“Take my hand,” Adaira whispered to him.
He did. Their fingers were slick, but as they began to walk, their mingled blood dripped down onto the snow and the clan line, leaving a trail as red as Orenna’s flowers.
Adaira began to speak the benediction for the east. She hadn’t been certain what she would say, or how to go about this, but now she found that the words came naturally. She spoke healing and blessings over the Tamerlaines, their crops and their gardens, their children, their spirits, their seasons. She spoke of goodness and life for the east. By the time she reached the end, her heart was pounding in her chest.
She and Torin continued to walk the clan line, hands entwined and blood flowing, snow crunching under their boots. When Torin remained silent, Adaira wondered if he was struggling to give a good and honest benediction for the west.
But then he surprised her.
“I bless the Breccans in the west,” Torin began, his words emerging like smoke. He blessed the western kail yards and lochs, streams, and valleys. He blessed the Breccan children, as well as their health and their spirits. For all the days to come.
After Torin finished, they continued to walk in silence to the place where the woods became scorched. Where Jack had evanesced.
Adaira didn’t know what to expect. Jack had broken the curse on this part of the clan line through fire and thunder and music and sacrifice. But as Adaira came to a stop and looked back at the way she and Torin had come . . . she saw their blood disappearing on the snow. The clan line began to fade away.
It was a quiet, gentle mending. So quiet that most would have missed it, had they not been waiting, hoping, for it to happen.
Adaira glanced up at Torin to see him smiling at her, tears in his eyes.
It didn’t take long for the news to spread. Adaira and Torin had lifted the curse from the other two parts of the clan line, and now it was gone. There was no longer a magical rift between the east and the west. What this would mean for Cadence’s future was still a mystery—all they had ever known was a divided island. Torin had simply said to Adaira, We’ll take it a day at a time, Adi.
She sighed, resting in that plan. For the first time in a long while, she didn’t need to have all the answers.
Innes found Adaira reading in the new library one evening not long after the mending. She glanced up from her book, expecting Innes to ask more questions about how the line had vanished.
“What is it, Mum?”
“Long ago, I wanted my daughters to be like me. To be my mirror.” Innes paused, as if lost in her memories. “I am relieved, now, to know you are nothing like me. You are your own self, and I had no part in shaping or molding you. How ironic to know my enemies made you greater than I ever could.”
Adaira blinked back her tears, uncertain what to say. But she was deeply moved by Innes’s words.
“I must soon name my heiress to the clan,” Innes continued. “You are my first and only choice. I cannot see myself blessing anyone apart from you, Adaira. But should you forgo it, I will understand and find another.”
Adaira had been waiting for this moment. For Innes to acknowledge her choice with her voice and her words. For Innes to make it known that this was what she wanted. And yet Adaira was unsure about what she wanted. She wondered if her vision would align with Innes’s. If she was brave enough to step into such a role again.
“You don’t have to give me an answer now,” Innes said, reading the hesitation on Adaira’s face. “But will you consider it?”
Adaira glanced at the candles, burning on the desk before her. She watched the fire dance, thinking of Jack. She thought of how much her life had changed its course, how it had veered onto a path she had never predicted. In some ways these changes had been good, but in others? She felt broken, as if her life was in pieces.
“I’m honored you ask me, Mum,” Adaira finally said. “I’ll consider it.”
Innes nodded and left without another word. But Adaira sat and stared at the same page for a long while, her mind reeling.
For a week after that conversation, Adaira dreamt of becoming laird of the Breccans. Even in her sleep, she couldn’t escape it. She soon found herself in the cistern, stripping her clothes away. She stepped into the water and swam into the warm darkness.
She thought of Jack. She thought of how afraid he had been that night when she had brought him here—the last night they had shared.
He had not known that she was just as terrified of the deep.
Adaira swam into it now, her fear making her stomach clench and her mind race. She pushed herself farther into it, until she thought she would weep, and then she saw the light in the crevice. The torch that burned everlasting.