Page 86 of The Arrow and the Alder

She stopped clawing at the shackles of his hands, instead reaching up her bodice to slide her fingers to where Rys’s ring pulsed like an alarm. She didn’t know if this would work, but she had to try.

With a last burst of strength, Seph ripped the cord from her neck and pressed Rys’s ring to Alder’s chest.

Light flashed, flesh seared. Alder roared and reared back, but it was enough. Seph scrambled out from underneath him and to the bed, where she slipped Rys’s ring onto her finger, snatched up Alder’s bow, nocked an arrow, and whirled around right as Alder drew to full height and turned on her.

But he did not take a single step in her direction. The moment was frozen, with her holding that arrow aimed decidedly at his chest—the ring had branded a circle into his skin—while he stood there, panting as fast as a dog, his hands flexed at his sides with unspent violence.

But still, he didn’t move toward her.

Lantern light gilded his tall and naked body, but Seph fixed her attention only on his eyes, the crimson glow within them, as if she might pull the real Alder out of them by sheer will. The moonstone enchantments upon his bow flared with power, though Seph kept that arrowhead stubbornly pointed at his chest. She didn’t want to fire it at him, but she would, and she stared straight at him, into the burning crimson, holding his gaze. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.Fight this, Alder.Come back to me!”

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, that crimson light began to dim.

Alder shook his head like a beast trying to dispel flies. “Get out of here,” he growled.

“I am not leaving you.” She took a step toward him, bow still raised.

He panted, his body twitched and flinched, and his face turned sharply away, as if he could not bear to look at her.

Seph took another step, and another.

“Leave,” he snarled with a mark of desperation.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Prince of Weald.” Seph stopped before him. She pressed the arrowhead to his chest, just as she’d done in the training yard—against his new branding, firmly enough that the burn dimpled—but she wanted him to feel the prick of it; she wanted him to remember. She wanted to bring him back.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he managed in a broken voice.

And Seph knew then thatthiswas the driving force behind his behavior toward her since the very first day she’d met him. This was the reason for every clipped word and action, and for the story he’d given her and Abecka’s elders. “Then don’t.”

He squeezed his eyes tight.

Seph couldn’t say what propelled her to do it, but she lowered the bow, inch by inch. She watched him closely with every move she made as she carefully removed the arrow, set both arrow and bow upon the floor before pressing her palm to his chest instead, over the place the ring had burned him.

Alder sucked air through his teeth. His body coiled like a drawn bowstring, his hands clenched and unclenched, and Seph was ready to dodge if she must. His skin was slick with sweat and as hot as flame, and Seph was very aware of all that power—all that masculine strength—roiling just beneath her fingertips. It was terrifying, really, but despite her gnawing fear, she wanted him to feel her touch, herhumanity.

They stood there like that, with her palm to his chest, until his breathing slowed and evened, until those shapes stopped slithering beneath his skin. Until his features relaxed and his posture uncoiled. Until his eyes opened and the gray was calm again.

Alder’s shoulders expanded with a long breath, and he slumped to his knees with defeat, head in his hands.

Seph’s heart squeezed as she tiptoed to the bed and snatched the blanket. She brought it back to him and draped it over his bare shoulders.

Over his nakedness.

Seph didn’t know what else to do or what to say, and so she did the only thing she could think of: she sat down beside him. It was what she used to do with Nora when her strength had depleted and she’d slipped into that dark pit of despair. Seph would sit with her, lending Nora whatever strength she could give, usually through story.

Seph decided to tell Alder a story now, since one suddenly—perfectly—came to mind. “My grandfather once told me the story of a child only half born.” Alder didn’t respond, so she took this as permission to continue. “Morat, the god of the underworld, had not wished for this child to be born, for it was said that the child would be Morat’s undoing. And so as Demas set this particular spirit in the kith realm, Morat tried to pull her back. Of course, Morat cannot reverse Demas’s will, but his attempt ripped the child’s soul in two. Half went to the underworld; half remained in the kith realm.”

Here, Seph paused. Still, Alder didn’t move, didn’t speak, but his breathing evened more. Seph resisted the urge to comb her fingers through his glossy hair, as she would’ve done to Nora, but, oh, how she wanted to, and her fingers twitched with unspent desire.

“The child grew up with two contrasting spirits. One touched by Demas, one touched by Morat. Her parents didn’t realize this, of course. Not in the beginning. They saw only a physical variation: one of the child’s eyes was a clear and brilliant blue, the other black as a moonless sky. But as the child grew older, the nursemaids brought startling reports. Some days, when the child saw the world through her blue eye, she exhibited wisdom beyond her years. But other days, when the child gazed through her black eye, she committed such atrocities that her parents didn’t believe them, until the day they watched their daughter ripping apart a rabbit with her teeth.”

Still, Alder kept quiet, but Seph knew she had his attention.

“As the child grew, the devilry became more dangerous, more deadly, and the parents feared they’d need to end the child’s life. The father had just made the decision to kill the child in her sleep when a Fate visited him in his dreams. ‘Do not take her life,’ said the Fate, ‘but instead remove the part that causes evil.’”

This time, Seph couldn’t help herself. She reached out and ran her fingers through Alder’s hair. It was damp with sweat, and thick. So thick and velvety soft.

Alder inhaled one deep and steady breath, but still, he didn’t speak, and he did not push her away.

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