Page 46 of The Arrow and the Alder

“What is that?” Seph frowned, approaching to get a better view of the marking upon the beast’s neck that she hadn’t noticed before. Some branding, seared into its flesh, that left a hairless pucker of silvery scar tissue in the shape of two kissing hemispheres with a vertical axis running between them.

“The mark of the one who is leading them,” Marks said lowly. He lifted his boot and scanned the rest of the carnage.

“Is it Prince Alder? Is he the one who?—”

“No. I don’t know who’s leading them, but Massie is blaming?—”

Thwick.

An arrow sank into the depraved corpse that lay at Marks’s feet, and Marks froze.

“Not another move,” said a man’s voice. A dozen hooded figures dressed in forest green emerged from the shadows and surrounded them completely. Half of them held bows, but Seph couldn’t see their faces. They were veiled in green cloth veined in gold, reminding Seph of giant maple leaves.

Where had they come from? Hadtheysent the depraved?

Was this…the depraved’s leader?

“Drop your weapons,” commanded the same voice. It echoed from everywhere, making it impossible for Seph to pin the source. “I will not ask again.”

Seph watched Marks, who flexed his fingers around the grip of his bow while a furious vein throbbed at his temple. At last, he growled and begrudgingly let his bow fall. Wood clattered upon stone, and his surrender echoed throughout the courtyard with one final cry of resistance.

“Who are you?” the same voice demanded.

“Show your face, and we’ll talk.” Marks’s shrewd gaze slid from mask to mask as if he too could not determine who had spoken.

This time, one of the figures stretched out an arm. The extended hand curled into a fist, and Seph noticed the vambrace, and the little black darts affixed to the wrist, which was aimed at Marks.

“We’ll talknow.” The voice did not echo this time, and it irrefutably belonged to the figure with the outstretched arm. “And you can begin by explaining why you have brought amortalinto Asra Domm.”

Asra Domm?

Seph’s pulse skipped. Asra Domm was the capitol of Weald, where High Lord Massie was from, which meant these ruins had been the fortress and home of the queen and Prince Alder.

Where Marks was, apparently, from.

Seph’s attention cut to Marks, who stared only at the veiled figure with fury in his eyes, and his fingers flexed.

“Ah, I see.” The figure turned his aim upon Seph.

Seph forgot to breathe.

“Wait.”

The objection hadn’t come from Marks; it’d come from another one of the figures—a woman, judging by the lilting alto of her voice. She stepped forward and stopped beside the man with the outstretched arm, then she placed her hand over his wrist and the darts.

“What are you doing?” the man hissed at her.

But the woman appeared to be in a daze. She took slow steps forward, placing herself between Marks and their leader.

“Evora!” the man spat at her, but she ignored him. Her attention fixed only on Marks, who’d gone inhumanly still.

He knows her too,Seph thought.

The woman—Evora—stopped before Marks and waved her hand before her face. The green-and-gold leaf mask dissolved into thin air. Kith ears peeked through long strands of auburn hair that framed a fierce yet elegant face, and the woman’s hazel eyes filled with emotion as she beheld the wild man before her. “It cannot be…”

Marks visibly trembled. Seph wondered who she was to him, and he to her—was this…his wife? Seph felt the strangest and unexpected prick within.

Slowly, Evora reached for Marks, and Marks did not stop her. All the courtyard watched in silent apprehension, especially Seph, as Evora pressed her palm to Marks’s cheek, as her eyes slid over his face and beard like she was trying to make sense of it—of him. Of the man she felt so certain lay beneath the savage, and then her expression broke as she whispered, “Alder.”

---