“Frae?” the man asked. “Can you help me make your mother’s tonic?”
“Oh yes!” she cried, carefully setting the book aside. “Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
He watched attentively as Frae set a kettle to boil and gathered Mirin’s herbs in the strainer. The fire was burning so brightly that the water boiled in a matter of moments, to Frae’s immense relief, and she quickly steeped the leaves in it.
“I’m not sure how we’ll get her to drink it,” Frae said after she had poured the pungent brew into Mirin’s favorite cup.
The man took the cup from her and carried it into the bedchamber.
Mirin still slept, her dark hair pooled around her, gleaming with silver threads at her temples. There were purple smudges beneath her eyes, and her face was ashen. Frae thought she looked very ill, almost as if she would vanish when evening came. She wrung her hands for a moment before climbing onto the mattress.
She sat on one side of Mirin, the man on the other, and she watched as he dipped his fingers in the tonic, then let it drip between Mirin’s parted lips. Frae thought that was strange at first, but she saw how persistent and careful he was. Soon Mirin had swallowed countless drops from his fingers, the color was returning to her face, and the pattern of her breathing had shifted.
Frae would never forget the moment her mother opened her eyes and saw the man, sitting next to her. She would never forget how Mirin had smiled, first at him and then at Frae.
Frae had always wanted to know what magic felt like. She imagined she had grasped it in her hands sometimes, when she harvested wildflowers from the valleys or drank from one of the trickling pools. When she looked up at the stars on a moonless night. But now she knew.
She felt the magic, gentle and soft, when she took Mirin’s hand and grinned.
“How did you know?” Sidra asked, caressing Torin’s hair. “How did you know I was ill?”
In the privacy of her chamber, deep in the Breccans’ castle, they lay entwined in her bed. It had been hours since the storm had broken and the sun had emerged, illuminating the west. Torin and Sidra had filled those hours working tirelessly alongside David and Innes—healing those who had been injured or afflicted, moving rubble aside, making repairs. They had worked shoulder to shoulder with the Breccans, and no one had been opposed, or thought it strange. No, it almost seemed as if it had always been this way, one clan aiding the other.
It was humbling to know that it was the blight and the wind that made their cooperation possible.
When the sun had warmed the afternoon air, Innes had sent Torin and Sidra up to her chamber to rest before dinner that night. They were to dine with the laird and her consort and with Adaira and Jack, as soon as the two returned. Sidra didn’t know what this dinner held, but she hoped that it would mark the beginning of something new. That sharing this meal would forge an understanding, and maybe even a friendship.
Torin shifted closer, his skin warm against hers. They were both filthy—there was dirt beneath her nails and grime in her hair—and yet Sidra hadn’t cared. She had unwound from her clothes and laid down, exhausted until Torin had joined her beneath the blanket.
He gazed at her a moment. His irises were blue as cornflowers, with an inner ring of brown. The color of sky and soil. She noticed that a few flowers were still hiding in his hair. She thought they suited him and let them be.
“You couldn’t see me, but I was with you, Sid,” he said, tracing her arm. “Even from the other side, I could see you vividly.”
She mulled over that, wondering if she had ever felt his presence. Maybe once or twice, she realized. Whenever she felt a draft in the castle.
“I was at a loss on how to solve the riddle,” he continued. “A riddle that would give me the answer to the blight. And so I watched as you prepared salves and healed your patients, thinking, if I paid close enough attention, I would find the answer in your hands.”
“And did you?” she whispered.
“Yes.” He smiled, linking their fingers together. “And Maisie also helped.”
Sidra listened as Torin told her everything. She was swept away by his story, by the riddle and his plight, by the flowers he gathered and his failed attempts. By a hill spirit named Hap, who had become his friend in adversity.
“There were quite a few moments when I didn’t think I would find the answer,” he confessed. “I think I would still be in the spirits’ realm, stranded and adrift, if I hadn’t realized that you had been affected by the blight.” He was quiet for a beat as he touched the black tangles of her hair. “There were some moments when I wondered why you didn’t tell me, and I ached over that. And then I realized that you were doing all that you could to save us, and I should have been ready and eager to work alongside you to find the answer.”