Page 5 of The Arrow and the Alder

A lder had meant to knock on the door, to deliver the promise he carried, but hesitated when he’d heard the arguing.

And then he’d heard his name.

“The Weald Prince,” one of the women was saying. “The one who deserted his regiment and joined forces with the depraved.”

So this was how that slimy bastard was spinning it?

Fantastic.

The women kept talking, and Alder continued listening, crouched beneath their window. He was so caught up in their conversation and strained family dynamics that he didn’t register the rain, or the approaching footsteps, until the door was swinging open and a head of white hair stormed through.

Alder was really losing his touch.

He ducked into the pines for cover; thankfully, the girl’s fury kept her focus fixed. Otherwise, she would have spotted him.

Which was sort of the point, he reminded himself. She was the reason he’d come all this way, and there she was, standing not ten paces away. He should call out to her, hand off the ring and be on his way.

And yet…

He watched her standing there, rooted by emotion as she covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders slumped and chest heaved, as if the weight of responsibility were finally too much to carry.

Alder knew something about that.

Just as he knew that fury was another face of grief, and he didn’t want to add any more to it.

He could walk away and return at a later time. Give her the privacy she wanted—privacy she thought she had. Alder watched as she wiped her splotched cheeks, strode for the woodpile, and picked up the ax.

She was such a little thing, but she swung the ax around as if she’d done it a thousand times.

She probably had.

Again, Rys’s ring weighed heavily. Again, Alder could not convince himself to interrupt—especially not for this errand. Log after log, the girl cracked them open so that despair did not crack her open instead.

Alder knew something about that, too.

He watched her woodpile grow, until she set down the ax, wiped her brow, and looked to the trees where he’d stood, but he had already slipped away.