Page 122 of The Arrow and the Alder

The witch’s eyes were huge, reflecting the prism of color within the satchel, as she waited.

And waited.

The witch’s triumphant smile faltered, and Massie took a step nearer.

“Did it not work?” he asked lowly.

The witch’s lips pinched together. “This is the real coat, is it not?”

“It is,” the impostor replied in Alder’s voice—a voice that had become so dear to Seph that it was difficult hearing it now, through the lens of a traitor. She had to keep reminding herself that it wasn’t actually therealAlder who was speaking.

The witch glared at the coat. “Then why isn’t it working?” she snarled through her teeth.

Just then, another bone-masked kith stepped through the tent flap. “Excuse me, Your?—”

The witch screamed in a fury and thrust a bolt of burning green light at the new kith. The bolt shot through his chest like a spear, his body went as rigid as a board, and he collapsed, dead.

The witch strode right over the dead guard as she stormed to the exit but paused there. “Bind the princess and gather your things,” she said without turning. “We leave for Süldar within the hour.” And then she was gone.

They’d been riding through the mist for what felt like hours. Seph couldn’t tell. Her present circumstances had plunged her into a haze of despair. Rasia was all right, but bound and sharing a mount with one of the bone-faced kith. The witch wasn’t about to let her go, now that she knew Rasia was a scryer, and she occasionally asked Rasia to check their surroundings, to see if they were being followed.

But who could follow them in this?

Even without Abecka’s and Milly’s visions, Seph could tell the curse was worsening—and fast. The air smelled strongly of rot, something like ash floated from a sky she couldn’t see, and oftentimes, as they wove through impenetrable mist and forest, a tree would topple and crash to the forest floor. One nearly fell right on top of her, and when it struck the ground, its trunk broke open like a rib cage and thousands of maggots and centipedes crawled out of it.

Time was short now.

As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, Seph struggled from another torment: sharing a mount with Fake Alder.

They’d shackled her wrists with scrappers and bound her mouth so that she couldn’t spew all her vitriol over the impostor seated behind her. His thick arms were around her waist, holding her to him, and she hated every inch of her body that met every inch of his.

She hated how it confused her.

By the end of the second day, they reached Süldar. The old capital of Light had been a fortress, but the curse had ripped it apart, leaving a stone-wrought skeleton behind. Broken towers stabbed upward through the fog like masts in a cloud, and windows gaped open like rictus mouths. Shadows moved within the mist above, never coming into view but sliding just beneath the surface, like evil spirits trapped behind the corporeal veil of the present world as a rhythmic clanging echoed.

The moonstone mines.

Where Alder and Rys had been imprisoned.

Why did the witch bring them here––to this haunt of the past sitting like a beacon of evil among the mists?

The witch tipped back her head and let loose an animalistic cry. The mist swirled and churned with her inhuman screech, and some of the shadows lurking behind the veil pushed through in a terrifying mass of wings and claws.

Three depraved descended, landing prostrate before the witch. Seph spied a branding upon their backs—the same marking she’d spied on the depraved in Asra Domm’s courtyard.

Saints in heaven…

Shewastheir master. Alder’s suspicions were correct. This witch was the force that helped Lord Massie rise to power, and Massie…

All this time, he’d capitalized upon the people’s fear, blaming Alder and his family to distract everyone from his own involvement.

The witch leapt down from her horse with impossible grace and power, and when her feet touched down, Seph could’ve sworn the ground shook. As if trembling beneath this great defiler, this consumer of souls, and wishing to expel her from its surface.

Her empty black eyes slid from one prostrate depraved to the next, observing them like a mother might her children.

“Did you take care of them?” the witch asked.

The depraved hesitated.

---