Page 82 of The Arrow and the Alder

“I’ll do it,” Seph said suddenly, and they all looked at her.

“Josephine, no—” Alder started.

But Seph cut him off. “Abecka is right. We don’t have time to deliberate, and it’s worth a shot at the very least.”

“You don’t understand,” he said lowly, as if she were the only person in that room. “You have not grown up in our world, and you have no idea how dangerous enchantments can be.”

“Alder, this is quite—” Abecka started.

But Alder was undeterred. “You might be able to touch that coat, Josephine, but some enchantments are woven to deceive. They could be permitting you to touch the coat only so that this power can claim you. Possess you. Don’t do it—at least not until we know more.”

“You have grossly overstepped your bounds, young prince,” Abecka snapped. “She ismyheir, and if there were any signs of the forbidden arts in that coat, I would feel it.”

“Really?” Alder’s tone was acid. “Then it’s unfortunate you were not there to clear the accusations against my family.”

The silence that followed was so complete that one could have heard a pin drop.

But while they’d argued, Seph had made up her mind, and she grabbed the coat before anyone could stop her.

“Josephine—” Alder started.

But Seph was walking away from him, from them all. They didn’t have time to sit here and deliberate, andyes, Seph didn’t understand all the ways enchantments worked, but what shedidunderstand was that they had just two months now before this curse destroyed them. For that—for her family—she could try wearing the damned coat.

Seph slid her arms into the sleeves. Rys’s ring tingled against her chest as she pulled the coat over her shoulders, but then it wasn’t Rys’s ring giving her the sensation. It was the coat. Its…power. As if Seph had wrapped herself in a blanket of warm water. It seeped into her pores, where it coalesced behind her breast, though it wasn’t unpleasant. Just…different.

She looked at the four, who all stared at her with varying expressions. Basrain, with studious examination; Abecka, a mixture of relief and curiosity. Tyrin bore no emotion, he merely waited.

Alder, however, looked furious.

“It’s fine,” she said to him. “I’m fine.” She gazed down at the coat, at all those glittering enchantments that moved like rivers of gold over the fabric. “I can feel the power within it, but…” Seph blinked, and her body went rigid. “Oh!”

It was as though a miniature sun had erupted behind her breastbone. Liquid fire burned through her veins, her mouth tasted like ash, and blinding white light filled her vision so completely that she could see nothing else. It was everywhere—heat and white—as ifshewere the sun. As ifshewere light, and it was burning right through the impurity that was her curse-touched body.

Oh, sacred saints in heaven…

Thiswas the power that the others had not been able to touch—the one that had seared Abecka’s flesh and left it angry red and bubbling—and it was going to burn right through Seph’s body if she didn’t take this coat off immediately.

But Seph didn’t know how. She no longer had any control over her body, nor any awareness of it, except for the pain, and it wasexcruciating. Flame ate through muscle and sinew, melting her bones, and Seph’s consciousness slowly faded, retreating into the recesses of her mind.

Fading, and fading.

And fading…

Seph sensed movement outside of herself. Ice brushed her skin, and then every other sensation halted, holding her in a terrible limbo of fire and confusion. She felt momentarily airborne, insubstantial yet suspended in a sea of white, and then it was as though gravity clenched firm fingers around her body and yanked her right out of the heavens, pulling her down at a dizzying speed, back to the surface. The light vanished, the fire quenched. Seph wheezed as her lungs filled with air, and her vision returned to normal.

She was crouched on the floor, heaving and sweating. Her head spun violently right before she was sick all over the floor.

Someone pulled back her hair as she emptied her stomach, and once she had finished, she realized Alder was kneeling beside her. One of his hands held back her hair while the other rested upon her back, and the coat lay in a heap just a few paces away.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.

He sounded upset.

“I think so,” she managed. Memory of that searing pain left a hollow in her chest.

Still, Alder didn’t move, and his hand remained resolutely upon her back like an anchor holding her to the present. Abecka stood stone-still before them, her face blanched.

“What did you see, daughter of Light?” Basrain asked quietly.

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