Page 95 of The Arrow and the Alder

They exchanged a glance.

“Maybe there’s a satchel around here somewhere,” Seph said.

“We must be quick about it.”

Seph grabbed the coat. Warmth and tingling swept up her arms, startling her with the memory of what had happened last time, but the power remained—thankfully—docile. Seph tucked the coat beneath her arm and followed Abecka back into the antechamber, where they both searched for something to contain it.

Seph had just spied a satchel hanging from the gnomon of a sundial when Abecka lifted…Seph didn’t know what it was. It was an enormous piece of fabric ribbed with wooden braces, almost like a sail, attached to a rope harness. “What is that?”

“I believe it is a way for Basrain to escape in case of an emergency.” Abecka smiled conspiratorially. “I think…he intended for this to catch wind like a sail and slow his fall.”

A rock dropped in Seph’s stomach. “You mean we jump?”

As if the saints had conspired to force their hand, voices sounded beyond Basrain’s door.

Abecka and Seph froze, their gazes met, and mutual understanding passed between them. Seph followed Abecka toward the balcony, grabbing the small satchel she’d found and shoving the coat into it. “Are you sure it’s going to work?” Seph hissed.

“I can help keep it aloft.” Abecka worked the harness while her gaze jumped to the door, which opened just as they stepped onto Basrain’s balcony.

“…try teaching her how to—” Basrain’s words stopped as he took one step into the room and spotted them.

Seph wondered how he’d so immediately seen through Abecka’s enchantments—and why Abecka’s enchantments were growing increasingly warm—when she spotted the figure behind him. A woman.Thewoman, the one Seph had seen with Massie in Harran.

Only this time, she wasn’t wearing a mask. Without it, Seph realized this woman wasn’t just trying to hide a face.

She’d worn a mask to hide that she was somethingother.

She possessed human features, but there was nothing human about them. Her face was too pale, a hollow of severity, bones sharpened with judgment. Her eyes were as dark and cold as a midwinter night, seeming to reflect every age that had passed before them and every age that was to come. Despite the chill, she wore only a sleeveless slip of black satin, as if she didn’t feel the cold—as if she didn’t feel anything in this body that served only to contain a power too vast for this world.

A wash of premonition swept over Seph’s skin, raising all the tiny hairs upon her arms. It was never Massie they should’ve feared; it was this woman.

Thiswitch.

She was the reason Seph’s grandfather had hidden the coat. The reason he’d made a replica and never told a soul about his past. To protect them all from her, whatever she was.

The symbol upon Seph’s forehead went cold, and Seph knew that Abecka’s glamour had been snuffed out completely.

“I should have known…” Abecka said with a tremor in her voice that frightened Seph.

The woman regarded Abecka as if she were observing more than this time and this place, and her accompanying smile sent a shiver over Seph’s skin.

“And you have brought me Jakobián’s heir,” the witch replied. Her words were like tendrils, reaching around Seph, poking and probing and searching for weakness. “I’ve been looking for you for a very long time, child of Light.”

“Now, Josephine!” Abecka yelled, and Seph didn’t hesitate. She grabbed one side of the harness while Abecka grabbed the other, and together they jumped.

The witch’s face contorted with fury, and she ran at them. “No!”

The witch pushed forth a palm, and brilliant green light shot forth, like lightning—what sort of power was this?—but the bolt shot right past as Seph went airborne, falling free. Seph’s heart dropped into her stomach, and she screamed, but only a second passed before she was jerked upward by the force of the expanding sail. It caught the wind with a violent snap, fabric pulling taut as the ribs stretched, and they were gliding gracefully across the sky. Bitter cold air stung Seph’s eyes and threw back her hair, tossing it about like a pennant in the wind. She gripped the harness so tightly her hands ached.

Beside her, Abecka murmured incessantly, weaving enchantments that Seph could only guess while she struggled to hold on. Already, her palms slipped and the joints in her fingers strained, but the ground was still too far away.

Seph wondered how they were flying in the direction they needed to go and realized Abecka must have been guiding that too with her words. Their sail continued to drift slowly down, the world oddly quiet and calm beneath them. Their sail tilted left, and they dropped steadily, floating over the open plain but heading toward the ridge they’d descended on their way into Callant.

She thought she saw Alder and the others galloping toward that ridge, and then a new set of horses exploded out of Callant’s front gate.

“Abecka!” Seph yelled.

“I see them!” Abecka yelled back.

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