That was the life he had envisioned for himself. It was a life with little risk. A life in which every day felt the same and his music was subdued. A life of partaking only of comfortable things and of sleeping alone at night, because it would be impossible to find a lover who would endure all his irascibility and the oddness of his isle blood, year after year.

Did he want such a fate?

“You’re unnaturally quiet, Jack,” Adaira remarked, lifting the teacup to her lips. There was a speck of cream at the corner of her mouth, and he was staring at it. “In the past, that meant you were plotting mischief.”

Jack blinked. He would ask her the safest of his questions—ironically, the one pertaining to their raid-loving enemies.

“Have the Breccans agreed to your notion of trade, heiress?”

“They have,” Adaira replied. “But they’ve made a request of me.”

“And what is that?”

She finally licked the cream from her lips. “They want me to visit the west.”

Jack thought she was jesting. He laughed, but it was a cold, bitter sound.

“I fail to see the humor in this,” she said in a sharp tone.

“As do I, Adaira,” he countered. “Perhaps I should sing you the ballad of Joan Tamerlaine and how she was doomed the moment she stepped foot in the west. How Fingal, her sulky husband, and his bloodthirsty clan drove her to a premature death.”

“I know the story of my ancestor,” Adaira replied through her teeth. “There’s no need for you to sing it to me.”

Jack quelled his sarcasm and drained his tea for courage. He wanted her to understand why her answer had upset him. He set a softer gaze upon her, only to find that she wasn’t even looking at him. She was flushed, angry. She was pushing her plate aside, about to rise.

“Adaira,” he said, gently.

She became still, her eyes flickering to his.

“So they’ve extended an invitation to you,” he said. “Perhaps it is a wise thing to accept. You’d be the first Tamerlaine to behold the west in nearly two hundred years. Perhaps peace is indeed something attainable, and you are the one destined to bring the isle back together as one. But perhaps it’s unwise, and the Breccans plan to harm you. You are the sole heiress. What would happen to the Tamerlaine clan if you perished?”

Adaira was silent.

Jack studied her face. She was still so much of a riddle to him. He asked, “What does your father think? Have you spoken of it to him yet?”

“About the visit? No. But I imagine his advice would strangely align with yours.”

“Can a bard not give sage advice then?”

Adaira almost smiled. “Perhaps you can be both to me? Bard and adviser?”

“Does it pay twice as much, heiress?”