Page 125 of The Arrow and the Alder

Stay.

Her vision flashed.

She saw her grandfather, with his black hair and mischievous smile, walking down the stairs to intercept a group of distinguished-looking kith who waited at the entry. Children laughed and ran past, giving chase out of the atrium, nearly bumping into a servant carrying a tray of food. Music lilted from somewhere far away, like a memory, and then it all faded away like ghosts, leaving her with only shadow and mist and ruin.

Leaving her with the present.

Seph reached the platform, but the witch had not stopped. She passed briskly through a marble archway and into a long dark corridor that disappeared into shadow, where she stopped at a door.

It was wide and embossed with an elegant display of metalwork, like vines made of silvery white moonstone. The witch raised her palms, but she did not touch the door. She breathed out, and the vinesmoved. They untangled themselves, melting and pooling upon the marble floor into a puddle of liquid moonlight. The witch pushed the door in, stepped through the puddle, and where her feet touched, the white turned black, as though drops of ink had been spilt, curling and mixing into the white, corrupting it, before she ascended the narrow and winding stone stair on the other side.

Seph stepped over the puddle, feeling a strange hum of power, like a note slightly off-key, and ascended the stairs after the witch and Massie, with Fake Alder right behind her. The witch pushed through another door at the top of the steps and strode into a space that reminded Seph a little of Basrain’s tower, but smaller.

Like Basrain’s, this room was round and totally open to the elements, capped by a dome that had a hole at its center to let in the sunlight, except this dome was made ofglass. Stained glass, to be exact, and these pictures were much different from those in the atrium.

These told a story.

Of a star standing before three figures: one who possessed only a mouth, another ears, the last eyes.

The Fates: Speech, Sound, and Sight.

In the next image, the Fates of Speech and Sight walked on, but Sound remained, conversing with the little star.

Touching the little star.

The next image was of the star falling—colliding—with the earth in an explosion ofeloit, creating a crater and a very familiar arch at its center.

A chill swept over Seph, head to toe. Her gaze slid quickly to the next image, one of the little fallen star creating its kingdom, erecting a fortress—Süldar, it was unmistakable with its many spires—and flooding the land with her glorious light. But darkness seeped in, first at the periphery, then over the two princes depicted as bathing in vats of blood.

One of those princes wore a coat. Her grandfather’s coat.

Seph’s next breath lodged in her chest.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” the witch said rhetorically. She, too, was gazing up at the stained glass. “I gave her everything she wanted, but she could never quite shake her origins, though she tried. Even this place—her own personal sanctuary—was designed because she could not forget, could not stop pining for it, and she had hoped that putting the past here, giving it a safe place to exist, for her own enjoyment, would be enough. But once one tastes the power in the heavens, nothing in the world will satisfy.”

Seph stared at the witch, but the witch’s attention fixed on one image in particular: the one of Sound touching the little star.

Little star.

It was the name the witch had used to refer to Abecka, and also Seph.

Seph’s heart beat faster.

“Tell me,daughter of Light.” The witch said Seph’s title with a strong note of sarcasm. “Have you never wondered how the kingdom of Light became so powerful? Why they were given more than any other court?”

Seph’s breaths were coming in shallow gasps now.

The witch smiled at her, and the expression on her face was vicious. “You like stories, do you not? Let me tell you one that I daresay you have never heard before. Once upon a time, there was a little star. She gleamed bright and brilliant, watching all that transpired over kith and mortal worlds. Watchingrealstories unfold before her watchful eye.

“This little star grew discontented, no longer satisfied with watching others’ stories but wanting one of her own, and so one day, she visited the Fates. Of course, you know of the Fates.”

Seph stared at the witch while her entire body began to tremble.

A gleam lit the witch’s eyes. “That little star asked the Fates—the weavers of destiny, given their power by Demas himself—if they would weaveherdestiny into those of the kith below.”

Seph took the smallest step back. She was going to be sick.

The witch continued, delighting in Seph’s turmoil. “The sister of Sight told her no. That it was too dangerous to weave a celestial power with those born of dust. That mankind—both kith and mortal—were not designed to hold it, and it would overwhelm them in the end. But our dear little star was ever the determined optimist, and so she visited the sister of Speech.

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