“I chose the gentlest of steeds for you to ride today,” she said, indicating the bay gelding that waited beside her horse.

Jack gave Adaira a flat look but pulled himself up into the saddle.

They rode together to the Earie Stone, the heart of Eastern Cadence, where the hills began to rise into mountains.

Adaira and Jack left their horses safely hobbled by a creek and ascended the hill, where the stone sat jagged and proud on the summit, a ring of alder trees surrounding it like dancing maidens.

“It feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, my old menace,” Adaira said wistfully as she walked beneath the boughs.

Jack knew what she spoke of. He felt it too, the way time seemed to cease on this sacred ground. It was eleven years ago that he and Adaira had fought over the thistle patch, not far from here.

He stood beneath one of the trees, a reverent distance from the stone, and watched as Adaira continued to walk around the perimeter.

“I’m sorry, you know,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I don’t think I ever apologized for shoving my thistles into your face and then abandoning you to your fate.”

“They were never your thistles to begin with,” Jack teased. “You stole them from my secret patch. And you still do, I see.” He nodded at the moon thistle tucked into her braid, and Adaira came to a stop an arm’s length away from him.

“Shall we split the patch equally now? Would that make you happy, bard?”

Jack was silent for a beat, and then he said, “No. I don’t want half of anything. Only all of it.”

Adaira held his gaze. She drew a deep breath, as if she wanted to say something to him. Perhaps to acknowledge the electricity that was brewing between them. Jack hoped that she would speak it first. Every time he saw her, he felt it a little more. Felt the tension like a harp string within him, strung from rib to rib.

“Are you ready to play?” she asked.

He heaved a sigh, hiding his disappointment. But this was why he was here. To sing for the earth, not to name his feelings for Adaira.

Jack deliberated about where to sit—facing the stone or facing one of the trees. In the end, he opted to sit on the grass with his face to the stone, his harp arranged on his lap. Adaira only sat after he had settled, a few yards away from him.