“Sidra,” he breathed into the wind.
He knew the choice she would make if she were the one to stumble upon the door.
Torin hesitated only a moment longer, then passed over the threshold.
Chapter 14
Jack stood in the river, staring upstream.
It was midmorning, and he had delayed as long as he could, eating breakfast with Mirin and Frae, tending to last-minute tasks around the croft. Now it was time for him to leave.
He had packed light—a few spare tunics in his satchel, Torin’s letter, and his harp.
You will find the answer among the Breccans.
Ash’s voice echoed through him as Jack took a step forward.
The water rushed around his ankles, seeping through his boots, and meadowsweet grew in frothy white clusters along the riverbank. The Aithwood, dense with pine, spruce, hemlock, and rowan, became gnarled the farther upstream he walked. Blooming bedstraw and violets peppered the forest floor, and shadows cast by the tree canopy trickled over Jack’s shoulders, shielding him from the sun. A few leaves drifted down to the water as he slowly withdrew his dirk from its sheath at his belt.
He waited until he was standing on the clan line, the edge of two realms. He thought about his father carrying Adaira through this river twenty-three years earlier, when she was a small, sickly infant. Niall Breccan’s blood in the water had hidden his passing back and forth over the clan line, time and time again, to visit Mirin’s cottage on the hill. Moray had also taken advantage of this secret flaw in the magical boundary, as well as the power of the Orenna flower, to kidnap the girls and roam the east without fear.
Jack was not the first to use the river, to let his blood drip down into the rapids before crossing from one side of the line to the other. He wasn’t the first, but he hoped to be the last. Perhaps his music would be strong enough to mend this wound in the isle.
He drew the blade across his palm.
The pain was vibrant, but only for a moment. As soon as his blood began to well and drip from his fingers, melting into the water, he stepped forward.
He crossed the border into the west.
Adaira stood before the enchanted door of the new library, sword belted at her waist and a satchel full of parchment hanging from her shoulder. She didn’t know what she would find beyond the radiant wood, but she hoped it was a quiet room full of nothing more than books and scrolls. She had avoided both Innes and David since the culling, refusing to sup in their rooms or join them for rides across the wilds. She knew she couldn’t avoid them for much longer, but when she did stand before them again, she wanted to have all the knowledge she could gather.
She wanted to make her case.
Adaira pricked her finger and laid her hand upon the wood. The wood accepted her blood, then unbolted its enchanted lock.
She crossed the threshold meekly, her eyes scanning the chamber. But it was as she had hoped: she was the only visitor. She set down her satchel on a scribing table that stood before a trio of mullioned windows. It was early morning, and the gray light was still too dim to properly write and read by, so she took her time lighting the candles around the room.
Adaira drew in a deep breath, tasting years of paper and ink.
She reached out to the nearest shelf and touched it.
“Please show me all the books and records you have on the culling,” she whispered. She didn’t dare to hope for a response—not until she heard a rustling and saw that two scrolls had pushed themselves forward and were nearly dangling from the shelf.
She took both with gentle hands and carried them to the table, where she sat and began to read.
One thing quickly became apparent: the culling had been happening since the clan line was created, nearly two centuries ago. When the folk’s magic had become divided and unbalanced by Joan and Fingal. The west suddenly had a surge of enchantment-made craft in their hands, yet they also had failing gardens and waning resources as a consequence. People were soon hungry and desperate, and so crime had started to crop up among the crofts and the city like weeds.
Adaira was strangely relieved to know that Innes hadn’t started the culling but rather had inherited the practice when she became laird.
She read on and eventually gleaned the information she had most wanted to find: there was no way to free a prisoner from the dungeons without having them fight in a culling. Fighting not only gave criminals the chance to die honorably, as Innes had mentioned, but also redeemed the guilty by proving they deserved another chance. Another important purpose of the culling was to help deter future crime by making the clan stand witness to it.
Adaira began to write down what she learned, filling page after page with notes and thoughts and questions she still had. She had skipped breakfast, though, and when her stomach began to growl, her recording was interrupted. She leaned back in her chair, staring at what she had gathered.