Page 18 of The Arrow and the Alder

“How many cows?”

Milly didn’t hesitate. “Three, all grazing peacefully, but as I watch, the mist creeps in. It’s so thick I can hardly see the cows now, and then the cows…change.” Milly paused, and her features scrunched in disgust and horror. “Their skin rots away and depraved hatch from them like their bodies are cocoons. One depraved screams and flies at me…and that’s when I wake.”

Seph stood quiet for a very long time.

Milly worried her bottom lip. “Does it mean anything? Or is it just an empty nightmare?”

Seph inhaled slowly, wishing with every fiber of her being that Milly’s dream were the latter. Glancing at the empty shelves and the cobwebs that had taken residence within, Seph said, “The three cows represent three months of normal life. The snow means that those three months begin at the first snowfall.”

“That’s…”Today, Milly never finished.

“At the end of those three months, the kith’s curse will have finally consumed the kithlands and seep through the veil and into our lands, and…Harran will fall.”

Milly stared at Seph. “Are you certain?”

“You had the dream three times, which means Ava has heard it from each of Demas’s three Fates.” According to Nani’s teachings on dreams.

Milly paled. “Blazing stars in heaven…What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Seph answered at last. “Let me think on it.” Her last word were empty, just an attempt to minimize Milly’s fear, because Seph wasn’t sure anything could be done.

Snow whirled like ghosts in the night as Seph hurried home. The streets were stark, empty, and though the light from a few struggling lanterns helped illuminate her path, Seph ignored it all, too wrapped up in Milly’s dream and the timing of High Lord Massie’s arrival.

And the hooded stranger. She still couldn’t believe she’d lost him!

Was it all connected? What was the coat really for? How did it all fit together––

Seph froze on her doorstep. Male voices echoed within, and one of them unmistakably belonged to the baron.

The coat.

She threw open the door and strode inside, bringing the snowstorm with her, and all conversation ceased. Seph soon realized that it was not just the baron who’d paid them a visit. Lord Bracey was there too, as well as Harbrook—Harran’s lead elder—two boned-faced kith, and High Lord Massie himself.

And Massie was holding her grandfather’s beautiful coat, appraising it hungrily.

“That doesn’t belong to you,kith,” Seph said before she could think better of it. But Milly’s dream was too near, Seph’s despair too loud, and she was so weary of sacrificing everything to these people.

And Seph had never been good at controlling her temper.

Her words were met with a silence so complete she could hear bits of ice strike the window.

Mama’s eyes grew large and round, and Linnea shot a helpless look at her savior––Bracey,who blinked as though he couldn’t possibly have heard Seph correctly.Harbrook, on the other hand,hadheard Seph and was seconds away from spewing fire, while the two kith stiffened and took a step forward, as if they intended to teach her a hard and unforgettable lesson.

Which was when Seph noticed the veiled woman. Seph hadn’t spotted her initially because she’d been shielded behind the two larger kith. She still wore her mask, but fathomless black eyes glinted through the slats.

High Lord Massie was unmoved, his ice-blue eyes expressionless, but it was the baron who broke the silence. There was no plastered smile on his face now. “You forget your place, you insolent girl! Apologize to High Lord Massie at once.”

He was right, of course. Seph knew better. She’d spoken out of turn, and such disrespect was grounds for death. Reason demanded she drop to her knees and beg for forgiveness, but her body would not bend and the words would not fall. Instead, she remembered the day Papa left, then Rys and Levi too. The fear straining their features, though they tried so hard to be strong. She thought of Elias, and his parents, and Henrik and Bailey, and so many others in Harran who had sacrificed those they loved most so that this baron could stand there with his jeweled fingers and greasy hair and a dozen smoking chimneys—and four damned barrels of mead.

The silence stretched and strained.

Lord Massie’s eyes narrowed, but only a hint.

Indignation splotched the baron’s shiny cheeks, and he took a threatening step toward Seph. “If you do not get on your knees and apologize this instant, I will personally take the?—”

Lord Massie raised a hand, and the baron’s jaw flapped shut like a fish. Master and puppet.

The kith high lord appraised Seph, his gaze like ice to her heart, piercing through flesh and bone, straight into her soul. If Seph had ever held any doubts that the kith were not human, they vanished in that instant. There was something unnatural about Massie, the way he did not blink, and the way he saw but didn’t see, as though he were gazing into another plane of existence. His features were too sharp, too hard and unforgiving. His scar caught the light in a strange way, as if he himself were the veil between worlds, the Rift the tear in his skin, and all the demons dwelled within him.

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