Page 13 of The Arrow and the Alder

“I’m sure he would agree,” Mama said, not really talking to Seph anymore, but more defending her case to the saints. “Especially if he could see Nora now…It might not have been Nani’s interpretation, but then Nani always said?—”

“Mama,what in Ava’s nameare you talking about?”

Mama stopped, her hair coiled wildly around her face as her features set with determination. “Come.” She waved at a bewildered Seph, then slipped through the door and into the bedchamber.

Curious and more than a little concerned, Seph followed.

Mama grabbed the candle from Nora’s nightstand while Seph closed the door behind them.

“What is this about?” Seph whispered as her mother set the candle upon the floor and slid the nightstand aside. Wood groaned and scraped, and a creeping wariness settled into Seph’s marrow. “Mama…?”

Mama crouched, trailing her fingers along the cracks between boards. “It has to be here somewhere…” she mumbled, and then, “Ah.” She lifted the end of a floorboard.

Seph stepped forward as her mother pulled the board away, setting it aside as she reached into the hole and pulled out a bundle of burlap.

Mama glanced at Seph before laying the bundle on the floor and unwrapping it. The burlap came free, revealing a beautiful blanket folded within. The fabric was the color of damp earth, of roasted chestnuts and stained mahogany, embroidered with whorls of shimmering golden thread?—

Mama stood and let the folds fall open.

It wasn’t a blanket at all; it was a coat. A beautiful velvety coat that glimmered gold despite its earthy undertones, and what Seph had first mistaken for whorls were actually symbols.

Kith symbols.

Enchantments.

Seph did not have any experience with kith enchantments, just enough to know what they looked like. According to her grandpa, language—enchantments, specifically—was the means by which the kith used and directed Demas’s power, but––

What in the world was an enchanted kith object doinghere,hidden beneath the floorboards of their home?

A sense of foreboding tickled the back of Seph’s neck as she eyed her mother. “What is this doing here, Mama?”

“It belonged to your grandfather,” she whispered. Her gaze trailed the length of the fabric, an unsettling hunger in her eyes.

“But it’s kith.”

“Yes…it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Beautiful wasn’t enough. The coat was exquisite.Otherworldly, and Seph couldn’t think of a single good reason why it was in their possession. “But what arewedoing with it?”

“Your nani believed this coat would save us,” Mama said, breathless. “And I think…well, now that a kith high lord is here, it seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

Seph’s eyes narrowed as the foreboding intensified. “You mean to give this to High Lord Massie?”

Mama stood straighter, her features drawn in a posture of defense. “Sephie, that rabbit will not feed us through winter, and you’ve seen our stores, just as I have. It’s no coincidence that High Lord Massie is here.”

“No, Mama.” Seph shook her head. She felt a protectiveness over this coat that she could not explain, and she also kept thinking on the high lord’s horned mask of bone. She didn’t carewhothis kith lord was; what manner of kith hid his face behind death? “You cannot give this to him.”

Mama looked perplexed and annoyed, her brows tight.

“Have you forgotten everything Grandpa Jake said?” Seph continued, more certain than ever that they could not hand this coat over to those bone-faced kith and their high lord. “All of his stories about their evil and trickery?—”

“Oh, shush, Sephie! Don’t be foolish! You know as well as I do how Grandpa sensationalized everything…”

“Not aboutthem!” Seph threw up her hands in frustration. “He never trusted the kith!”

“Yes, but Nanisawthis. In one of her visions!”

This drew Seph up short.

---