Page 18 of The Arrow and the Alder

I t was the most exquisite weapon Seph had ever seen. Well, perhaps the second, but only next to Marks’s bow, and she couldn’t recall the last time anyone had given her anything.

It had been hard for Seph to accept Marks’s gift, and she hadn’t meant to sound ungrateful, especially after he’d spent so much of his energy healing her last night—weariness still pulled at his shoulders. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something on the other side of his generosity. Some tally of debts he was secretly accruing, some tax she could not see.

You don’t trust anyone . Linnea’s words floated back to her.

Yes, and Seph still found it difficult trusting the kith who’d left Rys to die. And yet…she was faced with the hard reality that he had not left her. He’d wanted to—threatened to, even—but he hadn’t. A little voice reminded her that it was only due to his bargain, but there’d been no bargain last night, and he certainly hadn’t handled her burn like a man concerned only for himself. No, he’d been tender with her, not once hesitating to do everything he could to stop the enchantment from consuming her flesh.

What a conundrum he was!

She knew there was more to the story of his escape with her brother, and perhaps she would ask him about it, but not yet. Right then, Seph was starved, so she ate the bread Marks had tossed at her. It was very old, and very stale, and it crumbled like sand in her mouth. Maybe Marks had found the bread in the cellar beside the bow? Nevertheless, she was thankful for it. She hadn’t eaten anything in…saints, had it been two days? The bread was hardly enough to satisfy, but Seph’s belly hadn’t been full in years. Hunger had become a constant companion, so she’d made her peace with it and learned to ignore its loud and persistent nagging.

She scoured their surroundings as they walked, trying to see if there might be any wild berries—anything at all—but the mist was too thick. It was like passing through a cloud, with the occasional spindly black tree standing like a ghoul, ready to lash out with its branches and consume her whole. She couldn’t see farther than a dozen paces in front of her, and the land she could see was barren.

Most of her grandfather’s stories had been about Canna before the curse, before mist and shadow and depraved had stripped it of color and life. She’d thought his words hyperbolic when he’d claimed Canna no longer had color, but now that she was here, in the daylight, she realized it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. There truly was no color in this place. It was a canvas of gray and black lines, like a sketch before an artist fills in the shapes with substance and hue. There were no signs of life either, nothing skittering across the ground or flying. Harran’s forest was always moving, always breathing, but this…this was a rotting corpse. Even the air smelled sour, like compost and decay.

Like death.

Seph remembered Milly’s vision. Was this what awaited Harran in only three months? Would there even be a Harran by the time she figured out how to cross the Rift?

“Where are we, exactly?” Seph asked while they walked.

He glanced sharply back at her. “I thought you didn’t know these lands.”

“I know of them,” she said with conviction. “From my grandfather’s stories.”

Marks looked doubtful but turned his attention ahead again. “And what is it you know?” He might have said: What is it you think you know?

“I know that there are— were —four kingdoms, or courts,” Seph replied, and she pushed back a crusty lump of hair that had dragged across her face. What she wouldn’t give for a bath. “Weald, Tides, Palisades, and Light. I know the kingdom of Light was cursed by the Fate of Speech as punishment for the cruelty and bloodlust of Light’s two princes. That Light collapsed into mist and ruin, and all of Canna’s other kingdoms have suffered ever since. That you are…I believe my grandfather said you are all losing your connection to eloit …?”

Seph gave Marks a moment to correct her, but he did not. His gaze remained fixed ahead, his pace steady.

She continued, “What I don’t know is where the kingdoms are in relation to one another, except for Light, which—I was told—sits at the heart of the others. And like a sick heart, it pumps its blight through the veins of the other kingdoms, and now it’s seeping into the mortal world.”

Again, Seph remembered Milly’s dream.

Again, Marks remained quiet.

“We’re walking through the Light Kingdom, aren’t we?” Seph asked.

Marks’s face tilted to a sky neither of them could see. “We are at the boundary, yes.”

It was the only thing that made sense to her, given how her grandfather had described the Court of Light. However…“Why did Lord Massie make the tear here and not in Weald, where he’s from? I thought your kind avoided this place.”

“We do.” Marks ducked below a low and reaching branch. “And I imagine that’s exactly why Massie made the tear here.”

Seph noted that Marks never addressed Massie by his proper title. “Because Lord Massie does not want his errand widely known?” Seph asked, but the only response Marks gave was a tip of his bearded chin. “So why are you not following him?”

“Why would I follow him?”

“Well, you claim you don’t know what he wants with the coat, but aren’t you curious to find out where he’s taking it?”

Marks chuckled, albeit darkly. “No. I do not want to be anywhere near Massie when he realizes he’s got a fake in his hands. Not unless I have an army standing behind me.” And then Marks said, “Wait here.” He stalked off to the right.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t bother turning. “To relieve myself.”

They didn’t broach the subject of Lord Massie again. Actually, they didn’t broach any subject again, because Marks did not invite further conversation. Seph would have liked to ask him about Rys—or if he truly knew nothing about her papa and Levi—but he was decidedly introspective and quiet. Such behavior didn’t normally deter someone like Seph, but Marks had already been far more generous with her than their bargain required, and the strain of last night still weighed heavily upon him, so she decided not to press him for more and give him space to recover his energy.

Despite his reserve, Seph found an unexpected comfort in his silence and steady presence. She’d spent so much of these past few years alone, wandering the woods and seeking solace beneath their protective boughs. Aside from her grandfather, the trees were the only ones who let her be who she was, without asking her to act…well, more like Linnea. Elias had tried so hard to understand her, saints rest his soul, though even he never comprehended her spirit. Not fully. He’d even called her a termagant once. He’d said it playfully, of course, but Seph had heard the sliver of truth in his tone, and it pricked, though she’d shoved it down deep. She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been until now. Which was amusing, since Marks had kept trying to be rid of her, and his semantics drove her crazy, but he did seem to take her as she was.

Just like the woods.

With him, there was no flattery or posturing. He wasn’t trying to be anything other than what he was, subjecting himself only to the elements, beholden to the only law Seph herself had respected these past few years: survive or die.

Perhaps they weren’t so different after all.

Another hour passed before the mist began to thin. A visibility of ten paces slowly became twenty, a new landscape dawned into focus, and the air smelled less like compost and more like moss and damp earth. Where there had been mist and obscurity, there now stretched a densely wooded forest with a canopy so thick it blocked a gray sky. The trunks themselves were wide as houses, with dizzying heights, and Seph felt suddenly very small. As if the kith god, Demas, had made a home for himself in this place, to dwell amongst his immortal kith, something large and grand enough to contain his celestial form. Even the roots were god-sized, anchoring their impressive charges with feet that stretched across the forest floor, rising and dipping into the earth, as large as any respectable bridge. Seph marveled at Marks’s ability to know his way through this giant maze of trees and sprawling roots. There was no sun to mark direction, no distant landmark to be their guide, and the shadows were thick and deceiving. More than once, Seph mistook a cliff for a step, and she would have tumbled over had it not been for Marks’s steady guidance.

As they traveled, she found herself wondering about him. He appeared somewhere near her age, but Seph had no way of knowing considering the extended lifespans of the kith, and this thought sobered her a little. He could have lived an entire lifetime already. Who was his family? Did he have siblings?

A wife?

Was that who Seph was going to meet? The idea struck her uncomfortably. She couldn’t say why, and she decided not to dwell on it. Though she did wonder: what sort of woman would Marks take for a mate? She supposed she’d find out soon enough.

Eventually, daylight faded, and Marks stopped in the bend of a massive tree root to set down his pack.

“We’ll camp here for the night,” he said.

Seph glanced about them, at the darkness crowding all around, and she missed the enchanted walls of the tower. “Will we be safe?”

“It’s as safe as we’re going to get in these woods,” he replied as he moved about their perimeter, carving enchantments into the soft earth with his fingers.

Seph watched him for a moment before asking, “What will those do?”

“Create a glamour,” he said, his back to her. “It should keep us mostly invisible to anything that passes by.”

Seph knew of glamours—visual deceptions kith created to trick the senses and disguise the truth.

“Is it strong enough to hide a fire?” she asked, because with the night had come the cold, and now that they weren’t moving, it was settling in fast.

“Probably not,” Marks said, to her acute disappointment.

Seph didn’t complain, but she did wish she could help him secure their perimeter. Be useful. Watching him work made her feel like a burden, again, and this wasn’t a role she assumed…ever.

Feeling properly displaced, and not knowing what else to do, she unhooked her bow and quiver and sat against the tree root. Once Marks finished his work, he joined her, rummaging through his pack. Seph caught sight of her grandfather’s coat again before he tossed her another lump of stale bread. Seph caught it while Marks sat down beside her, keeping a liberal distance between them.

Perhaps he really did have a wife.

The two of them ate in companionable silence, and eventually Marks stretched one long leg and bent his other, then threaded his fingers and wrapped them around his knee. He leaned back against the tree root and tilted his face toward the reaching boughs above. Shadows clung to his eyes, and his expression was strained with a weariness Seph suspected ran much deeper than last night’s healing or lack of sleep.

“I’ll keep watch this time,” Seph said.

“I don’t mind.”

“I know, but I do.”

“If you weren’t here, I’d be doing it anyway.”

“But I am here. Please let me do something. You’ve already done so much for me.”

His gaze found hers, and then, without a word, he slid his pack over so that it rested between them like a physical barrier. He bent over and laid his head upon it, stretched his legs, and shut his eyes. Not even a minute passed before his breathing evened and his body relaxed with sleep.

Well, that was easy.

Seph finished her bread, studying him in what little light remained; she couldn’t help herself. His beard hid most of his face, but he had a nice nose. It was strong and decisive, if a little large––though his face was wide enough that it didn’t take over, and there was a bump in the middle, undoubtedly from a former break. It set his nose on a slant, though Seph thought it gave him character, like a bit of defiance, especially when compared to those straight and unyielding brows of his. She couldn’t see much of his mouth because it was buried within that bushy beard, and Seph wondered if his jaw was as strong as the rest of him, or if he would look handsome clean-shaven.

Had she really just contemplated how he’d look shaven?

Seph glanced away to the trees, forcing her traitorous thoughts to follow.