She shut the door behind him, enclosing them in the quiet space.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Adaira hesitated, but her eyes still held a trace of shock when they met his. “Innes just told me that music is forbidden in the west.”

The words rolled off Jack. It took him two full breaths to comprehend them. “Forbidden?”

“Yes. No instruments, no singing,” Adaira whispered, glancing away. “Bards haven’t been welcomed among the Breccans in over two hundred years. I . . . I don’t think you should—”

“Why?” he countered roughly. He knew what she was about to say to him, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“She said that it upsets the folk,” Adaira replied. “It causes storms. Fires. Floods.”

Jack was silent, but his thoughts churned. He knew magic flowed brighter in the hands of mortals in the west, to the spirits’ demise. The opposite of life in the east. He thought about how playing for the folk here had cost him threads of his health. He had never considered what it would be like to play for the spirits on the other side of the isle. Not until this moment, when he realized he could strum his music and sing for the west without cost. What power would spill from his hands.

“Then I’ll leave my harp,” he said, but his voice sounded strange. “I can’t rightly play it warped anyways.”

“Jack,” Adaira whispered, sorrowful.

His heart turned cold at the sound. “Don’t ask me to remain behind, Adaira.”

“If you come with me,” she said, “you’ll have to deny who you are. You’ll never play another instrument or sing another ballad. Not only would you have to surrender your first love, you would also be separated from your mother, who looks so frail I worry about how long she has left to live, and your sister, who is devastated to lose you and who might end up in the orphanage. The clan also longs for you to remain, and I’m sure that Torin would be—”

“The Tamerlaines don’t know I’m Breccan by half,” he said sharply. “I’m sure their opinion of me and my music will change rather quickly when that truth comes to light.”

“And yet you might encounter far worse danger in the west, if the Breccans discover whose son you are.”

Jack was silent.

Adaira sighed. She looked so weary and sad; she leaned on the wall, as if she couldn’t stand upright on her own. Her breaths flowed fast and shallow, and Jack softened his voice, gently drawing her to him.

“I made a vow to you,” he said, caressing her hair. “If you ask me to remain in the east while you are in the west . . . it will feel as if half of me has been torn away.”

A sound escaped her; Jack could feel how she trembled.