Page 40 of The Arrow and the Alder

He laughed and said, “Here.” He leaned the bow against the tower and set the quiver full of white arrows beside it. “It’s yours if you want it. I should add that we’ll probably intercept depraved along our way, but if you are determined to leave your safety entirely up to my skills as an archer, that is between you and the Fates.”

At this pronouncement, her eyes lit with challenge, and she snatched the weapon.

She admired the pearlescent bow, trailing her fingers over the curves and enchantments with wonder. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Alder hadn’t either, and he felt a strange and unexpected pressure behind his rib cage.

She pinched the string between her injured fingers and pulled back, her only sign of discomfort a slight tick in her jaw. Emotion filled her eyes, pouring out of her veryself, and Alder stood momentarily transfixed.

He’d never known this—such pure and unadulterated joy. He wanted to catch it, bottle it up, and sit in its radiant glory for all eternity.

And then she aimed that joy at him. “Thank you.”

Alder turned abruptly away, hooked his bow and quiver across his shoulders, and picked up his pack. Lifting the flap, he dug through and tossed a hunk of bread at her. She barely caught it in time.

“We need to get moving if we’re to arrive before nightfall,” he said. “Stay close, and let me know if you spot any depraved.”

It was the most exquisite weapon Seph had ever seen. Well, perhaps the second, but only next to Marks’s bow, and she couldn’t recall the last time anyone had given her anything.

It had been hard for Seph to accept Marks’s gift, and she hadn’t meant to sound ungrateful, especially after he’d spent so much of his energy healing her last night—weariness still pulled at his shoulders. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something on the other side of his generosity. Some tally of debts he was secretly accruing, some tax she could not see.

You don’t trust anyone. Linnea’s words floated back to her.

Yes, and Seph still found it difficult trusting the kith who’d left Rys to die. And yet…she was faced with the hard reality that he hadnotleft her. He’d wanted to—threatened to, even—but he hadn’t. A little voice reminded her that it was only due to his bargain, but there’d been no bargain last night, and he certainly hadn’t handled her burn like a man concerned only for himself. No, he’d been tender with her, not once hesitating to do everything he could to stop the enchantment from consuming her flesh.

What a conundrum he was!

She knew there was more to the story of his escape with her brother, and perhaps she would ask him about it, but not yet. Right then, Seph was starved, so she ate the bread Marks had tossed at her. It was very old, and very stale, and it crumbled like sand in her mouth. Maybe Marks had found the bread in the cellar beside the bow? Nevertheless, she was thankful for it. She hadn’t eaten anything in…saints, had it been two days? The bread was hardly enough to satisfy, but Seph’s belly hadn’t been full in years. Hunger had become a constant companion, so she’d made her peace with it and learned to ignore its loud and persistent nagging.

She scoured their surroundings as they walked, trying to see if there might be any wild berries—anything at all—but the mist was too thick. It was like passing through a cloud, with the occasional spindly black tree standing like a ghoul, ready to lash out with its branches and consume her whole. She couldn’t see farther than a dozen paces in front of her, and the land shecouldsee was barren.

Most of her grandfather’s stories had been about Cannabeforethe curse, before mist and shadow and depraved had stripped it of color and life. She’d thought his words hyperbolic when he’d claimed Canna no longer had color, but now that she was here, in the daylight, she realized it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. There truly was no color in this place. It was a canvas of gray and black lines, like a sketch before an artist fills in the shapes with substance and hue. There were no signs of life either, nothing skittering across the ground or flying. Harran’s forest was always moving, always breathing, but this…this was a rotting corpse. Even the air smelled sour, like compost and decay.

Like death.

Seph remembered Milly’s vision. Was this what awaited Harran in only three months? Would there evenbea Harran by the time she figured out how to cross the Rift?

“Where are we, exactly?” Seph asked while they walked.

He glanced sharply back at her. “I thought you didn’t know these lands.”

“I knowofthem,” she said with conviction. “From my grandfather’s stories.”

Marks looked doubtful but turned his attention ahead again. “And what is it you know?” He might have said: What is it youthinkyou know?

“I know that there are—were—four kingdoms, or courts,” Seph replied, and she pushed back a crusty lump of hair that had dragged across her face. What she wouldn’t give for a bath. “Weald, Tides, Palisades, and Light. I know the kingdom of Light was cursed by the Fate of Speech as punishment for the cruelty and bloodlust of Light’s two princes. That Light collapsed into mist and ruin, and all of Canna’s other kingdoms have suffered ever since. That you are…I believe my grandfather said you are all losing your connection toeloit…?”

Seph gave Marks a moment to correct her, but he did not. His gaze remained fixed ahead, his pace steady.

She continued, “What Idon’tknow is where the kingdoms are in relation to one another, except for Light, which—I was told—sits at the heart of the others. And like a sick heart, it pumps its blight through the veins of the other kingdoms, and now it’s seeping into the mortal world.”

Again, Seph remembered Milly’s dream.

Again, Marks remained quiet.

“We’re walking through the Light Kingdom, aren’t we?” Seph asked.

Marks’s face tilted to a sky neither of them could see. “We are at the boundary, yes.”

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