All the same, his heart flooded with relief when he reached the castle gate and slipped beneath the portcullis. Another moment of confusion followed. More guards heaved to close the gates, which instantly shut off the channel of wind that was ravaging the courtyard. Only then did Torin sigh before realizing that Innes Breccan was standing like a pillar amidst the chaos, reaching out to grasp her husband’s arm.
She looked David over. There was blood on his clothes and he was bowed down with exhaustion, but he seemed hale. Torin suddenly couldn’t move, watching the emotion crease Innes’s face. And then she felt his attention, for her eyes shifted and pierced him.
“Who is in your shadow?” Innes asked David in a sharp tone.
Torin felt her inquiry like a slap. His shoulders ached as he stood tall, meeting the Breccans’ suspicious eyes. He knew he should speak and offer an explanation. But he was so fatigued, his voice felt lost in his chest.
“I don’t know who he is,” David said after studying Torin.
But the longer Torin held Innes’s gaze, the more her eyes widened. She made a noise, half a snort, half a laugh. As if she couldn’t believe what the wind had just delivered to her courtyard.
“Spirits strike me. It’s the Laird of the East.”
Sidra was grinding herbs with her pestle and mortar when the Breccans’ hall fell unnaturally quiet. It was similar to the hush of a first snowfall, cold and crisp and strangely peaceful. She felt someone looking at her but didn’t glance up. Countless eyes had been watching her since she first stepped into the dimly lit hall. Breccans had been observing her, some with mistrust, some with curiosity, and she had told herself she could bear it, at least for a little while longer. Until either the storm tore this castle up from its roots or Jack’s song quelled it.
“Sidra.”
It wasn’t her name spoken into the silence that shocked her. It was the voice, beloved and deep and warm, like a summer valley. A voice she had thought she would never hear again.
She lifted her head. Her eyes cut through the twilight, through the many faces around her. Perhaps she had only imagined his voice, but her heart was pounding. People began to move, their boots scuffing the floor as they gave way to someone.
A path opened in the crowd and she finally saw him.
Torin stood mere paces away from her, tall and thin and streaked with dirt. His feet were bare, and his tunic was tattered. There was grass in his beard and blue flowers in his long flaxen hair. He looked otherworldly, and yet his eyes were fixed on her and her alone, as though no one else was in the hall. No one else in the realm apart from her.
Sidra dropped her pestle.
She ran to him, her ankle smarting in pain, but she scarcely felt it. Her movement broke whatever spell had caught Torin. He rushed to meet her, and they collided in the center of the Breccans’ hall surrounded by strangers. Everything faded into oblivion the moment she felt Torin’s hands touch her, the moment she breathed him in.
“Torin,” she gasped, clinging to him.
His arm came around her, solid and possessive, and his hand delved into her hair, drawing her mouth to his. He had never kissed her like this before, like he needed something that dwelled deep within her. His kiss was hungry and desperate and fierce, and Sidra felt it curl all the way down to her toes. She could taste the loam in him—a wild, green sweetness—and she wondered where he had been. She wondered about the things he had seen, and how he had found his way home to her.
His mouth broke from hers, his breath ragged. Their gazes met for a moment before he whispered her name, kissing her brow, the edge of her jaw, and Sidra tried to hold herself together, to remain upright, as his beard scratched her skin and her heart ached with fire.
“How . . .” she tried to say, her palms rushing over his chest, “how did you know to find me here?”
Torin raised his head, leveling his gaze with hers. He kept his arm around her, his hand in her hair. “I went home first,” he said. “Then I came to you.”
“Alone?”
He nodded.
“How did you make it through the storm?” she whispered.
“I had some assistance,” Torin said, and then he smiled. Sidra realized there were tears in his eyes, and she traced his face, struggling to swallow the knot that had risen in her throat.
“I wasn’t sure when you’d return,” she confessed.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said. “You have been so brave, Sidra. You have been so strong without me, holding the clan and the east together. Let me help you now, love. Let me carry it with you again.”