Page 97

Seph opened her lips to cry out, but dizziness took her. She laid her head against Alder’s neck, holding fast as hot tears streamed down her face, letting him carry her away.

And despite her haze of pain and grief, her final thought was how nice it was for someone to carryherfor a change.

Seph’s eyes opened to a dimly lit space. A cave, to be precise, about the size of their loft in Harran. A small fire burned on the ground beside the opposing wall, far enough away that she couldn’t accidentally roll into it, but she was otherwise alone.

She sat upright and immediately regretted it. White-hot pain lanced through her shoulder, and she winced and lay back down.

Right. She’d been shot.

But someone had removed the arrow, and a thin piece of shorn cloth was wrapped tightly around her shoulder and across her torso, beneath her undershirt, and her bodice lay on the ground beside her with its strings cut.

Alder ducked into the space, caught her gaze, and stopped in his tracks.

A breath passed, and a mountain of words piled between them. Seph didn’t know where to start, what to think, never mind that her mind was blurry with fatigue.

“How are you feeling?” Alder asked quietly.

Seph opened her mouth to tell him that she was all right, but a tear leaked out instead. She was not all right, and it had little to do with the pain throbbing in her shoulder. She shut her eyes on the world, on him, because she couldn’t bear to look at him while feeling all the things that she was feeling. “Evora and the others…?” she managed, nearly too afraid to ask.

“They’re fine,” he said gently. “They’re just outside with the horses.”

Seph felt him draw nearer. That connection she shared with him was even stronger than before, pulsing like the wound in her flesh.

“I brought you water,” he said from right beside her. When she didn’t respond, he said, “You need to drink, Josephine. You lost a lot of blood.”

His words were a shock to her consciousness, a fire amidst the haze of her mind. Her eyes opened and found his steel grays. She could have gazed into them forever for the strength and comfort they gave her. Strange that she should find that in him.

“Here, let me help you.” He extended a hand.

Seph didn’t deny him.

He slid his hand beneath her back and slowly helped her sit. Seph ground her teeth against the strain in her shoulder, and he flinched, as if he felt it too. He kept one hand on her lower back, his warmth burning through her undershirt, and he held out the waterskin with his other.

“How’s your rib?”

“Fine.Drink.”

Seph lacked the energy to fight him, so she took the water, brought it to her lips, and drank. Ava in heaven, she was parched, but she didn’t want to drink all his water, so she took a few sips and held it back to him.

He shook his head. “It’s all yours. I filled it for you.”

The simple statement made her eyes well with tears again. His thoughtfulness and tender care—a care he kept giving her, even when she’d tried to hate him—but this wasn’t the time or place to reflect on her tangled feelings, so she lifted the flask to her lips and drank until it ran dry.

“Thank you,” she managed. She held the flask out to him, and his fingers brushed hers as he took it and set it somewhere off to the side. Seph didn’t see. She’d closed her eyes again.

Which was a mistake, because she saw Abecka. She saw the earth split in half. She saw the witch throw her great-grandmother into the air and slam her already weakened body to the ground.

“I can alleviate the pain, if you—” Alder started.

“It’s not that,” Seph said.

He sat quiet, and when Seph opened her eyes again, he was looking at her as if he understood. As if he knew, like he’d been here before, carrying the kind of pain that stemmed from having a piece of one’s heart ripped out of them. There was no bandage for that, and while his presence and silent consolation brought her comfort, it also made it worse. It made herfeel. As if, after all these years, her heart felt safe to break apart and spill all over everything.

And it did.

Her tears came in a sudden and unexpected flood, dropping all over her lap and the floor—tears she’d held in since the war started and her papa, Levi, and Rys left. Tears for the day she’d learned Elias died, for Nani and Nora and Grandpa Jake, and for what the war had done to her relationship with Linnea. For all the things Seph had stuffed down just so she could survive each day, and then Abecka…

Abecka was the gust that blew down the futilely wrought temple of Seph’s willpower.