Page 20 of The Arrow and the Alder

M arks half slid, half sprinted down the other side of the ridge toward the charred remains of the fortress.

“Marks, wait!” Seph yelled, running after him.

He didn’t slow, nor stop, his long legs carrying him farther and farther ahead of her. When he reached the bottom of their steep decline, he tore across the open field as though his life depended upon it, bounding through the puddles as if he did not feel them, his arms pumping him forward with singular purpose. Seph had no chance of keeping up.

Still, she ran after him while dread weighed heavier with every step. This had been his destination all along, and it was nothing more than an ashen grave.

Concerns over what came next mixed with rapidly growing alarm: who was he that he would live here? At a fortress ?

Wind became a lion, roaring through the valley as Marks disappeared through a gate that hung open upon broken hinges. Seph followed him into the vast courtyard a moment later, where she slowed to a halt.

Fragments of burnt and broken wood littered the cobblestone streets amidst scorched bones—human or kith, Seph didn’t know. A single statue remained standing at the center, but it was cracked and stained by flame, like some cruel eulogy to a once beautiful city. And from the statue, three bodies had been hung.

They were black skeletons now, all flesh and organs having burned away. A thin golden circlet crowned one of the skulls, though it too had been blackened and tarnished by flame.

Marks’s steps slowed as he stared, grief-stricken, at the bodies while Seph’s internal alarms blared.

He knew those bodies, and they had been very, very important to him.

Marks stopped at the base of the statue, where he dropped his bow and collapsed to his knees, as if he’d lost all strength to stand. To hold himself up. He gripped his chest with one hand, like the heart beating beneath ached too much to endure. Then he yelled—a tragic and agonizing sound that echoed devastatingly throughout the courtyard.

The sound tore at Seph’s own heart.

She never imagined that this kith could feel so much, that he was even capable of such sorrow, and she felt a prick of shame. Perhaps his bargains and boorishness were the only ways he knew how to shield himself against a world that kept trying to tear him down.

Seph knew something about that.

Marks’s yell wrenched into a sob and he dropped his head into his hands. Seph could only stare in anguish. Her eyes burned and her chest constricted, and she absently clutched Rys’s ring while she watched Marks grieve. His pain was so real, so raw, and so palpable, as if he’d transferred his grief into that thin layer of mist and Seph was breathing it into her body. Into the place where her own despair lay carefully tucked away.

Because she’d buried it there. Because she feared that if she took it out and gazed upon it, it would destroy her.

Seph considered going to him but stopped herself. She’d already crossed a line where intimacy was concerned, which he clearly hadn’t appreciated. He’d hardly spoken to her since. So instead, she gave him privacy and space, and walked on. At least walking gave her something to do, something to distract herself, especially from her own grief. Her gaze absently skipped the debris, the burnt buildings, and the gray clouds above while the wind stole through the courtyard and rang a single hollow note, like a dirge. Her hair whipped across her face, and she was just brushing it aside when she spotted the glimmer of light upon her bow.

One of the enchantments was glowing.

Seph frowned, her heart skipped its next beat, and she withdrew an arrow on instinct. She scanned the ruins and sky, but as far as she could see, there was nothing—nothing but the wind, Marks, and three charred corpses.

Still, the glow persisted.

Seph was about to call out to Marks when her gaze settled on a gargoyle perched upon one of the many broken turrets. It struck her as odd since a gargoyle would never have been placed upon the jagged ledge of a broken wall. She crept forward to get a better vantage just as it pushed off the ledge.

Depraved!

Seph cursed as the creature spread its wings and dove.

For Marks.

He didn’t notice. It seemed he could see nothing of the world outside his grief.

Instinct took over, and she drew back the arrow and gazed down the smooth shaft. Her burn pulled taut, but it didn’t interfere. Not enough. She traced the depraved’s trajectory with the shining white arrowhead while it dove determinedly for its distracted prey.

Seph didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

She released.

String snapped, reverberating through the bow and her arm. The arrow soared, white feathers rippling while its shaft quivered behind a deadly sharp and resolute head. The depraved was nearly on top of Marks when the arrow lodged into its shoulder.

It wasn’t a perfect hit, and Seph blamed her injury for it, but she set another arrow as the depraved shrieked and flapped erratically to regain height, struggling to stay aloft.

Thwick .

Seph’s second arrow raced toward the demon and landed in its back, piercing it through.

The creature screamed and dropped from the sky to crash beside Marks, who had jumped to his feet, bow in hand.

Marks’s piercing gaze landed on Seph’s—held it.

And the sky came alive with shrieking.

Seph strung another arrow and fired at the first depraved that dove. Her arrow sank into its side, and it screamed and flapped and crashed into a building. Stone cracked and exploded, but she didn’t have time to celebrate, because another plunged into the courtyard.

And another.

And another.

Sacred saints in heaven, there were so many of them! Seph counted at least a dozen swirling overhead. She shot them down, one after another, her burn pulling with each shot, though every time she killed one, another seemed to take its place.

“To your right!” Marks yelled, and Seph finally noticed the depraved flying at her from the side.

She barely managed to roll out of the way before jumping back to her feet as yet another depraved bore down upon her. Seph whirled and fired upward. Her arrow struck, the depraved shrieked and—thankfully—crashed into the one that’d been rushing her on the ground, which gave her time to draw and nock another arrow. Again, she fired, and this arrow pierced the second depraved through its skull.

Seph glanced back.

Marks stood close by, shooting down the depraved, and he was incredible . Draw after draw, arrow after arrow with deadly precision. He never missed a mark and hardly looked at his targets as he fired, leaping and bounding over the remains, using the rubble to shield himself from diving claws. His grief did not slow him. If anything, it was fuel to his resolve, and she was so transfixed watching him that she didn’t notice the two creatures flying down at her until they were nearly upon her.

But Marks had.

He set two arrows upon his bow and fired before Seph could even draw one. Air whirred, silver arrows zinged, and the monsters screamed as they dropped from the sky. And then…

Silence.

Seph heaved, bow in hand, while Marks panted a few paces away, both of them scanning the cloud-covered sky. Dead depraved lay everywhere, littering the courtyard.

“Is that all of them?” Seph asked. The rain had reduced to a fine mist.

“I don’t know,” Marks replied, expression grim. “They’ve never penetrated this valley before.”

Seph wondered at his comment, but Marks lowered his bow, keeping an arrow in place as he took a step forward. He stopped beside the nearest depraved, pressed his boot to its wing, and shoved it over.

“What is that?” Seph frowned, approaching to get a better view of the marking upon the beast’s neck that she hadn’t noticed before. Some branding, seared into its flesh, that left a hairless pucker of silvery scar tissue in the shape of two kissing hemispheres with a vertical axis running between them.

“The mark of the one who is leading them,” Marks said lowly. He lifted his boot and scanned the rest of the carnage.

“Is it Prince Alder? Is he the one who?—”

“ No . I don’t know who’s leading them, but Massie is blaming?—”

Thwick .

An arrow sank into the depraved corpse that lay at Marks’s feet, and Marks froze.

“Not another move,” said a man’s voice. A dozen hooded figures dressed in forest green emerged from the shadows and surrounded them completely. Half of them held bows, but Seph couldn’t see their faces. They were veiled in green cloth veined in gold, reminding Seph of giant maple leaves.

Where had they come from? Had they sent the depraved?

Was this…the depraved’s leader?

“Drop your weapons,” commanded the same voice. It echoed from everywhere, making it impossible for Seph to pin the source. “I will not ask again.”

Seph watched Marks, who flexed his fingers around the grip of his bow while a furious vein throbbed at his temple. At last, he growled and begrudgingly let his bow fall. Wood clattered upon stone, and his surrender echoed throughout the courtyard with one final cry of resistance.

“Who are you?” the same voice demanded.

“Show your face, and we’ll talk.” Marks’s shrewd gaze slid from mask to mask as if he too could not determine who had spoken.

This time, one of the figures stretched out an arm. The extended hand curled into a fist, and Seph noticed the vambrace, and the little black darts affixed to the wrist, which was aimed at Marks.

“We’ll talk now .” The voice did not echo this time, and it irrefutably belonged to the figure with the outstretched arm. “And you can begin by explaining why you have brought a mortal into Asra Domm.”

Asra Domm?

Seph’s pulse skipped. Asra Domm was the capitol of Weald, where High Lord Massie was from, which meant these ruins had been the fortress and home of the queen and Prince Alder.

Where Marks was, apparently, from.

Seph’s attention cut to Marks, who stared only at the veiled figure with fury in his eyes, and his fingers flexed.

“Ah, I see.” The figure turned his aim upon Seph.

Seph forgot to breathe.

“ Wait .”

The objection hadn’t come from Marks; it’d come from another one of the figures—a woman, judging by the lilting alto of her voice. She stepped forward and stopped beside the man with the outstretched arm, then she placed her hand over his wrist and the darts.

“What are you doing?” the man hissed at her.

But the woman appeared to be in a daze. She took slow steps forward, placing herself between Marks and their leader.

“ Evora !” the man spat at her, but she ignored him. Her attention fixed only on Marks, who’d gone inhumanly still.

He knows her too, Seph thought.

The woman—Evora—stopped before Marks and waved her hand before her face. The green-and-gold leaf mask dissolved into thin air. Kith ears peeked through long strands of auburn hair that framed a fierce yet elegant face, and the woman’s hazel eyes filled with emotion as she beheld the wild man before her. “It cannot be…”

Marks visibly trembled. Seph wondered who she was to him, and he to her—was this…his wife? Seph felt the strangest and unexpected prick within.

Slowly, Evora reached for Marks, and Marks did not stop her. All the courtyard watched in silent apprehension, especially Seph, as Evora pressed her palm to Marks’s cheek, as her eyes slid over his face and beard like she was trying to make sense of it—of him. Of the man she felt so certain lay beneath the savage, and then her expression broke as she whispered, “ Alder .”