This time he accepted it as he sat in a straw-backed chair by the fire. The soup smelled of marrow and onions and pepper, of all the green living things Mirin grew in her garden. He let the steam ease before he began to eat, savoring the rich flavors of the meal. The taste of his childhood. And he swore for a moment that time rippled around them, granting him a glimpse of the past.

“Have you come home for good, Jack?” Mirin asked, sitting in a chair across from his.

Jack hesitated. His mind was still reeling with questions about Frae, with answers he was keen to learn. But he decided to wait. He could almost fool himself, thinking it was the old days. When Mirin had told him stories by the hearth.

“I’ll be returning to the mainland in time for autumn term,” he said, despite Adaira’s warning.

“I’m glad you’re home, even if it’s just for a spell,” Mirin said, lacing her fingers together. “I’ve been curious to hear more about your university. What is it like there? Do you enjoy it?”

He could have told her many things. He could have started at the beginning, recounting how in those early days he had hated the university. How learning music had come slowly to him. How he had wanted to smash his instruments and return home.

But perhaps she already knew that, from reading between the lines of the letters he had written her.

He could have told her about the moment when things changed, in his third year, when the most patient of professors had started to teach him how to play the harp and Jack had found his purpose at last. He was told to take great care with his hands, to let his fingernails grow long, as if he were becoming a new creature.

“I like it just fine,” he said. “The weather is pleasant. The food is average. The company is good.”

“You’re happy there?”

“Yes.” The reply was swift, reflexive.

“Good.” Mirin said. “I didn’t want to believe Lorna when she told me that you would prosper on the mainland. But how right she was.”

Jack knew the Tamerlaines had funded his education. The university was expensive, and Mirin alone could not have afforded it. He still sometimes wondered why he was chosen, out of all the other children on the isle. Most days he surmised that he was chosen because he was fatherless, troublesome, and wild, and the laird thought instruction far from home would tame him.

But perhaps Lorna had hoped Jack would return as a bard, ready to play for the east. As she had once done.

He didn’t want to dwell on such things. And it was time for him to address Mirin directly. He set his bowl aside and turned from the fire to face her.

“How old is Frae?”