Page 57 of The Arrow and the Alder

One month later …

A lder watched Josephine gaze upon the door of her home in Harran, her breath rising in a cloud before her. Snow dusted everything, draping this little mortal village in white. It was a sharp contrast to the warmth of Weald they’d enjoyed these past few weeks.

He wasn’t used to the cold anymore.

He’d drawn his hood to hide his ears, and Josephine had done the same. Just to be safe. Neither of them had any idea what to expect on this side of the veil. Yes, the war was over, but the kith had used mortals for too long. The road to healing would be arduous as they untangled all of the trauma that mortals had endured at kith hands. It was a soil choked with weeds and thorns, and it would take time to till them all away, to soften the earth so that it could be ready for them to plant new seeds.

“Are you all right?” Alder asked, studying Josephine.

She stared at her home, unblinking and un moving , but Alder suspected what had rooted her feet.

It was hard to come home when one had left as a very different person.

He grabbed her hand and gave it a good squeeze. “Josephine, you took on a Fate with your bare hands. You can face your family.”

Josephine inhaled deeply. She didn’t look so sure.

“Would you like me to wait here?” Alder asked softly.

“No.” She shook her head. “Just…please don’t put a tree in the middle of the house.”

“Do you know, that’s actually a fantastic idea…”

She gave him a look, and he smiled, taking a small step closer as he cupped her chin. His powers had dimmed, somewhat, insofar as them bleeding out of him without his being aware of it. He could still grow a forest with the mere flick of his fingers, but at least he was no longer sprouting trees in their bedchamber. It’d made that glorious part of their relationship…exciting, to say the least.

“Come on, love,” he said, planting a soft kiss upon her beautiful mouth. “You’re stalling.”

He tugged her forward, holding tight to her hand as they trudged up the small steps to the door. Josephine raised a hand to knock but froze when voices sounded on the other side.

Male voices.

Alder eyed her, waiting for her direction, when she suddenly released his hand, threw back her hood, and shoved in the door.

Two men glanced up from the table, one old and one young, and both carried such strong hints of Rys that Alder’s chest constricted. It had to be Ronan and Levi, Josephine’s father and younger brother. Ronan’s hair was fully silver, and though Levi’s was black and long and pulled back into a knot at his nape, it showed a few sprigs of age. Undoubtedly from the war. Alder was so thankful they were alive. Josephine could find relief in this, at least.

But neither man had noticed Alder. Their gazes were fixed on the trembling and unexpected visitor standing just inside their doorway.

And Josephine suddenly burst into tears.

“Sephie…?”

Alder wasn’t sure who spoke first, her father or Levi, but then Levi was bounding from the table, wrapping Josephine in his arms. The father limped after them—it looked like he’d sustained a knee injury—but then he was there too, embracing them both.

The scene was so beautiful, so poignant and personal, that Alder considered slipping outside to give Josephine privacy. But he couldn’t get his feet to move. This was the kind of reunion he’d wished for with his own family, and while that’d been stolen from him, it was as though the Fates were gifting him a piece of it, through Josephine.

She was his family now, and he shared in her joy of this moment as if it was his own.

“You’re alive,” her father whispered through his tears, stroking her hair. “I thought for certain we’d lost you…”

His voice trailed off as he suddenly noticed Alder. Levi did too.

“I say, what is going on over there?” a woman’s voice echoed from the next room. “Nora is trying to sleep—” Josephine’s mother appeared in the doorway and stopped in her tracks.

She glanced from Josephine to Alder, who stood just inside their front door. Recognition slowly dawned, and then she seemed trapped somewhere between wanting to embrace her daughter or beat Alder out of the house with a broomstick.

“What is he doing here!” The mother pointed a furious finger at Alder, who fought very hard not to smile.

Josephine extracted herself from her father and Levi and wiped her tears. “Mama.”

This one word seemed to tip her mother’s scales of justice in favor of joy for her daughter, and the woman ran at Josephine in a flurry of tears and waving hands before she wrapped Josephine in a suffocating embrace. “You ridiculous girl!” her mother wailed. “Have you any idea how worried I’ve been? After what happened to the baron’s guard, and then you and the baron disappeared…it’s been months, Josephine! You haven’t sent a single word, and we’ve been left to think the worst…” The woman’s voice trailed off as she sobbed into Josephine’s shoulder.

Linnea appeared then, standing in the doorway to the other room. Another little girl peeked out from behind her legs, eyes bright and giving Josephine the largest, toothiest grin Alder had ever seen. This had to be Nora, Josephine’s youngest sister.

Linnea took one look at Josephine and crumbled, leaving Nora leaning on the doorpost as she ran at her older sister in one huge heaving sob, and Josephine’s expression broke all over again.

“What happened to your hair, Sephie?” the mother said once the tears became manageable. She stroked Josephine’s hair, then froze, her gaze fixed on Josephine’s ears, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

“Mama…” Josephine said, placating, as the woman took the smallest step back.

Alder saw the hurt flicker across Josephine’s face, and he took an involuntary step forward.

Which caught the mother’s attention.

She glared accusingly at Alder. “You did this! This is all your fault! You selfish?—”

“Mama…” Josephine interrupted.

But the woman wasn’t done. “Brutish boor of a man! How could you do this to her?”

If only she knew what else he’d done with her daughter…

“ Mama ,” Josephine tried again, grabbing her mother’s hands firmly. “Meet Alder Marcus Tiridium Vetiver of Asra Domm, ruler of the Weald Court.”

The mother gasped. Alder couldn’t tell if it was one of surprise, amazement, or disgust. Probably all three. “You’re a kith? And a…a king ?”

“ And my husband.”

Josephine’s first claim had silenced them, but her second stole every breath from the room, so no one missed the soft laughter coming from the corner.

Where a very old man sat in his chair, his eyes open wide and smiling.

Memory punched Alder through the chest. Of course, Alder had been a boy when he’d last seen the prince of Light, and Jakobián had not looked so… old . The years had not been kind to his body, but his eyes held verve and a joy that Alder had only ever witnessed in this old kith’s granddaughter.

It made Alder smile.

“You are the very last person I expected to see walk through my door, young Vetiver,” Jakobián said to Alder, though he coughed in between words.

“Jakobián. It has…been a while.”

Josephine’s eyes widened as she looked between Alder and her grandfather.

“You know each other?” Ronan asked, every bit as bewildered as the rest of them.

Jakobián pressed his hands to the armrests and tried to push himself to a stand. The mother and Linnea rushed to his side, but he waved them off with a “ Bah !”

Alder’s lips curled, but his smile slowly faded as Jakobián finally stood and started dragging his old and unsteady feet toward Alder.

Then Alder begun to feel worried.

Josephine must have been worried too, because she rushed to her grandfather and held on to him as he continued toward Alder. Unlike the others, Jakobián did not push her away.

“Yes, I know him…” Jakobián said. “He was just a wisp of a boy last time I saw him, but I would recognize Navarra’s offspring anywhere.”

Jakobián stopped before Alder while holding on to Josephine for support. “Not such a wisp anymore, are you?” His gaze trailed over Alder’s length. “You took my Josephine, did you now?”

Alder’s gaze caught Josephine as he answered, “You make it sound as though I’ve abducted her.”

Jakobián raised a bushy white brow. “Haven’t you?”

“Grandpa,” Josephine cut in, “he did not abduct me. I…found someone that I could not live without.”

Jakobián looked at his granddaughter, then at Alder. “And it had to be him .”

Josephine looked as though she was about to say more, to defend Alder, but Jakobián smiled and winked.

Then, thoughtfully, he said, “I suppose the apple does not fall so far from the tree, after all. We have a lot to talk about, I imagine.”

Josephine smiled as she took in each member of her family until her gaze rested upon Alder. “Yes. Yes, we do.”