Jack shifted. He felt the weight of her words. He knew why she had summoned him now, and yet he wanted her to say it to him. “Why have you called me home, Adaira?”

She held his gaze, her face flushing. “I need you to play one of my mother’s ballads on your harp. I need you to invite the spirits of the sea to manifest, so I may speak with them about the missing lasses. I believe they can help me find Annabel and Eliza.”

He was silent, but his heart resounded like thunder and his mind spun like leaves caught in a whirlwind.

“I have a few concerns about this, Adaira,” Jack said.

“Tell me then.”

“What if the spirits answer the music, but they are malevolent toward us?” he asked. For while he worried about his own well-being, he was even more concerned about hers. She was the sole heiress, the only child of the laird. If something befell her, the east would be bewildered. Jack didn’t want that on his hands, to witness the spirits of the sea drown her.

“We’ll play at night. When the moon and stars shine on the water,” Adaira said, as if she had anticipated that he would ask this.

When the spirits of the sea are easily mollified.

Jack’s dismay didn’t ease; he recalled the sound of fingernails tapping on the hull of the fisherman’s boat, seeking a weak spot. The dim figure of the woman in the water, laughing at him as he desperately swam to shore. Did he truly desire to reel that spirit to him like a fish on a hook? To sing up that dangerous being?

So he tried once more and asked, “What if they don’t come to the sound of my music, my voice? What if they remember their fondness and respect for your mum and refuse to answer me, a bard who has been ousted by the clan?”

“You were never ousted by us,” Adaira said, intently watching him. And then she whispered, “Are you afraid, Jack?”

Yes, he thought, desperately. “No,” he said.

“Because I will be there with you, at your side,” she said. “My father was always with my mother when she played. I won’t let anything befall you.”

It was strange how much he believed her in that moment, given their troubled history. But her confidence was like wine, softening him. He could see why the clan adored her, followed her, worshiped her.

“Perhaps this will grant you clarity,” Adaira continued. “My da explained it to me like this: My mother couldn’t play with a skeptical heart. The folk came not just to hear the music, but to be adored by her. Because that is what they desire from us. Our praise, our faith. Our trust in them.”