Page 99 of The Arrow and the Alder

Firelight reflected in his eyes as he said, “I did.”

Things are not always what they seem, Josephine.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Alder’s face turned toward the fire, and his brow furrowed. “Because…I couldn’t tell you the truth without also confessing…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to.

Seph knew he was talking about what she’d witnessed that night—the evil trying to possess him would have strangled her to death had he not gotten control of it. But then Seph remembered all the other questions she’d had, namely: if he’d altered that part of his story just to hide what plagued him, what else had he not been honest about?

“The story you told the elders…” Seph said. “Was it true?”

Alder’s lips opened and closed. “I?—”

Evora stepped around the lip of rock.

“Oh…” Evora stopped in her tracks and glanced between them.

Seph realized how it must appear, with Alder so close and his legs hemming her in. Her cheeks warmed.

Alder, however, looked so dark and thunderous that Evora took a small step back.

“I was just coming to see if you needed anything.” If a voice could be a white flag of surrender, that was Evora just then.

“I don’t,” Alder said tightly.

Silence.

“I’ll just, um…” Evora slipped around the rock, out of sight.

Alder shut his eyes and inhaled slowly.

“She doesn’t know, does she?” Seph asked. Alder’s resounding silence was answer enough. “But why not, Alder? She might be able to help you.”

Alder’s eyes snapped open with such force that Seph flinched back a little. “If you had any idea what it is that I?—”

“Thentell me,” Seph said fiercely, holding his gaze. “I have already seen it, Alder, and I’m not afraid of you.”

“Not afraid—Fates, Josephine, I nearly killed you!” He looked wild, like the boorish man who’d shown up at her door in Harran, and his hands were fists before him. “I could’ve snapped your neck without a second thought. I wanted your blood. I wanted to tear you apart so that I could taste every last drop of your life. You should be terrified of me!”

He was trying to scare her away again, his guilt and his shame convincing him he must.

“And I am,” Seph cut back, “but not for the reasons I should be. I tried to hate you for the way yousayyou’ve used my brother, but I can’t seem to do that either, and truthfully, I don’t believe you used him the way you said you did before the elders.”

At this proclamation, his features tightened, and she knew she’d caught hold of the delicate thread he tried so desperately to hide.

Seph leaned in closer, emboldened. “Alder, what happened to you in Süldar,really? And what did my brother have to do with it? I don’t believe for a second that you came to Harran strictly for the coat, and I don’t know what to believe about anything where you’re concerned, so please tell me the truth so that I can sort out my feelings for you.”

Seph was surprised by her own confession, but there it was, and Alder was staring at her. His expression was a mask, but the intensity in his gaze could have burned a hole through her skull.

“You know this does not have a happy ending,” he said at last. His words were a warning, and Seph did not think he spoke only of Rys.

“I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t put much stock in happiness. I’ve never found it very reliable.”

A small, sad sort of smile touched his lips. His gaze skirted her features and her hairline, and Seph wondered if he was going to reach out and touch her hair again.

He did not. Instead, he moved away from her, and Seph already missed his warmth. He sat across from her instead, knees bent and ankles crossed, with his forearms resting upon his knees and his hands clasped loosely between them. Even compacted like this, Alder was massive. Like a great boulder beside her. His tunic pulled snug over his rounded shoulders, straining the fabric a little, and Seph couldn’t help but remember how he’d appeared last night, bare and gilded by lantern light.

“Rys was kind to me,” Alder said at last, staring at the empty space between them. “Maybe not in the beginning. He shared your unfavorable view of my kind”—Alder’s brow lifted at her on this point, and Seph made a face—“but…then he began to understand what the depraved were doing to me. How they were…experimenting.”

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