But just before Adaira departed the hall she saw Innes, still standing at the table, watching it all with dark, inscrutable eyes.
It hit her half an hour later, when she was in her bedroom unwinding the cold blue jewels from her hair. The last ice of the Aethyn dose melted, and Adaira began to shake. She reached out to the desk to steady herself. Her vision was blurring at the edges. Perspiration dripped down her neck as her stomach roiled, again and again, like a storm-churned tide.
Innes had warned her of how unpleasant it would be when the first dose of the poison wore off. It would get a little easier the more she imbibed it, but only if she could hold the contents down.
“Spirits,” Adaira whispered, gripping her abdomen.
She closed her eyes and trembled, her skin shining with sweat. The fire burning in the hearth was making everything far too warm, and she made her way to the nearest window. Her hands were so damp that it took three attempts to unlock the leaded glass, but it finally swung open and cool air began to waft into the chamber.
She closed her eyes, trying to distract herself from the pain that tore through her like a claw.
It soon took her to the floor.
Adaira bared her teeth and strangled a scream as she writhed on the rug.
You will think you are dying, Innes had said to her earlier. You will think that I fooled you into taking a lethal dose. But the pain will pass quickly if you can hold it down and withstand the brunt of it.
“I can’t,” Adaira wept as she began to crawl to her chamber pot. “I can’t do this.”
Her arms gave out before she could reach the bureau, where the pot was stored. She lay facedown on the floor, fighting the pain until every fiber of her body was strung so tight that she felt like her muscles and veins would snap within her. She dug her fingernails into the rug, into her hair. She tried to distract herself from the agony that burned through her body, but Adaira had never felt so weak and helpless before.
She touched her neck and found the half coin. It was like an anchor, and she closed her fingers around the coin’s golden edge, feeling it cut into her palm. She thought of Jack until thinking about him was nearly as unbearable as the pain and started to drag herself forward. But through the roar of her pulse and the din of her memories, she heard it—a very faint thread of music.
Adaira stilled. Bowed over on the floor, she fixed her attention on the sound. It was a harp, playing faintly in the distance. The music grew stronger, louder, carried on the wind that sighed into her bedroom.
Who would dare to play in the west? She wondered if she was hallucinating.
She wondered if she was dying.
And then he began to sing.
“Jack,” Adaira whispered, at first so overwhelmed by the sound of his voice that she couldn’t discern the words he sang. But her blood stirred to his music. She drank in his voice, the notes he gave to her, and soon the overwhelming tension in her body began to ease.
She closed her eyes, lay on her back, and listened to Jack sing of what had been, of what could still be. She breathed when he did. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell, with his notes until they felt knitted into her lungs, holding her steady. She envisioned him sitting on a hill in the dark, illumined by constellations, his face to the west.
And when it ended, when his voice and his music faded into silence, Adaira opened her eyes.
The last cramps in her body were subsiding.
She stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows dance as she continued to breathe slowly and deeply. She was about to drift off to sleep when a peal of thunder shook the castle. The stones rumbled beneath her, and the pitcher and washbasin rattled on the side table. The wardrobe doors swung open. Books and candlesticks vibrated on the mantel.
The fire nearly died in the hearth.
Lightning flashed erratically as the wind began to howl. The temperature plummeted, as though summer had crumbled into winter, and Adaira shivered on the floor as rain began to pelt the window. The storm that broke was perhaps one of the most vicious she had ever experienced. It was fear that dragged her up to her unsteady feet and made her hurry to latch the window before the wind tore it from its hinges. She saw that the gale had cracked the glass.
Thunder boomed again, shaking the fortress to its roots.
Adaira backed away from the window, her heart in her throat as the lightning split the darkness like tree roots, claiming every corner of the sky. The backs of her knees found the bed, and she sat. She watched, blinking the blurriness from her eyes, as the storm continued to rage.
Her memories drew her back in time.
She had been this afraid once before, on the ledge of Tilting Thom. Bane had materialized, furious at Jack for singing. The storm he had wrought as punishment had been a terrifying experience . . . but she hadn’t been alone.