doubt started to creep over her once more. Doubt and worry and that nagging feeling of being inadequate. But then she heard someone rise from the table. The clatter of a sword being cast down. Adaira turned toward the sound. One of the thanes had surrendered her blade. Then came another, and another, until the remaining twelve thanes and their heirs had disarmed themselves and knelt before her.
The gravity of what was happening struck her a moment later, seeping through her like wine.
Adaira stood with every sword in the Breccans’ hall shining at her feet.
She knew Innes was displeased with her.
After the nobility had left the hall to find lodging in the castle for the night, Adaira had followed Innes to her chambers for a private conversation. She thought Innes’s anger stemmed from the speech she had given, words that had poured out of her, effortlessly as breath. Words that had been hiding in her, like an arrowhead caught in her ribs. A shard of stone that she had been carrying, week after week in the west. She had never felt so light and unburdened as she did in that moment when she released those words along with the sword.
But now, watching Innes pace before the hearth, Adaira realized there was more to her displeasure than that.
“You’re angry with me,” she said. “Tell me why.”
Innes abruptly stopped, but she was facing the fire. The light illuminated the sharp planes of her profile, the silver in her hair, the circlet on her brow. It felt unusually dark in the laird’s chambers, and Adaira realized that the flames were burning low and dim. As if they wanted to extinguish.
“I don’t know what I feel, Adaira,” said Innes.
The sound of Innes speaking her eastern name made Adaira want to weep. She felt seen, acknowledged. She had to reach out and take hold of the nearest chair before her knees buckled.
“I’m not angry at you,” Innes continued. “I simply don’t know what to make of you.”
“Because of what I said?”
“Because of what you didn’t do.”
Adaira frowned, confused. Innes turned to face her, their gazes meeting.
“You should have beheaded the Pierces,” Innes began. “If their plans had succeeded, it would have caused endless strife between the clans, and it was your right to end their line. Because you didn’t, however, they will perceive you as weak, and they will strike again. Next time they will take it all away from you. Do you understand? This was your moment to rise and show the nobility who you are, and what it means if they cross you.”
Adaira finally saw the evening from Innes’s point of view.
“Rise to become what?” she countered.
Innes clenched her jaw. “If you must ask me such a question . . .”
“I merely want to hear you say it.”
They stared at each other, neither of them giving up ground.
Finally, Adaira decided to relent. She said, “You want me to be your heiress, and yet you are choosing to overlook the fact that I wasn’t raised as you were. I’m far more Tamerlaine than Breccan in my sensibilities, and for that, I am only destined to disappoint you and this clan.”
“That is not true,” Innes snarled.
Adaira took a step back, surprised by the unguarded feeling in her mother’s voice. Innes also seemed upset by her fraying emotions. She glanced away, seeking to compose herself.
Innes’s discomfort made Adaira’s heart ache for her, for all the things her mother had lost and surrendered to become who and what she was.
Was it all worth it?
“To live your life you have forged yourself to be as strong as possible,” Adaira said. “You have made yourself like a blade that is hammered over fire and quenched in water. Day after day. But there is nothing weak in being soft, in being gentle.”
Innes was silent, staring at the floor.
“I cannot change what I am,” Adaira whispered, “no more than you can, Mother.”
Innes pivoted to hide her face, but not before Adaira saw the tears in her eyes.
“Leave me.”
It was an order, one that chilled Adaira with uncertainty. But she left, as Innes wanted. She walked the corridors, once again surprised by how naturally that word had emerged from her, as though she had been longing to say it for years. Years before she had even realized who Innes was to her.
Mother.
Chapter 39
Jack could see his breath.
It was late as he sat at Adaira’s desk wrapped in a blue plaid, studying Iagan’s composition again. He could still hear the notes in his mind, as if Kae’s memory had become his own. He could still see the wings torn from Hinder, the gorse stolen from Whin’s crown. The shells taken from Ream and the scepter forced out of Ash’s hands.