Page 38 of The Arrow and the Alder
T he next few days of travel back to Velentis passed in a blur of magnificent thunderstorms, sleep (mostly for Seph), and intermittent conversation. Seph caught bits and pieces in her more lucid moments, and they usually revolved around what came next. Abecka had been a lighthouse to them all, illuminating the way forward, and without her, their future seemed bleak. Massie’s witch was so much more than any of them had expected, and the consensus was that they still needed more fighting men and women.
All that to say, Alder had his work cut out for him, and they only had two months left.
There was also the issue of who would lead Light now that she had lost her queen. This topic always ended in silence and subtle glances cast in Seph’s direction.
Seph was far too weary to think on any of it.
The pain in her shoulder was no better, and the blood loss had left her severely weakened.
Alder remained in his stag form as they’d traveled, carrying Seph comfortably atop his long and muscular back. He was uniquely beautiful even as a beast, with his impressive spread of antlers and his exquisite black coat that felt like velvet between her fingers. It was the same color as his actual hair, and Seph wished she’d been able to stay awake long enough in that cave to ask him about his transformation ability. Perhaps a moment would come again soon when they were out of immediate danger.
And to think she’d nearly killed him in the woods to make gloves!
When he took this form, was he still Alder, or was he something different? Was he aware of her legs clenched around his body? Or how sometimes, when she was overcome with exhaustion, she would lay her head against his neck and breathe him in, falling asleep to the rhythmic pounding of his strong heart? His beastly form still smelled like a forest, like wild grasses and thunderstorms.
And an overwhelming sense of comfort.
At night, after Alder’s beast form crouched low enough for her to slide to the ground, he would transform back into himself and tend to her injury. They hardly spoke, especially with so many traveling companions, and she didn’t say another word about all he’d shared. And so the truth became a mounting fire between them, given hot coals every day they traveled, every day she climbed onto his back, every day he carried her forward upon his steady, powerful legs.
Seph hadn’t realize they’d reached Velentis until she opened her eyes and found herself lying on the massive bed in her bedchamber. Of course, it took her a moment to place where she was—especially since she’d never actually slept on that bed—but she eventually recognized the furnishings and the constant thrum of water. Embers glowed in the hearth, a lantern burned beside her bed, and her hair was damp. Not with sweat, but damp as if someone had washed it. Her clothes had also been replaced by a thin nightdress made of soft white linen, embroidered with golden enchantments all along the hem and long sleeves. The neck scooped wide and low over her unbound breasts, and the idea that someone had undressed and bathed her sent a wash of heat through her body.
Her bandage was gone too.
She sat up to get a better feel of it, then slid her hand over her shoulder and beneath the neckline. The muscles around the wound were still tender, but where the incision had been now only a bump of puckered skin existed.
Impossible, she thought.
Feeling the sudden itch to move, Seph pushed back her covers and slid out of bed. The floor was cool beneath her bare feet but not unpleasant. She padded to the window, and she was just gazing out of it, at the veils of falling water, when she heard her door open.
Seph glanced back as Alder stepped through. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight of him.
He hadn’t noticed her yet, as if he’d expected her to still be sleeping. He’d changed his clothing as well, and was wearing dark and fitted breeches, tall black boots, and a long steel-gray tunic embroidered in emerald greens. The upper ties of his tunic were left casually undone, exposing a bit of his chest, and his black hair was a tousled mop of perfection.
The setting felt overwhelmingly intimate, especially in her nightdress, and Seph’s pulse raced.
Alder carried a flagon in one hand, and in the other, he carried two cups carved out of animal horns, and he used his elbow to close the door. He turned and took two steps toward the bed before realizing she wasn’t in it. His gaze slid to her standing at the window, and he stopped in his tracks.
Goddess divine, he was beautiful.
His eyes pierced her from across the room, seeming to take in all of her being in that once glance, and Seph’s cheeks burned hot.
“Well, your color’s improved, at least,” Alder said simply, as if he had no earthly idea the effect he had on her. He started slowly forward. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, thank you,” she said quietly. Her voice was raw from misuse, and she coughed on a tickle. “I was wondering who, erm, that is—” She glanced down at herself.
He set the flagon on her small table. “You were wondering who bathed you…?”
“Yes.”
“Sienne helped me,” he said, setting the cups beside the flagon. “She would have done it herself, but she needed another set of hands. You’re quite violent when you’re unconscious. You nearly broke my nose.” He gave her a lopsided grin that made him appear reckless and boyish, and Seph’s heart fluttered hopelessly.
“I…I’m sorry,” Seph replied lamely.
“It’s not as if you meant to.” He smirked. “Or did you…?”
Seph opened her lips to say something smart, as had been their usual pattern, but her thoughts were still slow, and he was so handsome, so she ended up staring at him like a besotted idiot instead.
Alder cleared his throat and glanced away as he poured the contents from the flagon into each of the horned cups. He grabbed them both and approached her. “It’s just water,” he said, holding out one of the cups.
“Thank you.” She took the cup from his hands and lifted it to her lips like a shield, finding it very difficult to look at him again.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?” Alder said after a moment. “I swear to the Fates that Sienne was there the entire time?—”
“Oh. It’s not that. Not at all. I trust you.” Those last words came out of her mouth as a surprise. She hadn’t meant to say them, but in speaking them, she realized they were true. She did trust him. Completely. Seph lowered the cup and licked her lips. “I…well, the only people who have ever seen me…undressed…are my mama and sisters. So.” She ignored the fire licking up her neck and looked to the window as she added, “I’m just a little embarrassed.”
“Ah.” He stood quiet for so long that she dared a peek at him. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, but then he averted his eyes and dragged his palm across the back of his neck. His gaze caught on the second cup, which he seemed to remember was in his hand, and he drained it completely.
“Thank you for carrying me, Alder,” Seph said. “Thank you for…everything.”
His eyes found hers again, and the warmth in them set a hundred butterflies loose in her stomach. “I am honored to do it.”
Seph missed sarcastic Alder, because she didn’t know what to do with the serious one. It felt like the ground was being pulled from under her feet. She lifted the goblet and took a small sip, more to give herself something to do—a distraction while she gathered her composure.
“Is your ability to transform into an animal very common?” she asked after a moment.
“Not really, no.” He took two steps to the table and refilled his cup. Water sloshed. “There are only a few of us who can.”
“You’re always a stag?”
“ Only a stag.” He set down the flagon. “I am a shifter. The ability manifests in youth, and honestly, the first time you do it is rather painful.” His gaze flickered to her, his brow furrowed as if his mind had briefly gone to some other subject entirely, and he lifted his cup and took another long sip.
“Are you still you when you’re in that form?” Seph asked carefully.
“Yes and no. I know my own mind, but my proclivities as a stag compete with my kith form, and the longer I remain a stag, the stronger those proclivities become.”
Seph remembered what he’d said before about how he’d stayed a beast for so long it’d frightened him. “Your hair is the exact same shade of black,” she added. “It even reflects the light in the same way. There’s almost a…burgundy hue to it sometimes. Your eyes are the same steel-gray too, and you still smell like…” the forest , she’d meant to say, but his lips were curling, and she felt a flare of heat all over.
She raised the cup to her lips again. “Anyway, how long have I been asleep?”
“Three days.”
Seph had expected him to say something along the lines of hours , and the cup froze at her lips as she gaped at him.
Alder gave her a stern look. “That arrow nearly killed you, Josephine. It was fatefully close to your heart.”
I had to cut out the arrow .
“I didn’t realize it was that serious,” she said.
“Oh, it’s worse. It was also enchanted to prevent your blood from clotting.”
Ah, that explained why her blood had flowed like a river.
“Thankfully, Sienne is a healer, which means she knows a good deal about unwriting those particular kinds of enchantments. Though there was a moment…” His voice trailed off, his brow creased, and his gaze flickered over her before he glanced away and took another sip of his water.
“And I imagine she also knows about Abecka by now,” Seph said quietly.
“She does.” His gaze settled back on her. “They all do.”
Worry needled at the back of Seph’s mind as their present circumstances drew into focus. She was still grieving the fact that she’d just lost her great-grandmother, but the people of Light had lost the queen they’d known much longer, and there was a subtle question in Alder’s tone that Seph didn’t much like. “Who will lead them?”
He studied her. “Who, indeed?”
Seph didn’t like the look on his face either—not at all. She felt a twitch of panic and she clutched the cup to her breast. “Certainly, they don’t expect me to…that I…” She let the unspoken question linger.
“You are Jakobián’s heir, Josephine.”
“Alder, I can’t stay here! I know I said that I’d stay and fight, but that was only because I couldn’t get through the Rift! Once we defeat this curse, and the Rift is safe for me to pass through, assuming I’m still alive by the end of it, I need to?—”
“Careful. You’re going to spill water all over yourself.”
Seph realized that, in her exasperation, she’d taken to pacing and waving her arms like a belligerent. She set the cup on the mantel over the hearth of embers. “Alder, I need to go back to Harran. To my family.”
“You can’t have a life there, Josephine. You know that.” He wasn’t saying it to be cruel. It was simply truth.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stay here!”
“Where do you intend to go?”
Seph’s chest rose and fell quickly, and she turned to face the embers, one hand braced upon the mantel. This conversation was making her alarmingly out of breath, and she knew it had to do with all the blood loss. “I don’t know. I’ll figure that out after, but I must return to my family. I can’t just abandon them—I won’t —and little Nora…” Seph chewed on her bottom lip. This wasn’t at all what she wanted to talk about right now.
Linnea’s words came back to haunt her. They’d cut at the time…because they were true. Seph didn’t disappear into the woods strictly for Nora. She went for her self too, for the freedom it afforded, for the solitude. What would be required of her if she inevitably stayed here? If the curse was eradicated and the war ended, and she made sure that her family was safe—what sort of life would Seph have in the Court of Light? One thing she knew for certain: she was so weary of others laying claim to her life.
“What if you brought your family here?” Alder asked, blowing right through the blockades of her resolve.
Seph snapped her gaze back to his. The idea sounded ludicrous to Seph, given their present circumstances. “Bring them here ? Well, that’s just…Alder, this entire conversation is absurd, and you know it!”
He raised a dark brow. “Do I?”
Seph faced him fully. “This is madness, Alder! You know what Abecka is— was —capable of…the kind of power she possessed. You saw it just as I did. That is what the people of Light need , and I can’t even read your damnable symbols!” Seph paused, finding herself quite out of breath again. She scowled at Alder. “Why are you smiling? This isn’t funny!”
“I know it isn’t.” He pressed his lips together, as if he were trying very hard to keep his smile from spreading wider.
“I’m not a child running away from responsibility, but I know my limitations, and this is beyond me.”
Alder did not appear to agree with her, and Seph couldn’t take it. It was too much and he was too handsome, and so she turned her attention back to the fire. Anywhere but at him. Her hands clenched the mantel, and her chest heaved. Then he was there, right behind her, but careful too, as though he were approaching a wild animal.
Now Seph was out of breath for an entirely different reason.
“I understand what it’s like to be given responsibility you don’t want.” His voice was low and so close that it felt like an embrace. “I ran from mine. As I said before, I hurt many in the process, and not a day goes by that I do not regret it.”
There was no humor in his voice now, and when Seph dared a glance back at him, he’d lost his smile. The embers from the hearth warmed his skin and softened all his sharp edges. Seph swallowed, hard.
“That’s different,” she said.
“How is that different?”
“ How is that different ? You were born here! You were raised here. You’re connected to your eloit in a way that I will never be?—”
“And you are connected to your humanity in a way that I will never be.” His eyes were blades as they cut back and forth between both of hers. He leaned forward just a hair, but it was enough to make Seph’s pulse skyrocket. “Josephine, do not think for a moment that you are less because you were not born in Canna, or…or that you’re incapable because you can’t command your eloit like Abecka could, but honestly, I believe even that’s just a matter of time. You’ve connected to your eloit faster than anyone I’ve ever seen, but that’s not why I want you to stay.”
Seph stared at him, heart pounding. “You want me to stay.”
A muscle flexed in Alder’s jaw, and then it was he who turned to face the embers. He rested a fist upon the mantel too, leaning against it, and Seph had the distinct impression he hadn’t meant to admit that.
Still, she waited, and she adjusted the neckline of her gown, which had slipped precariously over one shoulder in her fervor.
“We need your humanity, Josephine,” Alder said at last, his attention fixed on the fire. His words were an echo of Abecka’s. “That is far more powerful than any enchantment. Don’t believe me? Ask your grandfather. Ask him why this land was cursed in the first place. I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t for any lack of power.”
He was referencing the curse, of course, and why it had originated, but Seph already knew the answer: Canna had been given all the power in the world, and it had damned her in the end, because as Canna had grown inflated with pride, she’d lost her humanity.
“All I ask,” Alder continued quietly, “is that you do not dismiss the idea so easily.”
Seph mulled over his words. “When do they need an answer?”