Page 68 of The Arrow and the Alder

“Good. Now close your eyes and shoot the damned target.”

Seph silently fumed at him, then turned away and set her arrow upon her bow. She didn’t do it because he told her to. She did it because he believed she couldn’t. There was a difference.

Your eyes deceive you,he’d said.Trust your instinct.

Seph closed her eyes, trying to imagine the orb in her mind, which was difficult because her thoughts were fire. The training yard remained silent, and the seconds stretched. Seph flexed her fingers around the grip.

“This is impossible,” she hissed.

“It only seems that way because you haven’t done it before.”

“I haven’t done it before becauseit cannot be done.”

“That’s a lie you’re telling yourself to alleviate the pain of your own failing.”

“And you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“Shoot the arrow, Josephine.”

Seph pressed her lips together. She tried to get a sense for the target, but there was nothing. The only thing she couldsensewas the Weald Prince beside her, and she had half a mind to shoothim, which made her wonder if this wasexactlywhy he’d made the bargain. He’d known full well the day was coming when she’d want to shoot him right through his black and withered heart. “I can’t do this!”

“Yes, you can.”

“Why are you telling me that I can while also telling me to leave?”

“Because you don’t want to leave,” he said fiercely. “And you will never forgive yourself if you do.”

His words stopped her cold.

Seph cracked her eyes open only to find him staring straight back, his gaze as fierce as his tone had been.

“You don’t want tosurviveanymore; you want tolive,” he continued through his teeth. “You want to face your enemy directly and end this war, because you are so tired of running and hiding, and you would rather die free than endure that prison of existence in Harran, and so I will tell you again: shoot—the—damned—target.”

Seph stared up at him, her heart pounding, her legs trembling. His words were like the arrow in her hands, sharp and straight and piercing—right into her heart.

How did he see her so clearly?

Especially when she had missedhimso completely? Saints, she was a fool.

There was a challenge in his eyes, and something else Seph could not read, but it made her blood run hot, and so she closed her eyes. She shut them tight and steadied her breath, and she tried to ignore the feel of himright there. She imagined the orb floating at the center of the training yard, tried to imagine its exact placement, and then she released the arrow.

She didn’t need sight to know that she’d missed. Something clattered, and Seph opened her eyes again to see her little arrow drop to the stones while the orb raced toward her. She tried to jump out of the way, but the orb struck her spine and dissolved into a cloud of tremors and electricity as Seph cursed and winced.

Alder appeared entirely unaffected by her pain. “Again.”

Seph glowered. “This is ridiculous! No one can?—”

Alder whirled away from her and drew his own arrow from the quiver at his back. He dragged the fletching across his lips then set the arrow and pulled. But he did not raise the bow.

He closed his eyes instead.

The moment held and expanded as he breathed in deeply, as if breathing the surroundings into himself. Every scent, every taste, every sound. If he’d come to her home in Harran as he was now, she would have known at once that he was kith royalty. Authority seeped out of his pores and his bearing, the kind of self-possession that came only with years of strict tutelage given to the highborn.

Alder tipped his head a fraction, as if listening to the world around him. His tapered ear twitched just slightly. Seph would not have noticed had she not been watching him so closely, and in one swift motion, Alder raised the bow and fired.

The arrow struck its target right at its heart. The orb sizzled as it vanished, Alder’s silver arrow dropped, and another orb appeared.

Seph was still reeling from her surprise when Alder withdrew another arrow from his quiver—eyes still closed—set, pulled, and fired. This orb met the same fate as the first. He did it again, and again, never once missing his mark, and when two appeared, somehow he knew, then drew two arrows, nocked them both, and fired.

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