Mirin drew in a deep breath. “She’s eight.”

Eight. Jack felt the truth like a blow, imagining it. All those years he had been on the mainland, lost in music, he had had a little sister at home.

“I assume she’s my half-sister?” he asked.

Mirin was wringing her pale hands again. She glanced at the flames. “No. Frae is your full-blooded sister.”

The revelation was both a pain and a relief. Jack struggled to know which feeling to feed, eventually voicing the very thing that had driven a wedge between him and his mother. “I take it Frae knows who our father is then?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Mirin whispered. “I’m sorry, Jack. But you know I can’t speak of this.”

She had never apologized for anything before. It shocked Jack so much he decided to let the old argument ebb, and he acknowledged what was truly bothering him now.

He had a little sister, living on an isle where girls were vanishing.

This was a grave complication to his plans, which had been to play for the water folk and then bolt. He did not see how he could leave, unless he had some reassurance that both Mirin and Frae would be safe after he departed.

“I hear there’s been trouble on the isle,” he said. “Two lasses have disappeared.”

“Yes. The past fortnight has been tragic.” Mirin paused, tracing the bow of her lips. “Do you remember the old stories I used to tell you? Those bedtime tales as old as the land?”

“I remember,” he said.

“It was my greatest fear. That you would roam the hills and be tricked by a spirit. That you would never come home one day, and there would be no trace of you. So I told you those stories—to stay on the roads, to wear flowers in your hair, to be respectful of fire and wind and earth and sea—because I believed they would protect you.”

The stories had been frightening, entertaining. But stories were not made of steel.

“I’ve been told one of the missing girls is Eliza Elliott,” he continued, watching his mother’s reaction closely. “The Elliotts’ croft is only six kilometers from here, Mum.”

“I know, Jack.”

“What measures are you taking to ensure Frae isn’t next?”

“Frae is safe here with me.”

“But how can you be certain of that?” he demanded. “The folk are mercurial, even on their best days. They can’t be trusted.”

Mirin laughed, but it was full of scorn. “You truly plan to instruct me on the spirits, Jack? When you have always been irreverent toward their magic? When you have been gone from this place the past decade?”

“I’ve been gone because you sent me away,” he reminded her tersely.

Her offense waned. She suddenly appeared older to him. She appeared frail, as though the shadows in the room might break her, and he glanced at the loom.