“I was young and full of spite, and I scorned the lessons she tried to give me. The music would not take to my hands, and all I could think of was the guard I was not able to join. It is the greatest regret of my life now. To think back on those years and how I wasted those moments with her. There are some days when I can hardly bear to look upon her harp, because 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. I never once imagined I would lose my mum so soon, and I long for those moments with her, for the music she once tried to give me.

“These things I share with you, Jack . . . they are like thorns in my mouth. I rarely speak of my regrets and my heartache. As a laird, I am not to dwell on such things. But I also know that to hold my tongue and remain silent is sometimes the greatest regret of all for our kind. So let me say this to you: a small part of me looks at you and sounds a warning. He will leave after a year and a day. He will return to the mainland, where his heart yearns to be.

“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.”

Jack stood. She had captivated him, and he needed a distraction before the truth spilled out of him. Before he confessed how his feelings for her were becoming entwined with everything—his dreams, aspirations, desires. He wanted to reassure her, to answer her without words, but first he walked to his bureau, where a bottle of birk wine sat.

He poured them each a sparkling glass. Her fingers were cold as they brushed his, accepting his offering. She didn’t remain seated but rose, so their eyes were nearly level, with little space between them. They drank to their wounds, their regrets, and their hopes, to the past, to how the choices each had made unknowingly brought them back together.

“My heart doesn’t yearn for the mainland,” he said at last. “I thought I told you, Adaira, that it’s safe to say I won’t be returning.”

“And yet you’ve told me from the beginning that the mainland is your home,” she countered.