Page 37 of The Arrow and the Alder

“Sorry…” she started. “I was actually bringing it to you. I heard a noise, and I?—”

He strode past her, close enough that he stirred her hair. She caught the scent of him too, the pure wildness of it, like storms and freshly tilled earth. He crouched beside the bow and picked it up, gazing over its length as if perplexed by something. And then his eyes locked on her.

Seph was pinned beneath that stare.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

His voice was raw, and his words sounded like an accusation, but she wasn’t sure what he would be accusing her of.

“You’re welcome…?” she answered, trying to ignore the throbbing in her hand.Saints, it hurt. “Where were you, anyway?”

He stood abruptly, his gaze never leaving hers. “Searching our perimeter.”

“Without your weapon?”

He inclined his head and took a small step toward her. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

Seph gulped down a geyser of pain. “Rys, but of course you should have figured that out since you were at the front lines with him.” Her tone was acid, more from the pain in her hand than any bitterness at the circumstances, but Marks didn’t know that.

He opened his mouth but closed it again, and Seph took the opportunity to walk to the hatch. Her hand ached something fierce, and she wanted to examine it, preferably without him around, but as she strode past, he grabbed her arm. Firmly. Not painfully, but hard enough that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Let me see your hand.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I’m fine.” Seph stuck out her hand.

“Yourotherhand.”

Their gazes parried, and he didn’t wait for permission. He pulled her other hand free and promptly cursed.

“Come on,” he grumbled, pulling her toward the open hatch.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“You were burned by kithflame. You are not fine.”

“I’ve had worse.”

He laughed, all condescension, and stopped at the hatch, gesturing for her to go first.

If Seph weren’t in so much pain, she might’ve resisted him more, but the fire in her skin was getting worse and it was all she could do to make her way down the stairs. Marks followed closely after.

“What is…kithflame, exactly?” she managed through clenched teeth.

“Fire that won’t be quenched until it has consumed every inch of your skin.”

Oh.

“Sit.” He jabbed a ramrod straight finger toward the bed frame, and he did not wait for her answer as he slung his bow and quiver upon the weapons’ rack, strode to his pack, and rummaged through the contents.

Seph focused on steadying her breathing, and she was just sitting down when he joined her, a tiny jar in his hand. He sat right beside her, close enough that his shoulder and thigh pressed against hers. The sheer enormity of him sobered her at once, all that muscle and mass. The wood creaked so loudly under his weight that she wondered if the bed would break. He seemed unconcerned—at least about the bed—but he was plenty upset about her burn…which was spreading.

What had only touched her pointer finger was now creeping over her knuckle to her wrist, and it wasblue. Blue as the waters of the Sunder Springs and bubbling like them too.

Marks set the jar in his lap and grabbed Seph’s hand without preamble.

His wide palms and thick fingers positively dwarfed hers, and his skin was shockingly warm—and also vascular and covered in an assortment of tiny scars, not at all like the soft, pasty hands of the baron’s ilk. Thick callouses covered Marks’s palms and the fingertips he used for archery. He was so close, soeverywhere, the setting so intimate, that a butterfly set loose in her belly, which was preposterous, given the circumstances.

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