Elements Of Cadence Quotes

I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.

I once thought home was simply a place. Four walls to hold you at night while you slept. But I was wrong. It’s people. It’s being with the ones that you love, and maybe even the ones that you hate.

There is no failure in love. And I have loved without measure.

But alas, hearts are meant to be broken, aren’t they, bard?” “If they must break,” Jack said, “then they break and remake themselves into stronger vessels.

I tried to turn myself into stone. To not feel anything. But now I realize it is better to live, to feel and have a clean break than be half-dead and cold, cracked from resentment.

If I am weak for wanting you, then let me embrace that weakness and make it my strength," he said, his gaze fixed on the west. "And if you must haunt me, then let me haunt you in return.

This place was dark and quiet with dreams.

He marveled at how his own heart could exist outside his body. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered. “By you alone I could be undone.

A weed is just a plant out of place, her grandmother had once said to her. Treat them kindly, even if they are a nuisance, for they can make a faithful ally amongst the spirits.

Welcome home, my old menace.

Our hands can steal, or they can give. They can harm, or they can comfort. They can wound and kill, or they can heal and save. Which will you choose for your hands Torin?

Give your fear a name,” Jack said, remembering that Adaira had once said this very thing to Torin. “Once it is named, it is understood, and it loses its power over you.

I will comfort you in sadness; I will lift your head and be your strength when you are weak. I will sing with you when you are joyful. I will abide beside you and honor you for a year and a day, and thereafter should the spirits bless us.

The days may be dark,” Sidra said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel joy.

If we must drown, let us do so entwined.

Her faith was still some strange, broken mirror in her chest, the pieces sharp and jagged, reflecting years of her life out of order.

How can I heal him when I haven’t healed myself?

You and I have faced many things alone. Between the mainland and the isle, the east and the west, we've carried our troubles in solitude. As if it were weakness to share one's burden with another. But I am with you now. I am yours, and I want you to lay your burdens down on me.

They drank to their wounds, their regrets, and their hopes, to the past, to how the choices each had made had unknowingly brought them back together.

He knew that she was the only one he wanted to find in the darkness. The only one he wanted to hold the shape of his soul, even with his thorns and dreams and wounds.

She stumbled to her feet. The world spun for a moment—melting stars and a vermillion sunrise and the flap of a bird’s wings.

There is no failure in love, and I have loved without measure. In this, I am complete.

It feels strange,” she whispered. “To not know which side I belong to.” “You belong to both,” he replied. “You are the east as you are the west. You are mine as I am yours.

But he would come if she needed him. All she had to do was stand in her garden and speak his name into the wind, and he would come when the whisper on the breeze found him. When he recognized her voice within it, whether the wind blew from the north, the south, the east, or the west. Sometimes it took hours for him to arrive, but he always faithfully answered.

I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.

Perhaps he knew I needed you, more than I need air and warmth and light. That if I were to go on living as I had been in the east without you, I would soon be worn down to nothing but dust.

I want to change. But my bones are old, my heart is selfish, my spirit is weary. I look at me and I look at you, and I see two different dream. I am death. And you, Sidra…” He reached out to touch her face, softly, as if she might vanish beneath his fingers. “You are life.” She closed her eyes beneath his caress. When his hand eased away, she looked at him and whispered, “Does that mean we cannot exist as one?” He had been waiting for her to ask this. He had yearned to answer her in the orchard, when she had made it evident that they were vastly contrasting souls. “No,” Torin said. “It means that without you, I am nothing.

I tell myself I should remain guarded against you, even as we are fastened together. And yet another side of me believes that you and I could make something of this arrangement. That you and I are complements, that we are made to clash and sharpen each other like iron. That you and I will stay bound together by that which is nameless and runs deeper than vows, until the very end, when the isle takes my bones into the ground and my name is nothing but memory carved into a headstone.

I wasn’t living; I was merely taking up air and space.

The spirits felt his attention shift from them to her. The woman with hair like moonlight, the woman made of sharp beauty.

for sometimes love was like dust in the eyes, a hindrance when it came to seeing truth.

To live your life you have forged yourself to be as strong as possible. You have made yourself like a blade that is hammered over fire and quenched in water. Day after day. But there is nothing weak in being soft, in being gentle.

I wanted, more than anything, to belong somewhere.

You foolish, irresponsible, infuriating bard!

I am seized by the desire to find a way to step back in time, to choose differently. If I could only speak to my younger self…oh, the things I would say to her.

The other day,” Graeme said, “I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.

May you be strong and courageous,” he said. “May your enemies kneel before you. May you find the answers you seek. May you be victorious and spirits-blessed, and may peace follow as your shadow.

From your life came mine. I would not exist if you had been born in the east. I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone next to yours.

Adaira raised her hand and laid it against the arch of his cheek, and he knew she was beginning to see him as he saw her. The threads that tied them together. “My father was the Keeper of the Aithwood. It was he who brought you into the east, where he knew you would be safe and loved,” said Jack. It was liberating to speak those forbidden words aloud. The weight slipped from his chest like a stone, and he shivered to feel the space it left behind, waiting to be filled. “From your life came mine. I would not exist if you had been born in the east. I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.

You know what I am,” he said in a flat voice. “A bard?” “A bastard. I have no father, no proud lineage, no lands. I have nothing to offer you, Adaira.” “There is much you can offer me,” she countered, heady from the mere thought of his music. Spirits below, he had no idea the power he wielded. “And those things you mention don’t matter to me.” “But they matter to me,” Jack said, with a fist over his heart. “People will be appalled when they realize you want to marry me. That you chose me. Out of all the men in the east, I am the most unworthy.” “Let them,” Adaira said. “Let them be appalled, let them talk. Let them say whatever they want, it will soon fade, I promise you. And when it fades…it will be you and me and the truth. And that is all that matters in the end.

You are as gentle-hearted as you are fierce.

The fear of irrevocable change and the unknown began to beat against her ribs again.

Could a girl become a wildflower patch, resurrected every spring and summer only to wilt and fade come the sting of frost?

Our hands can steal, or they can give. They can harm, or they can comfort. They can wound and kill, or they can heal and save.

I imagine what it would be like to be immortal, to hold no fear of death. To dance and burn for an endless era. And I think how dull such an existence would be. That one would do anything to feel the sharp edge of life again.

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 the 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 you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.

She let him see the same in her. The hunger, the longing, the scars. The words she wrote but never sent. The shape of her soul that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. For once, she wasn’t afraid to surrender those pieces of herself, to let them twine with Jack. She let them all go because he was her home, her shelter. Her endless fire, burning through the dark.

She let them all go because he was her home, her shelter. Her endless fire, burning through the dark.

I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together.

You have become more to me than mere words spoken on a midsummer night.

None of them are the one that I want.

Music had granted once his power. Music now stripped it from him

It felt like a garment had slipped away between them, as if to utter and confess was the first step to healing, to putting broken pieces back together.

Summer was a long time in a child’s mind.

He stared into the dark space between stars, measuring the moon.

She had been scolding him for creating such sad songs, and he didn’t tell her that he felt the most alive when he played for sorrow.

You’re scaring me, Jack.” “Have I smiled too much then?

La música le había dado eso una vez. Un hogar, un propósito.

And so you turned your fear into something else,” he said. “You reached the place you thought you would never find, and you claimed it as your own. Well done, my love.

laird and bard out of respect for the folk.

The common room was messy, and this time it was not glamoured. His father had an overwhelming collection of things. There were piles of books, heaps of loose papers, waterlogged scrolls from another era set in haphazard stacks. Five pairs of fancy mainland boots with laces, hardly worn, and a jacket the color of fire, lined with plaid. Jars of golden pins, a jewelry box that held his mother’s abandoned pearls. A map of the realm pegged to the floor, because the walls were already crowded with drawings of musty tapestries and a chart of the northern constellations. All were possessions from Graeme’s former life, when he had been the ambassador to the mainland.

Appeasements and manifest prayers in the shape of carved figurines and small stacks of peat, so the fire could dance and burn, and chimes made of fishing line and glass beads, so the wind could hear its own breath when it passed by.

He briefly wondered if he was falling ill; he shouldn’t have swum in the ocean at night, when a chill could set in. But as soon as he remembered the moment when they had broken the surface and Adaira had laughed, Jack knew he would choose to do it again, and again, even if time permitted him to redo the past. That he would follow her into the sea. And perhaps that was true only because Adaira held his allegiance and respect as his laird, but perhaps it was due to something else. Something that stirred his soul like breath on embers, rousing old fire. Gods, he thought with a sharp intake. He needed to smother this feeling now, before it unfurled and grew wings. Or perhaps he should let it fly.

I thought you were going to stand me up,” Jack confessed. “You think I would ask to marry you and then fail to appear?” Adaira asked, amused. He met her gaze, his eyes incandescent with firelight. “It felt like I waited an eternity for you.

He is afraid, Sidra,” Donella said, and her voice was faint, as if she were about to fully fade. As if her wandering soul had found its peace at last. “What does he fear?” Sidra thought she knew the answer, but she decided to ask it, knowing Donella had insight she didn’t. “He is afraid of losing you, first in heart, then in body. And if you follow me to the grave, he will not be far behind you. His soul has found its counterpart in yours, and he belongs with you, even after Death’s sting.

From your life came mine. I would not exist if you had been born in the east. I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.

From your life came mine. I would not exist if you had been born in the east. I am but a verse inspired by your chorus, and I will follow you until the end, when the isle takes my bones and my name is nothing more than a remembrance on a headstone, next to yours.

You and I have faced many things alone. Between the mainland and the isle, the east and the west, we've carried our troubles in solitude. As if it were weakness to share one's burden with another. But I am with you now. I am yours, and I want you to lay your burdens down on me.

Could a girl become a wildflower patch, resurrected every spring and summer only to wilt and fade come the sting of frost? Could she become the foam of the sea that rolled over the coast for an eternity, or a flame that danced in a hearth? A winged being of the wind, sighing over the hills?

He saw nothing, his gaze sweeping the moonlit yard. And then a ripple of shadow caught his eye, but by the time he shifted his focus, it was gone, melting into the darkness. Jack wondered if he was hallucinating, and he trembled, contemplating pursuit. Could steel cut the heart of the wind? Could it divide the ocean’s tide? Could it make spirits cower and bend to mortals?

I made a vow to you,” he said, caressing her hair. “If you ask me to remain in the east while you are in the west… it will feel as if half of me has been torn away.” A sound escaped her; Jack could feel how she trembled. “I worry that if you come with me,” she said after a tense moment, “You will soon resent me. You will long for your family, and you will ache for your music. I’m unable to give you everything you need, Jack.” Her words struck him like a sword. Slowly, his hands fell away from her. Old feelings flared in him, the feelings he had carried as a boy, when he had felt unclaimed and unwanted. “You want me to stay here then?” he said in a flat tone. “You don’t want me to come with you?” “I want you with me,” Adaira said. “But not if it’s going to destroy you.

Do you know what the clan says of you, Adaira?” Jack began softly. “They call you our light. Our hope. They claim even the spirits bend a knee when you pass. I’m surprised flowers don’t grow in your footsteps.” That coaxed a slight chuckle from her, but he could still see her melancholy, as if a hundred sorrows weighed her down. “Then I have fooled you all. I fear that I am riddled with flaws, and there is far more shadow than light in me these days.” She met his gaze again. The wind began to blow from the east, cold and dry. Adaira’s hair rose and tangled like a silver net, and Jack could smell the fragrance within its shine. Like lavender and honey. He thought he would like to see those shadows in her. Because he felt his own, brimming in his bones and dancing in solitude for far too long.

The other day,” Graeme said, “I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.

Two girls now unaccounted for, and Sidra imagined them being claimed by the folk. She wondered if a girl could become a tree, no longer aging in mortal ways but by seasons. Could a girl become a wildflower patch, resurrected every spring and summer only to wilt and fade come the sting of frost? Could she become the foam of the sea that rolled over the coast for eternity, or a flame that danced in a hearth? A winged being of the wind, sighing over the hills? Could she be returned to her human family after such a life, and if so, would she even remember her parents, her human memories, her mortal name?

When a person with curiosity and interest has discipline available to him, he has the right formula for creativity. The philosopher Nietzsche spoke of the creative act as involving both Dionysian and Apollonian elements. The Dionysian represents the passionate interest and desire to learn. The Apollonian represents the form and structure that must guide any truly creative act. Music is limited by the diatonic scale, and poetry is limited by words and the forms of poetic cadence. The world is full of people with good ideas and fantasies that never come to fruition because they don’t have disciplined limits.

What if my da is Breccan?” Frae kicked a pebble on the road, keeping her eyes on the ground. “Would you still want to walk me home?” Ella was quiet for a moment, but maybe only because the question had taken her by surprise. Frae snuck a glance at her. For the past several days, Ella had walked her home from school and the boys had not bothered her again. But there were still whispers and pointed glances. A few times during class, no one had wanted to partner up with Frae. “If your da is a Breccan,” Ella began to say, “then yes, I’d still walk you home, and I’d still be your friend, Frae. Do you want to know why?” Frae nodded, but she could feel her face flush, her relief knotted with shame that she even had to ask this question when no other children she knew did. “Because your heart is good and brave and kind,” Ella said. “You are thoughtful and smart. And those are the kind of people who I want to be friends with. Not the ones who think they are above everyone else. Who scowl and judge things they don’t understand and throw mud and have cowardly hearts.” Frae soaked in Ella’s words, which were warm and soft as a plaid, and she suddenly could walk faster, her chin held higher. “And,” Ella added with a mischievous smile, “you make the best berry pies.

I thought about my fears,” she said. “How every day I woke up in the west I was afraid. I think because I often felt like a stranger. Like I was losing myself or forgetting who I was. And so I come here to swim in the warm darkness, even though it terrified me, and I tell myself, If I go deep enough, far enough, I will eventually find the edge of it. I will find the end.” Adaira paused, rolling her lips together. Water beaded on her face, gleaming like small gemstones. “I would find the end of my fear or finally claim it and turn it into something else. But I discovered that I could swim to the edge of the mortal realm and still be afraid.

Torin began to fold the plaid, in the same way he liked to fold his own. He brought it behind her, then across her chest before cinching it in place at her right shoulder. Yes, he thought. It was perfect on her. He stepped back to regard Mirin’s handiwork. Sidra glanced down at it, and she still appeared confused until Torin laid his palm over her chest, where the plaid now granted her protection. He could feel the enchantment within the pattern, holding firm, like steel. He touched the place she had been kicked, where her bruises had been slow to heal, as if her heart had shattered beneath her skin and bones. She understood now. She gasped and glanced up at him. Again, he wished that he could speak to her. Their last conversation still rattled in his mind, and he didn’t like the distance that had come between them. Let my secret guard your heart, he thought. “Thank you,” Sidra whispered, as if she had heard him. It renewed his hope, and he sat at the table before his knees gave out. His gaze snagged on a pie, whose center had been eaten away in a perfect circle, the spoon still in the dish. He pointed to the gaping hole, brow arched. Sidra smiled. “The middle is the best part.” No, the crust is. He shook his head, reaching for the spoon to eat the crisp places she had left behind. He was halfway done when there came a bark, followed by a knock on the open door.

I’m sorry, Jack. But as you’ll soon learn, I am not a good man.” “You don’t have to be a ‘good’ man,” Jack said. “You simply need to be an honest one.” His father looked at him again. His eyes were a bloodshot blue, like the summer sky at sunset, and filled with remorse. “Very well,” Niall said. “Then let me speak honestly to you. I’ve stolen. I’ve lied. I’ve killed. I’m a coward. I left your mother to raise you and your sister alone. I let her go. I let you go. I let Frae go. I am unworthy of what you hope for me, because I never fought for your mother and you and your sister when I should have.” “Then fight for us now!” Jack replied sharply. He pounded his chest with his fist, felt the best move through him. “Let our names be the sword in your hand. Let us be your shield and your armor. Fight for us tonight. Because over the clan line, I’m the shadows of the Aithwood, my mother still waits for you, weaving your story on her loom. My sister longs for you as I once did, wondering where you are and hoping you will one day knock on the door and proudly claim her. And I would love nothing more than to bore you with mainland stories day after day and sing to you until your guilt she’d like old skin and you choose the life you want, not the one you think you deserve.

Are you going to help me up?” Adaira unwound her matted braid and laughed again. “Do you think I was born yesterday?” She gave him a terrible idea. He almost smiled. “Then will you at least take my harp? It’s going to warp now, after all this time in the water.” He held up his instrument, and Adaira studied it. Jack concealed his glee as she reached forward to take hold of his harp. As soon as her fingers closed over the frame, he pulled. Adaira let out a shriek as she tumbled into the sea, just over his head. He couldn’t resist it; a broad grin spread across his face as Adaira spluttered to the surface. “You will soon pay for that,” she said, wiping water from her eyes. “Old menace.” “I have no doubt,” he replied in a droll tone. “What will it be, heiress? Tar and feathers? The stocks? My firstborn son?” She stared at him a moment, pearls of water on her long lashes. The sea lapped at their shoulders, and Jack could feel her fingers brush his as they both waded in the roll of the waves. “I can think of something far worse.” But she smiled as she said it, and he had never seen such a smile on her face before. Or maybe he had once, long ago when they were children. She was making him remember those old days. Days spent in the sea and caves. Nights spent roaming the wild places, the thistle patches and glens and the rocks on the coast. She was making him remember what it felt like to belong on isle. To belong to the east. She wanted him to stay and play for their clan, and Jack was beginning to think that maybe he should seize that opportunity, even if it stole his health, song by song. Just for a year. A full passing of seasons. Long enough to see her rise as laird. He drew a tendril of golden algae from her hair and begrudgingly acknowledged it then. He disliked her a little less than yesterday. And that could only bring him trouble.

He served Adaira the first slice and grinned when she cast a wary look his way. “You made this?” “Aye,” he said, standing close to her, waiting. Adaira took her spoon and poked at the pie. “What’s in it, Jack?” “Oh, what all did we dump in there, Frae? Blackberries, strawberries, pimpleberries—” “Pimpleberries?” Frae gasped in alarm. “What’s a pim—” “Honey and butter and a dash of good luck,” he finished, his gaze remaining on Adaira. “All of your favorite things, as I recall, heiress.” Adaira stared at him, her face composed save for her pursed lips. She was trying not to laugh, he realized. He was suddenly flustered. “Heiress, I did not put pimpleberries in there,” Frae frantically said. “Oh, sweet lass, I know you didn’t,” Adaira said, turning a smile upon the girl. “Your brother is teasing me. You see, when we were your age, there was a great dinner in the hall one night. And Jack brought me a piece of pie, to say sorry for something he had done earlier that day. He looked so contrite that I foolishly believed him and took a bite, only to realize something was very strange about it.” “What was it?” Frae asked, as if she could not imagine Jack doing something so awful. “He called it a ‘pimpleberry’, but it was actually a small skin of ink,” Adaira replied. “And it stained my teeth for a week and made me very ill.” “Is this true, Jack?” Mirin cried, setting her teacup down with a clatter. “‘Tis truth,” he confessed, and before any of the women could say another word, he took the plate and the spoon from Adaira and ate a piece of the pie. It was delicious, but only because he and Frae had found and harvested the berries and rolled out the dough and talked about swords and books and baby cows while they made it. He swallowed the sweetness and said, “I believe this one is exceptional, thanks to Frae.” Mirin bustled into the kitchen to cut a new slice for Adaira and find her a clean utensil, muttering about how the mainland must have robbed Jack of all manners. But Adaira didn’t seem to hear. She took the plate from his hands, as well as the spoon, and ate after him.

My bedroom is separated from the main body of my house so that I have to go outside and cross some pseudo-Japanese stepping stones in order to go to sleep at night. Often I get rained on a little bit on my way to bed. It’s a benediction. A good night kiss. Romantic? Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of. If reality is a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of the world is as valid as any other - and a great deal more rewarding. It makes of life and unpredictable adventure rather that a problematic equation. Rain is the natural element for romanticism. A dripping fir is a hundred times more sexy than a sunburnt palm tree, and more primal and contemplative, too. A steady, wind-driven rain composed music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things. Obviously, then, the Pacific Northwest's customary climate is perfect for a writer. It's cozy and intimate. Reducing temptation (how can you possibly play on the beach or work in the yard?), it turns a person inward, connecting them with what Jung called "the bottom below the bottom," those areas of the deep unconscious into which every serious writer must spelunk. Directly above my writing desk there is a skylight. This is the window, rain-drummed and bough-brushed, through which my Muse arrives, bringing with her the rhythms and cadences of cloud and water, not to mention the latest catalog from Victoria's Secret and the twenty-three auxiliary verbs. Oddly enough, not every local author shares my proclivity for precipitation. Unaware of the poetry they're missing, many malign the mist as malevolently as they non-literary heliotropes do. They wring their damp mitts and fret about rot, cursing the prolonged spillage, claiming they're too dejected to write, that their feet itch (athlete's foot), the roof leaks, they can't stop coughing, and they feel as if they're slowly being digested by an oyster. Yet the next sunny day, though it may be weeks away, will trot out such a mountainous array of pagodas, vanilla sundaes, hero chins and god fingers; such a sunset palette of Jell-O, carrot oil, Vegas strip, and Kool-Aid; such a sea-vista display of broad waters, firred islands, whale spouts, and boat sails thicker than triangles in a geometry book, that any and all memories of dankness will fizz and implode in a blaze of bedazzled amnesia. "Paradise!" you'll hear them proclaim as they call United Van Lines to cancel their move to Arizona.

That had always been Torin’s method in the past, hadn’t it? Slicing necks and piercing hearts with swords. It had been easy for him to fall back into his old ways, and now he had to take a moment to untangle his emotions.

The fear of irrevocable change and the unknown began to beat against her ribs again.

The confidence in Moray’s expression faded, his posture drooped, and his breaths hissed through his teeth. He was silver-tongued, Sidra knew. She had heard him tell a story before and knew that he could string words together like spells. Maybe I’m another life he could have been a bard, putting his skills to good use instead of wielding them for his own selfish purposes.

Will you come closer to me?

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 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.

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 the 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 you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.

She drew her knees to her chest, wondering who she was becoming. She tried to see herself in a month, in a year. Through springs and summers, autumns and winters. Through rain, drought, famine, plenty. Would she grow old here, living out her days as a hollow shell of who she had been? What was her true place among the Breccans? As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see the path she wanted to forge. But perhaps that was because she still didn’t know where she belonged.

She couldn’t hold everything at once, all these misgivings and fears and dreads.

Because I’m carrying enough as it is! I can’t bear anything else. It will crush me, Graeme.” “Then tell us how to help you. Give your burdens to us, the tasks that weigh you down. You shouldn’t be carrying it all alone to begin with.” She didn’t know what to say. It was too much to think about, this notion of dividing all her responsibilities into slices and giving them away.

The confidence in Moray’s expression faded, his posture drooped, and his breaths hissed through his teeth. He was silver-tongued, Sidra knew. She had heard him tell a story before and knew that he could string words together like spells. Maybe I’m another life he could have been a bard, putting his skills to good use instead of wielding them for his own selfish purposes.

Godfrey?” She called. “Take my plaid and drape it around my husband.” “Your husband, Lady Cora?” “Yes. Come closer.” Godfrey looked pale as a wraith, as if the blood had been drained from him. He finally realized who had nearly died in the arena under his watch, and he meekly held up his hand and caught the plaid as she dropped it to him. Adaira watched as he shook out the wrinkles and draped the blue-and-violet-checkered wool over Jack’s shoulders. She laid her palm over her breast, where her heart beat like thunder, and spoke the ancient words over him. “I claim you, Jack Tamerlaine. From this day forth, you will be sheltered in my house, and will drink from my cup, and will find rest beneath my watch. If anyone lifts a sword against you, they will raise one against me. Such challenge will not go unanswered. You are mine to defend until the isle takes your bones or you desire it otherwise. Rise, and renew your heart.

She stepped forward, until the distance between them evanesced and he could see the freckles fanning across her nose. Jack drew in a sharp breath, because there was fire in her eyes, and he was captivated by it, as well as slightly fearful of such heat. Especially when she raised a fist at him. “You foolish”— she shoved him once with her hands— “insufferable “— then nudged him again, just over his pounding heart— infuriating bard!” She pushed him a third time, forcing Jack to take a step back. Fury spun from fear, he realized as he saw tears well up in her eyes. And he would gladly let her pound her fists on his chest if she needed to. She could call him whatever she felt like, because he was with her and that was all that mattered to him. He was breathing the same air as her, standing in the same moment with her. Jack waited for her to shove him again, welcoming her to do so with his eyes and his hands, held palms up at his sides. Yes, let it all go, Adaira, he thought, waiting. Let yourself unravel with me. “I almost watched you die!” she shouted at him, and this time her fist pounded her own chest. Once, twice. A third time. As if she needed to command her own heart to keep beating

He knew that icy feeling of self-preservation, the instinct to cut away something good for fear of it wounding you later. He knew about having no choice but to protect yourself when you feel like you’re on your own.

I’m sorry, Jack. But as you’ll soon learn, I am not a good man.” “You don’t have to be a ‘good’ man,” Jack said. “You simply need to be an honest one.” His father looked at him again. His eyes were a bloodshot blue, like the summer sky at sunset, and filled with remorse. “Very well,” Niall said. “Then let me speak honestly to you. I’ve stolen. I’ve lied. I’ve killed. I’m a coward. I left your mother to raise you and your sister alone. I let her go. I let you go. I let Frae go. I am unworthy of what you hope for me, because I never fought for your mother and you and your sister when I should have.” “Then fight for us now!” Jack replied sharply. He pounded his chest with his fist, felt the best move through him. “Let our names be the sword in your hand. Let us be your shield and your armor. Fight for us tonight. Because over the clan line, I’m the shadows of the Aithwood, my mother still waits for you, weaving your story on her loom. My sister longs for you as I once did, wondering where you are and hoping you will one day knock on the door and proudly claim her. And I would love nothing more than to bore you with mainland stories day after day and sing to you until your guilt she’d like old skin and you choose the life you want, not the one you think you deserve.

Adaira remembered being lost earlier that day, wandering the wilds. If she had never come home, if the land had devoured her whole and stolen this moment from her, she would have perished from regret. She would have fallen apart, thinking of all the things she had wanted to say and do and yet had not, for reasons that felt like tangled vines within her.

Torin could hardly see, but he continued to mix everything together until all he saw was his blood and the salt of his tears and his many many regrets. The pain in his hands finally caught up to him, eclipsing his inner turmoil. He dropped his makeshift pestle. Torin closed his eyes and lay facedown in the garden, letting his exhaustion drag him into a world where there was nothing but darkness and stars.

I stand here and ask myself ‘why?’ Why did you want to kill the Tamerlaines, who trusted us after centuries of strife? Why, if not for your own fear and ignorance? You look to the past, where there is nothing but bloodshed. You chart your present by what has been done and what has happened, as if you can never rise and break away from it.

Innes’s discomfort made Adaira’s heart ache for her, for all the things her mother had lost and surrendered to become who and what she was.