Page 37 of The Arrow and the Alder

S eph’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 her feel . 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.

Alder reached out and combed his hand through her hair, brushed it back from her face. It was such a sweet gesture, but his ministrations only made her tears come faster.

She rubbed at her cheeks, feeling embarrassed, but also too overcome to do anything about it. “I’m sorry.”

“Why on earth are you sorry?”

Seph couldn’t answer. She wiped at her face, trying to dry away her sorrow.

“Would you prefer I leave you?” Alder asked. He pulled his hand from her hair, but Seph caught it and squeezed.

“No, please, I…” She stopped herself and realized she was physically holding him there. She released her vise-like grip on his hand. “That is, please don’t feel obligated to stay, but you don’t have to?—”

“I want to stay.”

Her vision blurred through tears as she looked at him. His hair was in elegant disarray, and a mixture of exhaustion and tenderness pulled at his eyes. Seph’s chest squeezed.

“Mind if I check the wound?” he asked after a moment.

Seph nodded, wiping her cheeks again.

She turned a little as Alder scooted closer. One of his knees touched her leg, and his other leg stretched behind her.

“I need to lift your undershirt.” His words were so close now.

Seph swallowed hard and nodded once, fixing her eyes ahead.

Alder brushed her hair aside first.

“Sorry…” she said softly. “My hair…it gets everywhere.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s like starlight.”

His compliment spoken so simply, so sincerely, made her cheeks warm, especially as he grabbed the hem of her tunic, and—very slowly—lifted. His fingertips brushed her back, and Seph’s breath hitched. She’d never been seen by a man before. And even though Alder was focused strictly on making sure she wasn’t going to die, Seph’s pulse quickened.

“Did that hurt just now?” he whispered.

His voice was so low, so near , that it took Seph a moment to register his question. “No.”

He raised her undershirt the rest of the way—just the back, letting it mostly fall over her front. Cool air kissed her bare skin before his warm fingers slipped beneath the bandage. The cloth pulled tight around her chest, and Alder sat quiet.

“Is it so terrible?” Seph asked, breaking the silence.

“I had to cut out the arrow.”

She wanted to look at him, but he was still right there , and he was touching her. “You tended to me?” she asked just above a whisper.

“Yes.” A beat. “I am sorry about your bodice, but I was in a bit of a hurry.”

The silence stretched, and Seph’s heartbeat drummed in her ears, especially as Alder’s fingers pressed lightly around the wound.

“It’s hard to keep the infection at bay,” Alder said after a moment. “Sienne will be able to heal this completely, but until then, you’ll need to rest, and I’ll probably need to change this a few more times.”

Alder adjusted the bandage back over the wound, his fingertips grazing her spine as he carefully pulled her undershirt back into place.

“It was you, in the woods. You were the stag.”

A breath passed, and then he pulled his hand away. “Yes.”

“You carried my brother too, when you escaped…didn’t you?” she asked.

Firelight reflected in his eyes as he said, “I did.”

Things are not always what they seem, Josephine .

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Alder’s face turned toward the fire, and his brow furrowed. “Because…I couldn’t tell you the truth without also confessing…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to.

Seph knew he was talking about what she’d witnessed that night—the evil trying to possess him would have strangled her to death had he not gotten control of it. But then Seph remembered all the other questions she’d had, namely: if he’d altered that part of his story just to hide what plagued him, what else had he not been honest about?

“The story you told the elders…” Seph said. “Was it true?”

Alder’s lips opened and closed. “I?—”

Evora stepped around the lip of rock.

“Oh…” Evora stopped in her tracks and glanced between them.

Seph realized how it must appear, with Alder so close and his legs hemming her in. Her cheeks warmed.

Alder, however, looked so dark and thunderous that Evora took a small step back.

“I was just coming to see if you needed anything.” If a voice could be a white flag of surrender, that was Evora just then.

“I don’t,” Alder said tightly.

Silence.

“I’ll just, um…” Evora slipped around the rock, out of sight.

Alder shut his eyes and inhaled slowly.

“She doesn’t know, does she?” Seph asked. Alder’s resounding silence was answer enough. “But why not, Alder? She might be able to help you.”

Alder’s eyes snapped open with such force that Seph flinched back a little. “If you had any idea what it is that I?—”

“Then tell me ,” Seph said fiercely, holding his gaze. “I have already seen it, Alder, and I’m not afraid of you.”

“ Not afraid— Fates, Josephine, I nearly killed you!” He looked wild, like the boorish man who’d shown up at her door in Harran, and his hands were fists before him. “I could’ve snapped your neck without a second thought. I wanted your blood. I wanted to tear you apart so that I could taste every last drop of your life. You should be terrified of me!”

He was trying to scare her away again, his guilt and his shame convincing him he must.

“ And I am ,” Seph cut back, “but not for the reasons I should be. I tried to hate you for the way you say you’ve used my brother, but I can’t seem to do that either, and truthfully, I don’t believe you used him the way you said you did before the elders.”

At this proclamation, his features tightened, and she knew she’d caught hold of the delicate thread he tried so desperately to hide.

Seph leaned in closer, emboldened. “Alder, what happened to you in Süldar, really ? And what did my brother have to do with it? I don’t believe for a second that you came to Harran strictly for the coat, and I don’t know what to believe about anything where you’re concerned, so please tell me the truth so that I can sort out my feelings for you.”

Seph was surprised by her own confession, but there it was, and Alder was staring at her. His expression was a mask, but the intensity in his gaze could have burned a hole through her skull.

“You know this does not have a happy ending,” he said at last. His words were a warning, and Seph did not think he spoke only of Rys.

“I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t put much stock in happiness. I’ve never found it very reliable.”

A small, sad sort of smile touched his lips. His gaze skirted her features and her hairline, and Seph wondered if he was going to reach out and touch her hair again.

He did not. Instead, he moved away from her, and Seph already missed his warmth. He sat across from her instead, knees bent and ankles crossed, with his forearms resting upon his knees and his hands clasped loosely between them. Even compacted like this, Alder was massive. Like a great boulder beside her. His tunic pulled snug over his rounded shoulders, straining the fabric a little, and Seph couldn’t help but remember how he’d appeared last night, bare and gilded by lantern light.

“Rys was kind to me,” Alder said at last, staring at the empty space between them. “Maybe not in the beginning. He shared your unfavorable view of my kind”—Alder’s brow lifted at her on this point, and Seph made a face—“but…then he began to understand what the depraved were doing to me. How they were…experimenting.”

Seph shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew the depraved were no longer the mindless demons they used to be, but this was another level entirely. “Did they know who you were?”

A dark laugh escaped him. “Oh, yes. It’s why they did it. I was to be a bargaining chip for their master—the witch, I am certain of it now. I was to be a creature she could control. Some heinous blend of man and monster, able to take both forms. Rys figured it out soon enough. He took pity on me, and I hated him for it. I didn’t want pity. I deserved every horror they bestowed.”

“Because of your life before?” Seph asked, wanting to understand all the pieces completely. Wanting to understand him .

“Yes.” He hesitated. His jaw flexed as he continued, “I was spoiled, and foolish, and I hurt people that I cared deeply about. Serinbor included. Every name you’ve ever called me, I’ve deserved ten times over, and I was prepared to accept the depraved’s torture as my due, but your brother…he was as damned tenacious as you are. Whenever possible, he didn’t leave my side. He took it upon himself as his singular mission to help me hold on to my sense of self so the corruption would not root.”

Here, Alder stopped, and a crease formed between his brows. He seemed to be having a difficult time revisiting this place where the truth haunted him.

But saints , what he’d said…it was so like Rys.

“He told me…he said he had a young sister,” Alder continued. “Someone who suffered. Who was constantly plagued by illness, and that his oldest sister— you , his little lion heart—had been indefatigable in her compassion and servitude. It was your example that inspired his persistence with me.”

A tear leaked over Seph’s cheek.

“Rys found a way out,” Alder said after a moment. “He said that he wouldn’t leave without me. He wanted me to find help, a way to rid myself of this evil that…keeps trying to take over my person. Our escape wasn’t much different from what you heard before the elders, only that I changed into my other form to give us a good lead.”

Understanding filled Seph. “The stag.”

“Yes.” He held her gaze. “And it was while he was on my back that we intercepted depraved. I tried to get us to safety, but…”

Seph had been about to ask him to elaborate on his stag form, but he looked sharply aside, and she was so stricken by the brokenness in his expression—brokenness over Rys—that she decided to ask him about the stag later. For now, she wanted to hear the rest of Rys’s story. It was clear that Alder had cared for her brother very much—everyone who knew Rys did—and for Seph’s part, she felt as though she were losing Rys all over again. Because this time—this story—was true.

“Did they take him?” she asked through her tears.

“No, not like that,” Alder said with a subtle shake of his head. “Your brother was an exceptional archer, like you.” He cast her a sideways glance. “He shot down most of them, but one still managed to mangle his arm, and by the time I changed back…Rys had lost too much blood and the infection was already taking hold.”

Seph’s next breath shuddered.

“He gave me his ring to return to your family,” Alder continued quietly, “and he asked…he begged that I put a swift end to his suffering so that he could die a mortal man, and so I did. I took his blade, and I ran it through his heart. That much was true, and, Josephine, I…It should have been me. I knew it then; I know it now. I needed to take that ring to his family, but I couldn’t do it because I was a coward. That’s it. Cowardice kept me from returning to Asra Domm, and cowardice kept me from taking the ring back to you. Yes, Rys told me the story of a coat in the mines, but that damned coat couldn’t have been further from my mind when I ran through the Rift and into mortal lands. I was just trying to get away from myself . Who I’d been and what I was…becoming.”

Alder raked a hand through his hair again. One clump fell free and curled upon his forehead.

“Did the ring not help you?” Seph asked.

“Actually, it did. It seemed to keep my affliction from taking root and sending me over. Still, nothing held off the darkness as effectively as when I was a stag, and so I eventually tucked the ring away and wandered in that form. For months . I even contemplated remaining a stag, but then I started confusing my kith and animal forms, and it…it frightened me too.”

Seph remembered the Alder she’d met. The boor and lack of humanity. It made sense now. He’d spent too much time as an animal, and he lived in fear of the monster.

“I eventually made my way south,” he said in Seph’s silence. “Toward Harran, with the intent of fulfilling my promise to your brother, and when I was just outside of Harran, that’s when I first saw Massie.”

Seph recalled that day in the woods when she’d seen the stag. When Massie and his bone-masked kith had arrived. “And Massie saw you.”

Alder’s lips thinned and he nodded once. “I had no idea what he could be doing there, but I took refuge in your woods. I risked the crowds to find out why he’d come. What you heard in that square was as much a surprise to me as it was to you—I’d completely forgotten about Rys’s story of the coat until that moment—and when I went to your home to deliver the ring, Massie was there. I waited. I tried to listen. I saw you walk up to your front door. I didn’t intend to be so abrupt with all of you, but I needed to follow Massie. To know what he was up to.” He stopped and dipped his head a little as he looked straight into her eyes. Seph was struck by how clear his were.

“I apologize for what you saw as callousness,” he said with barely contained emotion, “but I swear to you that could not be further from the truth. It was unworthiness that strangled my words, it was too much time as a stag that stole any sense of propriety, and it was a need to follow Massie that cut short my time. And when I found you in that pit with the real coat…” He chewed on his bottom lip and flexed his hands. “I realized Rys’s tale was so much more than just a story, and that Massie would eventually come back for you.”

Seph ingested all his words in silence, her face wet with tears. “But you were going to leave me for dead.”

Alder’s grin was rueful. “That was just to get you to cooperate. I was mostly trying to figure out what to do with you, because I owed it to Rys to keep you safe, at the very least, and I thought keeping you safe meant keeping you far away from me.”

Seph glanced down.

“Also, if you’ll recall, I never asked you to pass the coat’s powers on to me,” Alder said.

Seph’s gaze darted back to him. That’s right! He never had asked her to pass on those powers as Massie and the baron—and even the depraved—had done.

Suffice it to say that anything of interest to Massie is of interest to me .

That truly had been his reason.

“But why couldn’t you have said all of this before?” Seph asked through the tailspin of her thoughts.

Alder’s lips tightened, and he unclasped and clasped his hands. “Josephine. If Abecka or her elders had any idea, they never would have risked the people of Velentis. They never would have risked their safety, and with all the rumors circulating about my ties to the depraved, this would have been the proof they’d needed to believe I’d come to lead the depraved straight to their hidden sanctuary.”

“But they might be able to help you, Alder! Certainly Sienne?—”

“ No one can fix this.” He leaned forward, and the fire in his eyes matched the one burning beside them. “Do you think I haven’t tried? Do you think I haven’t investigated every possible solution? I have done every damn thing I can think of, but I need a god’s power for this.” There was a moment of quiet between them, and when Alder continued, his voice was softer—warmer, almost. “So you see, perhaps I am the selfish ass you accused me of being, because if I cared one whit for anyone else, I would have stayed away. Most importantly, I would stay away from you .”

There was something in that last statement and with the way he was looking at her that wrapped around Seph’s entire body like a hot blanket, and made her heart feel too large for her chest, but her thoughts were slow and sluggish, and she suspected her loss of blood was to blame. Alder must’ve seen something shift in her too because he slid his arms off his knees and said, “I’ve kept you awake long enough. I should let you rest. Especially since I’d like to get moving tomorrow…assuming you’re feeling up to it.”

It took Seph a moment to follow his thoughts. “To Velentis?”

“Yes. The other elders will need to know what happened, and we’ve got to figure out what to do with this coat of yours.”

Seph’s head was now beginning to ache. “Where are we, by the way?”

“Deep in the foothills of Boliar. We should be safe for the night. Tyrin has hidden our location with every enchantment he knows, but we still shouldn’t linger.”

Alder looked like he might say more but stood instead.

“Because of the witch?” Seph asked.

Alder didn’t reply.

“I think my”— yawn —“great-grandmother knew who she was.” Seph wanted to talk more, but she was so tired. Exhaustion fell like a cloud over her, turning her thoughts to sludge. Seph started lying down, and Alder’s hands were immediately on her back and shoulders, helping her.

Seph’s eyes were already closed as he said, “Evora has offered her horse to you for tomorrow, should you prefer to ride it instead.”

Seph was confused as to why he was telling her this, and then she understood. She didn’t have a horse, and Alder’s had bolted. But Alder clearly didn’t need a horse. “And you would carry your cousin?”

“Yes.”

Seph didn’t have an answer. It was so hard to think. She heard him shift and imagined he was leaving.

She opened her eyes. “Alder.”

He stopped and glanced back at her.

There was so much to say, but Seph was too tired to say any of it, and so she said the only thing that made sense to her. “As long as it’s not too much trouble, I’d prefer it if you carried me tomorrow.”

He held her gaze, and a small smile touched his lips. “I would be honored, Your Highness.” His gaze lingered on her a moment more before he added, “Now get some rest,” and he slipped out of view.