Page 54 of The Arrow and the Alder
S eph opened her eyes to broad daylight streaming through the open oculus above. A cloudless blue sky nearly blinded her.
No.
This was not what she’d wanted at all. She’d thought the Fates had granted her wish, but here she was. Alive.
The dome still lay in ruin, but it was no longer clouded with mist or shadow. Everything was crisp and bright and pleasantly warm, and a pair of birds chirped as they darted past in bolts of red and yellow. Vines climbed up the pillars impossibly fast, wrapping affectionately around them while a rainbow of blooms burst forth. The air even smelled like Alder, like trees and fresh blooms and thunderstorms. A drapery of moss fell from the shattered dome and grasses sprang from the floor and rubble, as though a forest had just taken over everything, and if there was evidence of Massie’s bone-masked kith, Seph couldn’t see it. They were either gone or buried in green. She did spy Serinbor, however, curled upon the floor with a blanket of grasses covering his form, as though he were sleeping.
He’d come with Alder, to fight beside him in the end, and Seph would never know how?—
Her eyes caught on another form.
Alder .
He lay—as himself—naked and unmoving. A carpet of moss, enormous green leaves, and blooming flowers spread beneath him, as if the forest itself had made a memorial to this beautiful man.
Seph ran to him and dropped to her knees, touching his black hair and handsome face while her eyes filled with tears. “Alder…I’m so sorry. I tried?—”
His dark lashes fluttered, and Seph froze.
Hope was like a sun inside of her.
She pressed two fingers just below his jaw, checking for a pulse, and when it greeted her, she nearly fell over him with relief. “Thank you,” she cried out softly to the Fates. “Thank you…for saving him.”
Seph sat there a moment, silently praising the Fates for the gift they had bestowed, though she still felt the soft pang of regret—that he was kith and she mortal, so they could not be together for very long, but at least he lived .
Seph unwound the coat from her shoulders. The enchantments were gone now, the coat nothing more than a garment of plain wool. She was just draping it over Alder’s bare lower half when his hand weighed gently upon her arm.
Seph stilled and turned her face to find his steel-gray eyes gazing back at her.
His eyes were so full of emotion. “How am I alive?”
Seph smiled and wiped a tear. “The Fates gave you back your life.”
“The Fates?”
“The other two. Their sister—the one working with Massie—has been sent back to Demas, and the light has been restored. It’s over, Alder.”
His lips parted and closed, his gaze swept the space around them. A crease formed between his beautiful brows, and he looked so wonderfully charming, confounded as he was—and maybe even a little annoyed that he’d missed so much—that Seph chuckled and pressed her lips to that crease.
Which was when Alder reached up and traced his fingers over the bend of her ear. “Darling…”
His voice was low and urgent, and Seph followed his fingertips with her own, understanding at once what had stolen his attention.
Her ears…they were kith ears.
She gasped, her fingers stilled on the curve, just as Alder grasped a clump of her hair and held it before her eyes.
It was no longer white, but pale gold.
Their gazes met.
“The light was in me too,” she said. “Not just the coat.”
He looked as though he wanted to ask more, but closed his eyes and touched his forehead to hers instead. “I thought I’d lost you.”
For a long while, they simply sat like that—together, soaking in the beautiful blessing of this moment and silently praising the Fates for the future they had been granted.
Alder pulled back a little, just enough to look at her, and he trailed a fingertip down her face and over her lips. “I’m so scared someone is going to wake me up, and I’ll realize this is all a dream.”
“It isn’t.” She kissed his fingertip.
“So when you said you loved me, that wasn’t a dream either?”
Seph smiled through her tears. “No.”
He grinned wickedly. “Excellent.”
Something about the way he said it made her ask, “Why…?”
“Because I’d like to kiss you, and I didn’t want it to be a dream and have some idiot wake me in the middle of it.”
Seph laughed, and Alder slid his hand into her hair and captured her laugh with his mouth. She forgot all the rest, feeling as though the Fates had placed the light directly into her heart instead of giving it back to the world.