Adaira rubbed her brow, only to remember she still wore her flower crown. She drew it away from her head and set it on the table.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Jack said.

“He was my first love,” she began. “I was eighteen and lonely. I was still struggling with my mother’s death, and Callan was there. I fell for him, quickly, recklessly. I was naïve and believed every promise he gave me. He was all I wanted, and I thought I was enough for him, that he loved me as I loved him. I soon realized I didn’t know him as well as I thought. He was dishonest and sought to use me to get into the guard. And when that didn’t work, he tried to bribe his way there, which Torin and my father settled by sending him to work in the marsh. At first, I was tempted to defend him, until I learned I was not the only one he spoke promises to. But alas, hearts are made to be broken, aren’t they, bard?”

“If they must break,” Jack said, “then they break and remake themselves into stronger vessels.”

“Spoken as one who has likewise had his heart broken,” Adaira countered.

Now Jack was the one to glance away from her, into the mesmerizing safety of the fire. Adaira thought he wouldn’t speak, even as she longed to know the events of his past. But then he opened his mouth and began to breathe words.

“She was a fellow student at the university, in the same year as me. We had a few classes together. I noticed her long before she noticed me. And then one day she heard me play the harp, and she began to speak to me, more and more. My feelings ran deeper than hers. She loved my music more than she loved me, and at first I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. But then I realized . . . she had always loved music. It was something that would forever challenge her, something that would never fade or age or betray her. It sadly wasn’t the same for me, though. I struggled to earn music’s favor—it was forced upon me in the beginning—and even when I had attained a portion of it, I never felt worthy of its beauty.

“But I’m rambling. The moral of this long-winded tale is that I realized music would always be more important to her, so I tried to turn myself into stone. To not feel anything. But now I realize that it is better to live, to feel and have a clean break than be half-dead and cold, cracked from resentment.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Adaira whispered and lifted her cup.