Page 23 of The Arrow and the Alder

S eph’s grandfather had told stories of how the kith used eloit to erect magnificent structures out of earth and rock. She didn’t doubt that the very same power had also created this impossible feat, this defiance beneath the earth. Under any other circumstances, Seph might’ve been overcome with wonderment and awe.

However.

It was difficult to freely marvel at this extraordinary world beneath the surface given the man walking beside her.

Prince Alder.

There was so much Seph wanted to say to him—or say at him, rather—but the cloth sack had made it difficult. Listening had even been a strain, though she’d caught most of the prince’s conversation with Evora––who was his cousin , not his wife. When Alder had finally removed the sack and she’d turned around with every intention of spewing all of the vitriol she’d been saving up along their journey, the sheer scale of this incredible underground refuge had promptly distracted her. Now she found herself stealing glimpses of Alder instead, wondering how she could’ve missed the truth.

She should have seen it. All of the signs were there. To be fair, she’d believed Massie’s lies about Prince Alder. She’d mistakenly thought he was involved with the depraved. Seeing “Marks” dispatch them without a second thought…well, he couldn’t possibly be working with them if he was killing them. She just hadn’t considered that Lord Massie had created and spread the rumor himself to capitalize on Alder’s poor reputation and Weald’s vulnerability—given that her prince and warriors were at the Rift—to steal the throne. But then how could Seph know the inner political workings of the kith?

And Alder hadn’t actually lied about who he wasn’t. She’d asked him if he worked for the Weald Prince; she’d never asked him if he was the Weald Prince. So in that respect, he wasn’t a liar.

She was just an idiot.

All this time, he had been using her! He was no better than Massie, or the baron, or any other ruler in this saintsforsaken world who took what they wanted to suit their own purpose no matter the injury to anyone else.

The morning in the woods flashed before her mind—unbidden—that moment when she’d awoken beside him…or on him, rather. She’d been mortified, but also wracked with guilt because she’d enjoyed it. Her error could’ve resulted in their death, but she’d be a liar if she didn’t admit she’d slept better than she had in ages, wrapped in his warmth and his strength. Seph, who believed autonomy her particular strength, but in that moment, she’d begun to doubt, wondering if autonomy was just a fancy word for loneliness.

She stole another glance at the Weald Prince as they followed the priestess down the stone path, only to find herself skewered by those steely grays.

“You’re despicable,” she said.

“So I am.”

Seph’s temper flared. “ You used me , and I can’t believe I didn’t…” Seph was so angry and hurt that she couldn’t finish her words, but then their path ended at a pair of mahogany doors.

The doors were enormous, engraved with scenes of wildlife and trees and blooming flowers. A world, Seph imagined, before the curse. Armed kith stood on either side, but as the priestess neared, those armed kith bowed their heads and pushed the doors in.

Seph and Alder followed the priestess through the doors and into an atrium, where Serinbor, Evora, and a few kith robed in silver waited. Light and water pierced through a crack in the canopy above, dusting the center of the atrium floor and the small pool of glittering water depressed within. A table stood off to one side, and a great brick of a tome lay upon it, opened to a page of symbols Seph couldn’t read.

Beside it, rested her grandfather’s coat.

It’d been draped across the table, where its golden threads caught the light and threw prisms of color upon the floor and chiseled stone walls. The sight of it made Seph’s heart leap, all that light and color and power contained, and the ring at her chest tingled to distraction.

“They say you’ve given yourself to the dark, son of Weald,” rang a woman’s voice, filling every crack and high ceiling. “That Queen Navarra took your secrets to her grave while you were off exploiting Canna’s vulnerabilities, using the curse to fashion for yourself a new generation of depraved, to aid you in your selfish ambitions for power.”

Seph followed the voice to a dignified woman, who stood upon a platform, her back to them while she overlooked the vast chasm beyond and its sheer draperies of cascading water. Her hair fell in soft white sheets all the way to her knees, and she wore an ivory robe trimmed in gold with kith enchantments embroidered upon it. Seph immediately thought of her grandfather’s coat. The enchantments were startlingly— eerily —similar, and a strange and uneasy feeling prickled at the back of Seph’s mind.

This was undoubtedly the enchantress that Evora had mentioned, but her greeting did not bode well for Seph’s future.

Evora glanced uneasily at Alder, while Serinbor folded his arms like a man come to witness a long-awaited justice served.

Alder, however, did not shrink. He didn’t even flinch. “It seems they are saying a lot of things, Enchantress Abecka, and I ask that you permit me the opportunity to explain them.”

His words settled in the spaces, and Seph wondered how he could remain so calm and controlled when his fate dangled by a thread.

“Queen Navarra was one of the greatest rulers I have ever known,” the enchantress snapped, still without turning, “and yet she suffered the most at the hands of her own son.”

Her condemnation struck like a gavel, and this time, Alder’s hands clenched, his nose twitching as if those words had hit him square between the eyes.

“I know your play, Prince of Weald,” the enchantress continued with scorn. “Do not think that because you could not see us, that we could not see you. I have survived many generations, and I have seen every sort of man. I know what you are. Even now, while we are at the very brink of annihilation, you would offer me this coat strictly to purchase…” The enchantress had been in the process of turning around when her eyes found Seph. Her words stopped. Everything about the enchantress stopped, as if she were suspended in time, gazing upon Seph.

As if she knew Seph.

Premonition swept from the back of Seph’s mind all the way to her feet, and her heart stuttered. She couldn’t possibly understand how the enchantress might know her, she’d never beheld such a woman, this kith who wore age like a trophy, like a victory professing all that she’d endured and survived and overcome. Yet Seph felt the tug of connection, the pull of memory.

Abecka’s sharp amber gaze remained anchored upon Seph, and everyone else in the room looked at Seph too.

Which was when Serinbor intervened. “I warned them not to bring a mor?—”

Abecka raised a hand, and Serinbor ceased speaking. He cleared his throat and his forehead wrinkled with confusion.

“Who is this?” Abecka said at a pitch higher than before.

Serinbor blinked. “The mortal girl whom Prince Alder was?—”

“Not you, Serinbor,” Abecka cut in. She lowered her hand and took a step forward, those amber eyes boring into Seph. “Tell me your name, child.”

Seph hesitated. She caught Alder’s puzzled gaze before hastily dipping her head in a bow. She didn’t know if it was proper, but it seemed like the right thing to do. “My name is Seph.”

“Your full name.”

Now Alder was eyeing the enchantress.

“Josephine. Josephine Risorro Alistair.”

Abecka inhaled sharply, which drew the curious attention of…everyone.

“ Leave us ,” Abecka said almost frantically. “I will speak to the mortal alone.”

It took the others a moment to respond, like the gears of a mill slowly groaning into motion. The robed kith cast uncertain glances at Seph but bowed and slowly stepped away. The priestess and Serinbor looked profoundly unhappy but withdrew as commanded. Evora followed, but when Alder began to turn, Abecka said, “Not you, son of Weald.”

Alder waited, looking vexed, while the others departed. Serinbor was the last to go, as if waiting for the enchantress to change her mind. She did not, and he bowed stiffly, casting Alder a scathing glance before leaving through the doors.

It was Alder who broke the thick and uncomfortable silence. “If I have caused offense, Enchantress, I swear it was not intentional?—”

“You do not know who she is,” Abecka said, appraising him with open disbelief.

A crease formed between Alder’s thick black brows. “I am not sure what you mean.”

Abecka’s gaze slid to Seph, and then Alder looked at her too, and Seph suddenly felt like a specimen on display for academic study.

“Forgive my ignorance, but…do I know you?” Seph asked Abecka, unease rattling her bones.

Abecka’s expression cracked just a little, as if the sound of Seph’s voice broke something deep inside of her. She approached steadily, gazing over Seph as one might appraise a lost treasure. “You have his face,” she said so softly, stopping just out of reach. Her eyes slid over Seph’s features, as though she were looking at a memory. A very fond, very painful memory. “Your eyes are hers, but the rest belongs to him.”

“Who are you talking about?” Seph asked, but as her question hovered there in the quiet as she realized they were the same height, she and the enchantress. Not only that, they possessed the very same build, though time had loosened Abecka’s skin and softened her musculature. They also possessed the same ivory-white hair, though Abecka’s was smooth where Seph’s was…well, big.

Alder’s gaze darted between them as if he, too, were suddenly noting their biological similarities, and Seph had the sudden and very new feeling that she was teetering on a cliff’s edge.

Abecka’s eyes shone like glass, the amber warm as honey—an amber that was achingly familiar. “My son is Jakobián, though you may know him as Jake, and I am the one who made that coat for him.”

And Seph was falling.

Beside her, Alder stood very still.

Jakobián.

Grandpa Jake .

Seph suddenly couldn’t fill her lungs with enough air. “There must be some mistake. He isn’t…my family…that is, we are all mortal,” she managed, but even as she said the words, she no longer believed them.

She recalled her dream, the one where her grandfather had kith ears.

“I met her family,” Alder cut in, looking uneasy. “There are no kith among them.”

“Not anymore, no,” Abecka answered. “Jakobián forfeited his life to save Raquel—the mortal bride—and in return, the Fates blessed him with a second life. As a mortal man.”

Alder looked from Abecka to Seph as if struck by sudden revelation. “That day he disappeared…”

“The Fates sent him to the mortal realm.”

“And closed the veil,” Alder finished at a whisper, as if he now understood something that had long vexed him.

Seph pressed her fingers to her temples and took a distracted step back. All this time, the story of the two princes—a story Seph herself had very recently told Nora, in fact—it’d been about…their grandfather ?

She struggled to remember the rest of the story as her grandfather had always told it. How every seven years, a piece of the veil opened and the older prince took a mortal bride in hopes of curing Canna of the curse. How after many failed attempts, the younger brother tricked the older by disguising himself, via glamour, and thus proceeded to steal his brother’s mortal bride, with the aim to kill her, but fell in love with her instead. He’d become mortal to be with her, and that day the veil had closed completely—until the Rift had opened three years ago.

“He gave up his immortality for love ?” Seph had asked of him back then, unable to comprehend why anyone would forfeit such a thing.

Her grandfather’s smile had been wistful as he’d stroked her mane of wild hair. “One day, my little lion, you will meet someone you cannot live without, and then you’ll discover that you will sacrifice everything.”

All along, that story had been about him . He’d sacrificed everything for Nani.

Including his birthright.

Oh, sacred saints in heaven…

He was the one who, with his brother’s help, had committed such atrocities as to garner the attention of the Fates, who had cursed all of Canna to mist and darkness and depraved.

Her sweet and doting grandfather.

Seph couldn’t reconcile the two men, but she also couldn’t ignore how much sense it all made. Why he’d never speak of his family or his life before. Why no one from his past had ever come to call upon him. Why he’d known so much about the kith that no one else ever seemed to know.

How Lord Massie could have known him.

How he’d ended up with an enchanted ring and an enchanted coat—a coat that resembled the one Abecka now wore.

Abecka, an enchantress .

Abecka––Seph’s great-grandmother, and the queen of the Court of Light.

Never trust a kith.

Her grandfather’s words mocked her now.

“How is my Jakobián?” Abecka asked suddenly. These weren’t the words of an enchantress; these belonged to a mother. “You are his daughter, yes?”

Her last question took Seph by surprise, but then she realized Abecka would know nothing of her grandfather’s life after he’d been cut off from his people.

Abecka would not know how richly he’d aged.

“I…he…” Seph dragged a hand over her face, struggling to find words. It was all so much to sift through. “I am his granddaughter.”

A little gasp escaped Abecka’s lips, and Seph saw the pain in her eyes—pain that her son had lived so much life and that she’d been there for none of it.

Seph continued, trying to think of the answers a mother would want to know. “He and his wife were very much in love. They…had three children. Their oldest—Ronan—is my father, but he is at the warfront with my brother Levi. There are… were five of us, but I recently lost my oldest brother, Rys, to the war.”

Abecka stepped aside—distractedly—her gaze fixed on the floor as if she might see Jakobián’s life in those dark veins of stone. “And Jakobián?” Her voice was a whisper, haunted and frail. “How is he ?”

Seph hesitated. Her gaze briefly met Alder’s. “He is alive, but he has been unconscious since my grandmother passed six months ago.”

Abecka stared at her. Seph could not read the look in her eyes. “He is hanging on for you,” she said after a moment, and her gaze slid to the coat.

“He never said a word to me about the coat,” Seph said. “Not once. I only learned of its existence a few days ago.” At the question in Abecka’s eyes, Seph went on to explain the situation surrounding her discovery of the coat.

“Massie knows?” Abecka interrupted with alarm, looking to Alder who tipped his head with grim confirmation.

Just then, the doors cracked open, and one of the silvery-robed priestesses stepped in, bowing her head.

“What is it, Nistarra?” Abecka asked.

“Apologies, Enchantress; word of the Weald Prince’s arrival is spreading rather quickly, and there are many of Weald who are eager to see him. I have asked them to wait, but I am afraid they won’t be kept any longer.”

Abecka drew upright with a deep breath and studied Alder. “It is a better reception than you deserve, to be sure, though your people always did have a soft spot where you were concerned.”

Alder’s eyes flashed with something Seph could not read. “Perhaps that’s because you do not see everything, Enchantress.”

Seph sensed there was more to Alder’s slight than their present circumstances.

“Careful, young prince without a throne,” Abecka warned. “Your people may have a softness for you, but I do not, and it is in my home that you have found refuge.”

Alder’s eyes narrowed. He tipped his head a second later.

Abecka’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she said, “We will continue this conversation in the morning.” She turned toward the priestess. “Nistarra, see that Jakobián’s heir is bathed and fed, and have rooms prepared for her in the upper sanctuary.”

Jakobián’s heir .

The implications of this title slowly dawned, but the enchantress had turned away, as if to physically block Seph from voicing any objections.

“It will be done.” Nistarra stood tall and turned slightly, waiting for Seph to join her at the door.

Seph’s feet wouldn’t move. Her heart raced and her palms sweated, and she was very aware of Alder watching her as she said, “I have family in Harran.”

The enchantress stopped. She didn’t turn, but Seph pressed on anyway, before the bars of her fate could be sealed. “They depend upon me for survival, especially with my papa and brother gone fighting in your war. I’ve already lost one brother to it, and I have a sister who is grievously ill, so if claiming me as Jakobián’s heir puts their lives at any risk, then I would prefer you forget that I was ever here. In fact, I would ask instead that you help me find a way to return to them—if not for me, then at least help me on account of your son.”

A brittle silence punctuated Seph’s words.

At last, Abecka glanced back, though her face held no discernible emotion. “You can’t return, Josephine. I understand your family needs you, but the Rift has become too dangerous, the depraved too numerous, and I will not risk any of my people for a mission that will end only in death. I suggest you make peace with your situation and get some rest. Goodnight.”