A new season of peace, Adaira had said with such hope that Torin had wanted to believe her.

But now all he could envision was how foolish he had been to let her put herself in a vulnerable situation, meeting with the Breccan on the northern shore. To let her give up their food and drink. To expose their knowledge of the Orenna flower.

His cousin’s voice came again, a whisper in his mind. What are you afraid of, Torin? Give this fear a name, so I can put your mind at ease.

A sound slipped from him. His stomach had ached for days now, ever since he had opened his father’s door and beheld Sidra, battered and devastated. When he had realized Maisie had been taken.

I’m afraid of losing everything I love. The east, his purpose. The people woven into his life.

He had been too proud to say it to Adaira, but he confessed it now as he flew across the hills. He didn’t want to think about the ones he had lost, but they rose like specters. His mother, whom he vaguely remembered, whose voice had been gentle but sad. He had been so young when she abandoned him. Donella, once a vibrant soul, had faded in his mind over the years. He had been so defiant when she died. Maisie, his own flesh and blood that he had failed to protect and was currently failing to find. Sidra, who was bound to him by a blood vow. She had arrived home drenched from the cursed loch, her eyes searching and lost.

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

He had retraced that revelation of hers endless times in the past few hours. So much that he felt the groove of it in his thoughts. He had been startled by her confession—he thought her so far above him. He’d never expected to earn her love, and he didn’t know how to show her how deeply he felt for her.

But Torin didn’t have time to think about this.

He was almost to the Elliotts’ when a moving shadow caught his attention. It was on the path ahead of him, pressing west. He realized it was a man, running, and Torin unsheathed his sword, urging his stead to quicken his pace.

The runner heard his approach and whirled with an arrow nocked on his bow. Torin was preparing to strike when the man lowered his weapon, then tucked and rolled to avoid being trampled by the horse.

Torin turned the stallion about, nearly unseating himself in his haste, and his gaze swept the moonlit grass. The man with the bow was easy to find, a thin shadow rising from the ground, brushing dirt from his clothes.

“That’s the second time you’ve almost killed me, Torin.”

Jack’s unmistakable, peevish voice.