Page 129 of The Arrow and the Alder

The two fell to the ground in a tangle, but Alder snatched the advantage first, grabbing Massie by the shoulders and slamming his own head against Massie’s. Massie crumpled, and Alder reached for the lapels of his overcoat, but Massie was fast.

He hadn’t become Queen Navarra’s high lord for nothing.

Massie grabbed a rock and slammed it across Alder’s jaw, and Alder saw stars.

He fell back as Massie scrambled out from under his hold, out of reach, and Massie found his sword just as Serinbor rushed him with a yell.

They were a clash of swords, giving Alder time to gather himself and retrieve his bow. Alder set the arrow and pulled back just as Massie knocked the sword from Serinbor’s grip, catching it mid-air. Massie’s lips curled as he gazed upon a weaponless Serinbor. “I’ll admit, I’m surprised to see you still trailing the Weald Prince like a shadow. I was certain you’d learned your less?—”

Alder released the arrow, and it sank into Massie’s thigh.

Massie hissed and staggered forward.

“Where is she, you bastard?” Alder demanded.

Massie smiled through bloodstained teeth. Serinbor tried to get nearer, but Massie whirled both swords. “You’re too late. You are…always too late. Too late for your people. Too late for the queen. You should have heard her screams?—”

Alder fired another arrow, right above the first. “I asked you a question, snake.”

Massie hissed through his teeth. “You’ll never reach her in time?—”

Alder fired a third arrow, which went right through Massie’s hand.

This time, Massie howled and dropped both swords to cradle his impaled hand.

“I can do this all day,” Alder said lowly as the battle raged all around them.

A scream cut through the din and reached Alder’s ears, echoing from one of the fortress’s towers. Serinbor met his gaze, fear mirrored in his, and a flush of heat enveloped Alder, disorienting him with its intensity. At first, he worried a depraved had raked its claws over his back, but then he realized it washerpain that he was feeling through the connection they shared.

Josephine.

“You see?” Massie continued staggering forward with blood trickling down his leg and hand. “It’s too late. You cannot possibly…save her, just as you failed…to save them.”

Seph’s world was light and fire and pain—excruciating pain, as if her bones had morphed into hot coals, melting all her organs. She had no concept of her body except for the agony coursing through every inch of her, and through her misery, through the haze of blinding white, a shadow crept into her periphery. Like a blot of ink upon a sheet of fresh vellum, what started as a dot began bleeding into the fibers, spreading outward until it formed a slinking, grotesque form.

Something…marginally human in shape, but bowed and hunched over, with rotting flesh and wisps of wiry black hair clinging stubbornly to its spongy skull. The figure had no eyes, only empty sockets, its lips were sewn shut, but its ears were large and grossly elongated, with unnatural spirals of cartilage that undoubtedly contributed to unparalleled hearing.

Give me the light!Pass your burden to meee now!The creature’s lips did not move, but it washervoice echoing in that space. The Fate of Sound. As if Sound could not hold to the projection of that formidable witch in this pure light, because the light burned away all her glamour, exposing her for the monster that she was.

Exposing truth.

Seph didn’t know what was happening, or how the Fate had found her in this strange plane of existence, but then the creature snapped its head to the right.

Something else had caught its attention. Something in the tangible world.

Seph was distantly aware of splintering wood and a thunderous crash. The inky, insubstantial creature screamed in fury and vanished like smoke. A second later, the light vanished too—the heat, the pain, all of it—and Seph blinked her eyes open to see the coat lying in a heap on the ground beside her.

But who…?

Seph spotted Serinbor magnificently wielding a sword against the bone-masked guards while simultaneously shooting darts from his vambrace. He was fighting to get to Evora—still glamoured as Alder and aiming an arrow at…

An enormous black stag.

Alder.

Seph sucked in a breath and her heart lurched. The Fate was tangled up in his impressive spread of antlers, so Evora could not get a clean shot. The Fate yelled in fury as Alder rammed her into a pillar with such force it cracked, splintering right up the middle, to the dome. Glass exploded, and a thousand shimmering daggers rained down.

It was just the distraction Seph needed.

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