Page 44 of The Arrow and the Alder

“A bit of rain won’t kill us.”

“No, but lightning will. We’re completely exposed out here.”

“That didn’t seem to bother you last night.”

He’d meant to tease her, but his words came out sharper than intended. Josephine fell quiet, and when he glanced back, her lips were set in a firm line and she wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Which was for the best. They were nearly at their destination, where their paths would diverge.

Theymust. And she would agree once she discovered who he truly was.

They’d made it halfway across the moors before the clouds opened and rain fell in a torrent, soaking them both, and it didn’t fully relent until they crested the final ridge. Behind him, Josephine was waterlogged and shivering—still without complaint—her hair a blanket upon her back. Her boots made obnoxious squelching sounds as she followed him around a mound of granite boulders.

Where Alder stopped in his tracks.

The valley stretched below, hemmed in by the Minarets’ infamous jagged peaks, and at the heart stood the charred remains of the fortress. The towers were toppled and bridges collapsed, resting upon crumbling stone walls—all of it stained black from fire. Rainfall had flooded the surrounding lawn in many places, and old fence posts poked through the still water like gravestones, while a thin layer of mist hovered just above the ground, as though the spirits of the fallen had gathered there to haunt their final resting place forever. A single banner fluttered from the scorched parapets of the sole remaining spire, though most of that banner had disintegrated, leaving blackened threads to flap sadly in the wind.

A pit settled in Alder’s stomach, and he started running.

Marks half slid, half sprinted down the other side of the ridge toward the charred remains of the fortress.

“Marks, wait!” Seph yelled, running after him.

He didn’t slow, nor stop, his long legs carrying him farther and farther ahead of her. When he reached the bottom of their steep decline, he tore across the open field as though his life depended upon it, bounding through the puddles as if he did not feel them, his arms pumping him forward with singular purpose. Seph had no chance of keeping up.

Still, she ran after him while dread weighed heavier with every step. This had been his destination all along, and it was nothing more than an ashen grave.

Concerns over what came next mixed with rapidly growing alarm: who was he that he would live here? At afortress?

Wind became a lion, roaring through the valley as Marks disappeared through a gate that hung open upon broken hinges. Seph followed him into the vast courtyard a moment later, where she slowed to a halt.

Fragments of burnt and broken wood littered the cobblestone streets amidst scorched bones—human or kith, Seph didn’t know. A single statue remained standing at the center, but it was cracked and stained by flame, like some cruel eulogy to a once beautiful city. And from the statue, three bodies had been hung.

They were black skeletons now, all flesh and organs having burned away. A thin golden circlet crowned one of the skulls, though it too had been blackened and tarnished by flame.

Marks’s steps slowed as he stared, grief-stricken, at the bodies while Seph’s internal alarms blared.

He knew those bodies, and they had been very, very important to him.

Marks stopped at the base of the statue, where he dropped his bow and collapsed to his knees, as if he’d lost all strength to stand. To hold himself up. He gripped his chest with one hand, like the heart beating beneath ached too much to endure. Then he yelled—a tragic and agonizing sound that echoed devastatingly throughout the courtyard.

The sound tore at Seph’s own heart.

She never imagined that this kith couldfeelso much, that he was even capable of such sorrow, and she felt a prick of shame. Perhaps his bargains and boorishness were the only ways he knew how to shield himself against a world that kept trying to tear him down.

Seph knew something about that.

Marks’s yell wrenched into a sob and he dropped his head into his hands. Seph could only stare in anguish. Her eyes burned and her chest constricted, and she absently clutched Rys’s ring while she watched Marks grieve. His pain was so real, so raw, and so palpable, as if he’d transferred his grief into that thin layer of mist and Seph was breathing it into her body. Into the place where her own despair lay carefully tucked away.

Because she’d buried it there. Because she feared that if she took it out and gazed upon it, it would destroy her.

Seph considered going to him but stopped herself. She’d already crossed a line where intimacy was concerned, which he clearly hadn’t appreciated. He’d hardly spoken to her since. So instead, she gave him privacy and space, and walked on. At least walking gave her something to do, something to distract herself, especially from her own grief. Her gaze absently skipped the debris, the burnt buildings, and the gray clouds above while the wind stole through the courtyard and rang a single hollow note, like a dirge. Her hair whipped across her face, and she was just brushing it aside when she spotted the glimmer of light upon her bow.

One of the enchantments was glowing.

Seph frowned, her heart skipped its next beat, and she withdrew an arrow on instinct. She scanned the ruins and sky, but as far as she could see, there was nothing—nothing but the wind, Marks, and three charred corpses.

Still, the glow persisted.

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