Page 130 of The Arrow and the Alder

She sprinted for Evora, and Evora was so focused on Alder that she didn’t see Seph until she barreled into her. Evora cried out, her arrow flew wide, and the bow slipped from her hands as the two of them hit the ground in a tangle.

Evora was quick—faster than Seph. Stronger too, but if Seph had learned anything, it was how to survive. How to play to her strengths, and right now, Evora’s cumbersome coat was one of them. Seph relented just enough so that it wasn’t obvious, and when Evora had her pinned, Seph grabbed fistfuls of the coat, jerked the kith woman close, and slammed her forehead to Evora’s nose, as she’d seen Serinbor do.

Evora hissed and covered her nose, and Seph bucked, scrambling out from beneath her, grabbing the coat as she did and yanking it free.

The glamour vanished, and Evora was herself again.

“Much better,” Seph hissed, her fury competing with the pain of betrayal.

Evora growled and shoved herself to her feet, only to find herself face-to-face with Seph’s arrow.

Seph smiled, all teeth. “If you’re going to play the traitor, at least wear your own face, coward.”

Evora looked at her with such hate in her eyes, it stole Seph’s breath. How had she hidden this from them all?

“Coward, am I?” Evora sneered. “I have waited for this moment longer than you’ve been alive.” She took a step closer.

Serinbor kept glancing over, wanting to help, but he couldn’t break free of his own battle.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Evora, but I will.”

Evora laughed, as if she didn’t believe Seph would, and she took a step anyway, and another.

Seph’s chest squeezed, and she released the arrow.

It pierced Evora’s belly with a wetthwick. Nothing fatal, if it was treated soon enough, but just enough to stop her.

Evora gasped and lurched forward, pressing her hand around the arrow. Blood seeped into her tunic and between her fingers, while hate made her beauty monstrous. “You think you know my cousin, but you don’t. You don’t know what heis.Look at him, Josephine! Look at the one you would give your heart to. Yourprince!”

Seph couldn’t help it; she glanced over, and Seph’s blood went cold. During her fight with Evora, she hadn’t noticed that the stag had collapsed to the floor. That the Fate was walking around him, murmuring incessantly—some incantation—while the stag twitched and convulsed.

Which was when Seph also noticed the symbol glowing upon his hind—a branding. The same branding she’d seen on the depraved.

The Fate had done this to him.

Only a god can fix this,Alder had said.

He might not have known who, exactly, had done this, but he’d known the power was far beyond any of them.

The symbol burned brighter and brighter as the Fate’s voice grew louder, crunching glass beneath her bare feet as she walked. Shapes slithered beneath the stag’s skin, and Alder’s face contorted grotesquely. Man, stag, depraved—all of them warring for dominance.

“No…” Seph started for him, but Evora kicked out her leg, knocking Seph from her legs.

She landed flat on her back. Her head slammed on stone as the air punched from her lungs, and then Evora was there, kneeling over her with the arrow still sticking out of her belly. Blood dripped everywhere, and she held a blade in her hand, just over Seph’s heart. “It’s over, little star. You can join my cousin in hell.”

And Evora raised the blade.

Alder was losing the fight. Hate was like an inferno inside of him, and though he tried to hold it in, to press it down as he had for so long, it would not be contained. Not this time. It strengthened with every word the witch spoke.

No, not a witch. A Fate. He understood that now. Nothing else could have commanded him thus—could have overwhelmed his mother and put this demon inside of him—except a god.

His…master.

Yes, that was it. She was his master and his mistress. His queen and hisgoddess.

Yes.

Yesssssssss.

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