Page 55 of The Arrow and the Alder

A lder did not know how long he lay tangled with Josephine upon the moss-covered floor, kissing her thoroughly, but a throat cleared, cutting it far too short.

Dammit.

“I thought you said this isn’t a dream,” Alder grumbled against Josephine’s lips.

She chuckled and pulled away, and Alder was about to pull her right back to him when he spotted the militant man standing at the exit, wearing the familiar colors of Weald and an astonishing amount of depraved blood.

Alder thought it suited his uncle nicely.

“Ah, Uncle.” Alder begrudgingly pushed himself to his elbow, though the taste of Josephine lingered on his lips. “Josephine, meet my uncle. Lord Hammerfell.”

Josephine blushed and—unfortunately—extricated herself from Alder’s arm as she stood. “It is good to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” Lord Hammerfell replied tightly, eyeing her head to toe, as if he were comparing the figure before him to the one his mind had composed based on Alder’s description. He looked sharply at Alder. “Did you do this?” He gestured grandly at the room.

Which was when Alder realized it was drowning in foliage.

At first, Alder was confused, but then his mind caught up. He remembered how Canna had been before the curse infected them all. When their rulers had been knitted with the very land, chosen by Demas to heal it, see it flourish.

It was how Canna had been built, every city, every impressive structure.

Of course, that’d all changed when the curse descended. Whatever unique ties Canna’s rulers had been given were severed, the curse obscuring their connection, tainting it. Weakening it.

Alder remembered when he was a boy, how his mother—being tied to Weald—had the unique ability to make things grow. To heal scars, to change the landscape. To build a fortress out of rock. But once the curse arrived, she’d lost those powers, instead using everything she could just to hold it back from Weald, to keep the mist from infecting what remained.

Had the Fates granted him the power his mother and ancestors had possessed?

Even as Alder wondered, as he gazed about him in awe, he felt a rush of eloit leave his body. The tiles cracked open and a sapling sprung out of them, growing and reaching and spreading into an alder tree with impossible speed, until it created a lush canopy over them all.

“Good gods!” Alder jumped to his feet, realizing—too late—that the coat Josephine had draped over his lower half had slipped from his body. He stood naked, and while this did not particularly embarrass him, it certainly embarrassed Josephine, and her cheeks turned a brilliant shade of red before she picked up the coat and held it out to him.

He considered refusing it, just so that he could enjoy the color upon her face a little longer, and he would have done just that if his uncle also weren’t standing right there .

“Thank you, darling,” he said instead, taking the coat and putting it on, which was when he spotted Serinbor lying upon the tiles beneath the tree, curled up with a blanket of grasses as though he were sleeping.

“Serinbor…” Alder bounded over the rubble and vines to get to his friend, silently praying he only slept. That Serinbor lived.

Alder dropped to his knees beside him. Dried blood caked Serinbor’s brow, and a dark patch stained his vest, and Alder pleaded to every god he could think of as he checked Serinbor’s pulse.

“Oh, thank the Fates…” Alder heaved his relief, now checking for any point of injury or obstruction.

“He’s alive?” Josephine asked with surprise, crouching beside him.

“Yes, his pulse is faint, but if we could just…” Alder considered all the foliage, and the new power he’d been granted. Eloit practically hummed beneath his skin, impatient to be used. Alder didn’t doubt his body would adjust to it in time, that the eloit would eventually calm to something more reasonable, but for now…

Alder placed a hand over Serinbor’s brow, closed his eyes, and murmured a word of transference. Something that would press some of Alder’s overly-abundant eloit into Serinbor, as he’d done for Josephine’s burn, but Alder’s power was so potent, he’d barely finished speaking before Serinbor’s body spasmed with a fit of coughing.

Alder could have cried with relief.

Serinbor’s eyes opened as Alder helped him sit, helped extract all the vines that had tangled themselves with Serinbor’s arms and legs. And when Serinbor finally ceased coughing, he glanced about him, at this glorious arboretum. His gaze trailed the alder tree’s branches, down its massive trunk and then settled—and narrowed—on Alder himself.

“Dammit, Alder. Why do you always have to be such a showoff?”

Alder laughed, though Josephine looked uncertain until Serinbor’s lips stretched into a smile, and then she laughed too.

“Here, let me help you,” Alder said, gripping Serinbor’s hand and helping him to his feet. Then he embraced his old friend.

He thanked the gods when Serinbor returned it. Alder knew it wasn’t perfect, but it was a start at least.

“What’s the situation outside?” Alder asked as they pulled apart.

Lord Hammerfell’s mouth parted and closed as if he could not find the right words to explain. “I think you might come and see for yourself.”

The four of them left that sanctuary of green only to find that Alder’s power, apparently, had not ceased there. Vines draped from Süldar’s halls, and moss carpeted the floors. Swollen green buds bloomed as he walked past, dripping with every hue imaginable, completely burying the nightmare that had existed for so long.

“You’re not doing this on purpose?” Josephine asked.

He plucked one such bud, watched it bloom violet. “No.” He brought it to his nose and breathed it in before rolling the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “That is to say, I feel connected to my eloit in a way I’ve never felt before.” A burst of eloit left his body again, and he watched as a carpet of moss spread out before them. “Though I am not consciously doing any of this.”

“Mm,” Serinbor drawled dubiously.

Lord Hammerfell stepped over a clump of colorful mushrooms that had sprouted from the tiles. “It seems Weald is celebrating your return.”

“Well, let us hope it does not celebrate too much longer. This is a bit excessive.” Alder eyed another alder tree that had sprouted amidst the tiles. It stretched taller until it touched the high ceiling, where it spread out its branches, looking very much as though it’d grown first and this fortress had been built around it.

“Y know, Alder, if I didn’t know any better, I might think you were trying to take over my kingdom,” Josephine mused.

“It’s certainly more cheerful, don’t you agree? It was so dark and dreary before…”

She smiled as they stepped through the main doors and outside into the courtyard, where Alder slowed to a halt. Josephine stopped beside him.

Süldar itself had not changed. The fortress was still a crumbling ruin, but there was no mist, no darkness or depraved. A brilliant blue sky stretched above, and an unfiltered sun burned bright and defiant. The air felt warm and glorious, just as it had been all those years ago. Grasses sprouted from the cracks between cobbles, vines crawled over the rubble, wrapping around old statues, and a few warriors jumped back as a massive pine erupted in the place they had just been standing.

“It’s gone.” Alder’s voice had fallen out at a whisper, while he soberly gazed upon the world around them. At the remnants of a battle they had won, and those they’d lost in their desperate charge toward victory.

There were a few dead kith amongst the rubble, many wearing the colors of Weald, though some wore the silver of Light. The living picked through the rubble, looking for those who might be alive but were too weak to call for aid, and though the sun was bright, a heavy solemnity fell over everything.

Still, there were not as many dead as there could’ve been, and Alder praised the Fates for that, though one piece remained glaringly absent. “Where are the depraved?”

Lord Hammerfell’s gaze settled upon a handful of haggard-looking kith wearing scraps of clothing, a lost look about them. “Most disintegrated in the blast of light that came from the tower. The rest…it seems they were given back their kith or human forms, though they’re having a difficult time adjusting.”

Josephine took a small step forward, gazing across the courtyard, at the men and women who were trying to pick up the pieces. “Then we will help them,” she said, turning those summer-sky eyes boldly back at Alder. “We will help them reintegrate into society, and we will give them a home.”

Alder knew well how Josephine felt about rulers and ruling, but Fates if she did not look and speak like a queen—the kind the people needed .

The kind he needed.

Alder grabbed her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. “ We most certainly will.”