Page 26 of The Arrow and the Alder

A lder had been impatient to give an accounting of his last few years. To get this drama over with so that he could move forward.

That was, until Josephine walked through those doors.

Honestly, was Abecka trying to torment him?

He hadn’t been able to look away from her, hoping his face didn’t betray the battle within. He was a fool for not seeing it before. Not that he could’ve known she was related to the enchantress—he’d never laid eyes on Abecka before—but he should’ve known Josephine was more. That she was this . She might hate the expectations and the theater of it all just as he did, but she was born for it. To lead. To fight. To resist the temptations so many leaders before him had succumbed to.

Josephine was made of something else. Something rare and unyielding, and when her clear blue eyes had finally found his…

Well, Alder began doubting the story he’d constructed in those early hours of the morning. The one that would put the final nail in the coffin of their moribund rapport.

Dammit.

“Alder?” Abecka pressed.

Alder cleared his throat and angled himself to the crowd, though Josephine burned like a falling star in his periphery. “Actually, I was stationed north of the Rift. At the Sumner gate.”

“But that has long since—” Tyrin started.

“Fallen, yes. I know. I was there when it fell, so as you can imagine, my time at the warfront was…cut short.”

Some in the crowd whispered, glances were exchanged. Everyone knew about the Fall of Sumner, because it’d been a slaughter near the beginning of the war. When the tide had turned against the kith, when the kith had begun asking for mortal aid.

Alder hated thinking on it now.

“We were told there weren’t any survivors,” Sienne said.

“Oh, there were survivors,” Alder said lowly. “I would guess somewhere around fifty, but all were taken captive by depraved.”

“And you are the only one who escaped?” Celia asked. Each question was like a manacle she hoped to bind him with.

Alder smiled viciously. “You are trying to trap me in my words before I’ve even spoken them, Celia dear.”

“Your words cannot be trusted.”

“And yet my words are all you have, considering you’ve been hiding underground while the rest of us fight your war.”

Alder probably shouldn’t have said it, since he was supposed to be clearing his sordid reputation, but there it was, hanging in the air like some foul stench. The room fell silent, a few shifted uneasily, but his kin from Weald stood tall and proud, Alder was glad to see.

“Celia will listen,” Abecka said—thankfully—casting Celia a pointed look. “Please proceed, Prince Alder.”

Alder gave a slight tilt of his head, in gratitude, and he couldn’t help but glance at Josephine before continuing.

Which was a mistake, because it took him another moment to remember what he’d been about to say. “I met her brother in the dungeons of Süldar.”

An uneasy quiet settled over the crowd; he knew it would. Süldar was the capital of Light. The fortress where Queen Abecka, King Issachar, and their two sons had lived, but it’d been destroyed the day Light fell.

“ Yes ,” Alder continued, answering the question on everyone’s faces. “It is being rebuilt.”

Abecka paled. “Who is rebuilding it?”

Alder shoved those images from his mind—images that’d haunted him every day since. Otherwise, he would never get through this testimony. “Kith and mortal prisoners alike.”

“Under whose command?” Sienne asked, slightly exasperated.

“The depraved and whoever is leading them.”

“And who is that?”

“They don’t speak a name, but they know the mark of their master, and I know some of you know of what I speak.” He glanced at Evora and at Serinbor, and even Serinbor couldn’t deny it, though he looked as though he wanted to do anything but give credit to Alder’s testimony.

“I have seen the mark,” Abecka said, eyeing Alder closely. “And you truly do not know to whom it belongs?”

Alder shook his head. “No, I do not know who the mark belongs to, nor who is leading them.” Alder said the words aloud so Abecka and her elders would know that they were true.

“I don’t believe him,” Celia said anyway. “He knows more, and he is not telling us.” Celia jabbed a finger at Alder. “You’ve been working with the depraved. You have joined forces with their leader, and you have used Abecka’s heir to earn our trust and find a way into Velentis.”

Her words sat in the silence, tilting on edge.

Alder looked at her so intensely, she slunk back a little. “That’s a pretty story, Celia, and I don’t doubt you’d sell your withered soul for it to be true, but those depraved guard their master’s anonymity even more closely than they guard their prisoners.”

“Which is where you met her brother,” Abecka interjected.

Alder peeled his gaze from Celia. “Yes.” A beat. His chest felt suddenly tight. “We worked Süldar’s mines together.”

“My mother’s old mines?” Celia asked with surprise.

“The very same. Rys’s company had been apprehended along the Rift, and those who’d survived were brought to Süldar.”

“How did you escape?” Abecka asked.

Alder looked at Josephine despite himself, at the ring dangling between her breasts, but then forced his eyes on hers as he said, “It was Rys.”

Josephine’s lips pressed together and she gave the slightest shake of her head, as if to say: I knew it. I knew he would be the one to figure it out, and yet here you are in his place.

Alder couldn’t say that she was wrong. “There was no way to reach my eloit in that place, though I tried,” he continued. He looked back at the elders, unable to hold Josephine’s gaze through this. “The dungeons are protected by some power I can’t comprehend. My enchantments wouldn’t take. Rys had no notion of eloit , so he chiseled away at the rock of his cell little by little, using a ladle.”

Here, Alder paused to gather himself. The crowd waited.

“He worked all night, and come morn, he would set a stone back over the hole. I didn’t know about it until the day he broke through. He could have left that night, but he stayed and waited for me and a few others. So one evening, when we were returning from the mine, we saw an opportunity and took down our depraved guard and then escaped through Rys’s cell. Unfortunately, it alerted the other depraved.”

Alder looked at Josephine, into the depths of her watery gaze. It was the confession she had wanted, the confession she deserved. This part, at least, was true.

“You mentioned others with you?” Tyrin asked.

Alder squeezed his hands and peeled his gaze from Josephine. “Three, but they were taken by depraved as we fled, and it was then that I…Neither Rys nor I realized he’d been infected with depraved poison. He lost control of himself quickly, and I…I killed him.” Alder closed his eyes and forced these next words out. They were mostly true. “I put a blade through his heart, and then I took the ring from his hand and left his dead body in the woods.”

Alder stood there like that, the room quiet, and even though his eyes were closed, he could still see Josephine’s face. Her sorrow, her pain, and her fury.

“But why go to Harran instead of returning home?” Tyrin asked.

This was the question that had an answer he could not give. So Alder had come up with one he could give. But right then, he wished he’d explained it to Josephine, that he’d told her everything. Maybe someday he could, if she would ever speak to him again after what he was about to say. After how he was about to spin the truth.

Alder’s shoulders expanded with a breath and he opened his eyes a sliver. He did not look at Josephine as he said, “I knew of the coat.”

He heard Josephine’s sharp intake of air.

“ How ?” Abecka asked.

“Quite by accident, really. Rys used to tell stories while we were working the mines to help the time pass. That’s how I learned of his family and how he’d been separated from his father, Ronan, and brother Levi. Reinforcements were needed on our side, and Rys’s commander sent him and a few others to help—Rys was very skilled with a bow—though Ronan and Levi remained at Fallows Gorge.

“Anyway, one of Rys’s stories was about a coat of many colors. One that shone with all the shades of light. He said his grandfather had buried it because he feared it might fall into the wrong hands.”

Alder hesitated, then forced himself to press on. He had to be very careful with his wording on this next part.

“A depraved caught wind of his tale, however. They tortured him for more, but Rys had no more to give, and so they stuck him back in his cell with the intent to try again the next day. I believe they would have tortured him to death had we not escaped. But that is why I was in Harran. I knew the coat was real the first day the depraved took him away, and once we escaped, I vowed to do whatever it took to find Rys’s family and…bring the coat back to Weald.”

Against his better judgment, he looked at Josephine. There was a small part of him that hoped she might hear the truth through his words. She was so good at seeing it.

But all he saw in her eyes was pain, and he knew that she would never forgive him.