“Will you come closer to me?” he whispered.
Adaira rose and walked around the table. He turned on the bench to face her, and she settled close to him, their gazes aligned and their hearts in tune.
“I missed you,” he said. “I felt as if half of me had been torn away. I had swiftly realized that I made a mistake, leaving you behind that morning. I thought that if you stood at my side while I played that I would be divided, that I would choose you over the spirits. But now I see that I should have had you beside me, because when the fire claimed me, they took only half a mortal. They took my mortality and my body, but my heart stayed with you in the mortal realm.”
Adaira exhaled, closing her eyes when Jack tucked a loose thread of hair behind her ear.
“I was so worried,” she breathed, looking at him once more. “I was so worried you had forgotten me in your new realm, and the time we shared here. That if I ever saw you again, you wouldn’t remember me.”
“Even if I lived a thousand years in the fire,” Jack said, “I would not forget you. I would not allow myself to.”
A smile tugged on Adaira’s mouth. “Is that the beginning of a new ballad, old menace?”
Jack returned her smile, but he felt the truth scrape through the hollow places inside him that his music had once filled. Thinking of that loss hurt for a moment, but then Adaira traced the back of his hand and he felt flooded by light and hope.
“Your harp survived, by the way,” she said. “After the fire took you, the harp was left behind. In perfect condition, I might add. It’s in my room, waiting for you.”
“It was good of you to look after it,” Jack said. “But I don’t have a need for it anymore.”
Adaira frowned. “What do you mean, Jack?”
“My music became my crown. And I gave my crown away to return to my mortal life.”
She was silent, but her countenance had gone pale. She was mourning his loss, perhaps even more than him, and Jack wanted to ease that pain.
“I may not be able to play a harp again, or sing for the clan,” he said. “But I have found that this is my song. This is my music.” And he framed her face in his hands. “Months ago, I told you that I was a verse inspired by your chorus. I thought I knew what those words meant then, but now I fully understand the depth and the breadth of them. I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together. In waking up at your side every sunrise and falling asleep entwined with you every sunset. In kneeling beside you in the kail yard and leading a clan and overseeing trade and eating at our parents’ tables. In making mistakes, because I know that I’ll make them, and then restitution, because I’m better than I once ever hoped to be when I’m with you.”
Adaira turned her face to kiss his palm, where his scar from their blood vow still shone. When she looked at him again, there were tears in her eyes.
“What do you think, Heiress?” Jack whispered, because he was suddenly desperate to know her thoughts. To know what she was feeling.
Adaira leaned forward, brushing his lips with hers. “I think that I want to make such music with you until my last day when the isle takes my bones. I think that you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.”
Jack kissed her softly. The taste and feel of her was familiar, beloved, and he let himself fall into the comfort of her. In weaving his fingers into her hair and drawing out her gasps and feeling her cling to him. He had never felt so alive, not even when he had played his harp and sung for the spirits. He had never felt such wonder, and it reverberated through his soul like the final note of a ballad.
Soon, Adaira broke away and leaned back to smile up at him. He hadn’t even realized how much time had passed, or how low the fire had burned. The frosted light beyond the windows was blue, and he sensed it was evening.
“Should we go to Mirin’s, and see if she can set an extra place for us at her table?” Adaira asked.
Jack’s heart quickened, overflowing. “I would love that.”
“Come, old menace.”
He let Adaira draw him to his feet. They banked the fire in the hearth and extinguished the candles, one by one.
The snow was falling, thick and slow, when they stepped outside of the trading house. Adaira wove her fingers with his and led him down the river road, past the faded clan line. Neither of them realized they had stepped into the east until the trees fell away, one by one, and a light suddenly shone through the snow.