She nodded. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disappointed with his answer, but he sensed a fraction of the weight she was carrying as the Heiress of the East.

He didn’t envy her status or her power as he had once.

“And where will I be playing this?” he asked.

“On the shore,” Adaira replied. “We can meet at midnight, two nights from now, at Kelpie Rock. You remember where to find it?”

It was the place where they had once swum for countless hours as children. Jack wondered if Adaira was choosing it because the rock held strong memories for them both. He vividly recalled bobbing on the waves as a lad and racing her to the shore, eager to beat her.

“Of course,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten my way around the isle.”

She only smiled.

Jack was carefully folding Lorna’s music into his harp case when Adaira said, “I suppose you are eager to see Mirin?”

He bit back a sarcastic retort. “Aye. Since you’re done with me, I’ll be heading that way to visit her.”

“She’ll be overjoyed to see you,” Adaira stated.

Jack said nothing, but his heart felt like stone. When he had first arrived at the mainland school, his mother had written him once a month. He had gone to a broom closet and wept every time her words had arrived. Reading of the isle roused his longing to return home, and he often skipped his music classes, hoping his professors would send him back. They hadn’t, of course, because they were determined to see him flourish there. The wild isle-born lad who would have had no proper last name if not for the generosity of his laird.

As the years passed, Jack had finally given himself up to the music, falling deeper and deeper into that world, and Mirin’s letters had become more and more infrequent, until they only arrived annually, when the leaves turned gold and the frost fell and he had aged another year.

“I have no doubt,” Jack said, and this time the sarcasm bled into his voice.

Adaira must have noticed, but she didn’t make a remark. “Thank you for your help, Jack,” she said. “Would you also be able to meet with me again tomorrow at noontide?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Adaira tilted her head, gazing at him. “You are quite overjoyed to be home, aren’t you, my old menace?”

“This place was never my home,” he said.

She made no reply to that comment, but her eyes softened. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He watched her leave. He stood in the music chamber for a few minutes more, to soak in the solitude.

The light was beginning to fade. He felt how late the hour was, and he knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable.

It was time for him to see Mirin.