Page 24 of The Arrow and the Alder

Since the last, it’d beentwo.

It’d been so long Seph even wondered if she’d lost this particular side of her ability.

Apparently not.

She slid her hand just below her shift, where she’d suspended Rys’s enchanted ring from a leather cord around her neck.

The stranger’s words from the night before were still too near, and they’d kept her up late into the night, haunting her with their simplicity. Seph had always known losing Rys was a possibility—maybe even an inevitability, if she were being honest. For what could mortals do against the ravenous depraved? But hearing Rys’s fate spoken thus, after two years of nothing, was too…simple. As if his rich, colorful life could be extinguished by the three little unfeeling words uttered by a complete stranger:Rys is dead.

This ring belonged on his finger. Their papa had given it to him, given to him by his father—Grandpa Jake—as an heirloom of protection against kith enchantments. Though at the time, the kith hadn’t been able to enter their lands, so the ring had been passed down more out of sentimentality than practicality. Rys had originally worn it on his thumb, but as he’d grown, his thumb had become too wide for it, so he’d been forced to switch hands. Then fingers.

It’d been on his middle finger when he’d left for the war. The cool moonstone had brushed Seph’s cheek when he’d said goodbye. In that moment, Seph had known that she might never again see him or her papa or Levi, yet hope had whispered: not them.Anyonebut them.

Hope, that abominable thing. Always clinging to dead things.

You are the strong one.

Linnea’s words haunted her now. Seph didn’t want to be the strong one, but she feared that if she let go, she would fall apart and never be able to put herself back together again.

She squeezed the little band of moonstone—something solid, something sure—and closed her eyes, but her dream flashed behind her eyelids again.

It was a simple thing for Seph to interpret others’ dreams, but it had always been difficult interpreting her own. This was where Nani came in, but she wasn’t here anymore. Seph rubbed her temples, determined to figure it out on her own.

Anything to distract herself from the overwhelming pain of Rys’s loss.

The coat Lord Massie had sought was obviously tied to the curse, and though Seph didn’t understand how, the timing of it, in conjunction with Milly’s vision, convinced Seph on this point. The parts Seph couldnotpiece together were what Grandpa Jake and Nani had to do with any of it, or why he’d had kith ears in her dream, or why he and Nani had been burying the coat in the backyard, where the woodpile now…

Back.

Pile.

Seph turned her head in the direction of the backyard. Was that what her grandfather had been trying to tell her? To search beneath the woodpile? Was he aware that they’d given Lord Massie the coat? If so, why would he ask Seph to go to the woodpile?

Unless…

Unless Nani had seen this day in one of her visions, and they’d constructed another coat. A fake.

Give my regards to your grandfather.

Lord Massie’s words still haunted Seph. The twisted smirk upon his face as he’d spoken them, and the cruel gleam in his eyes. As if he’d known Seph’s grandfather. Not knownof, but really and trulyknownhim.

Linnea coughed beside her and rolled onto her other side, dragging Seph from her spiraling thoughts.

No. This was ridiculous. Seph was exhausted and now creating stories where there were none just so that she didn’t have to dwell on Rys. Resolved, she lay back down, rolled onto her side, and tucked her hand beneath her pillow, willing herself to go back to sleep.

Two breaths later, Seph was throwing back her covers and climbing off of her pallet. She tugged on her boots, snatched her coat off the hook, and slipped it on over her nightdress before tiptoeing around Linnea to climb gingerly down the ladder in the dark. With every step, her mind whispered her foolery, but her heart would not quit. And Seph could not rest until she was certain.

Grabbing a lantern, she made her way out back. A cold and bitter wind snatched her warmth immediately, but the fire of curiosity burned within, chasing away night’s chill. Seph grabbed the shovel from the old stable and strode toward the woodpile.

There.

She set the lantern down, stabbed the shovel into the damp earth, moved a few logs out of the way, and started digging. With every heave, reason told her to go back to bed, that emotion was getting the best of her, but it felt good to move, to sweat. To work out the tangle of feelings that knotted inside of her soul.

Seph dug deeper and deeper, fueling her fury into every scoop of earth, into every stomp of her boot on the lip of her shovel. In her mind, she saw the kith high lord holding up her grandfather’s coat while the baron stood gloating. She envisioned a depraved clawing through Rys’s skin, and then hot tears mixed with her sweat and fury. Dig after dig, clump after clump. She’d already dug much deeper than the vision had shown her, and at last she growled in anger and frustration, threw down the shovel, and collapsed to her knees.

“I can’t do this anymore…” Seph whispered to no one as the tears streamed freely down her face. Saints, she was so tired—tired of fighting. Tired of hoping.

Tired of her own futility.

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