Page 61 of The Arrow and the Alder

Alder gave a slight tilt of his head, in gratitude, and he couldn’t help but glance at Josephine before continuing.

Which was a mistake, because it took him another moment to remember what he’d been about to say. “I met her brother in the dungeons of Süldar.”

An uneasy quiet settled over the crowd; he knew it would. Süldar was the capital of Light. The fortress where Queen Abecka, King Issachar, and their two sons had lived, but it’d been destroyed the day Light fell.

“Yes,” Alder continued, answering the question on everyone’s faces. “It is being rebuilt.”

Abecka paled. “Who is rebuilding it?”

Alder shoved those images from his mind—images that’d haunted him every day since. Otherwise, he would never get through this testimony. “Kith and mortal prisoners alike.”

“Under whose command?” Sienne asked, slightly exasperated.

“The depraved and whoever is leading them.”

“And who is that?”

“They don’t speak a name, but they know the mark of their master, and I know some of you know of what I speak.” He glanced at Evora and at Serinbor, and even Serinbor couldn’t deny it, though he looked as though he wanted to doanythingbut give credit to Alder’s testimony.

“I have seen the mark,” Abecka said, eyeing Alder closely. “And you truly do not know to whom it belongs?”

Alder shook his head. “No, I do not know who the mark belongs to, nor who is leading them.” Alder said the words aloud so Abecka and her elders would know that they were true.

“I don’t believe him,” Celia said anyway. “He knows more, and he is not telling us.” Celia jabbed a finger at Alder. “You’ve been working with the depraved. You have joined forces with their leader, and you have used Abecka’s heir to earn our trust and find a way into Velentis.”

Her words sat in the silence, tilting on edge.

Alder looked at her so intensely, she slunk back a little. “That’s a pretty story, Celia, and I don’t doubt you’d sell your withered soul for it to be true, but those depraved guard their master’s anonymity even more closely than they guard their prisoners.”

“Which is where you met her brother,” Abecka interjected.

Alder peeled his gaze from Celia. “Yes.” A beat. His chest felt suddenly tight. “We worked Süldar’s mines together.”

“My mother’s old mines?” Celia asked with surprise.

“The very same. Rys’s company had been apprehended along the Rift, and those who’d survived were brought to Süldar.”

“How did you escape?” Abecka asked.

Alder looked at Josephine despite himself, at the ring dangling between her breasts, but then forced his eyes on hers as he said, “It was Rys.”

Josephine’s lips pressed together and she gave the slightest shake of her head, as if to say:I knew it.I knew he would be the one to figure it out, and yet here you are in his place.

Alder couldn’t say that she was wrong. “There was no way to reach myeloitin that place, though I tried,” he continued. He looked back at the elders, unable to hold Josephine’s gaze through this. “The dungeons are protected by some power I can’t comprehend. My enchantments wouldn’t take. Rys had no notion ofeloit, so he chiseled away at the rock of his cell little by little, using a ladle.”

Here, Alder paused to gather himself. The crowd waited.

“He worked all night, and come morn, he would set a stone back over the hole. I didn’t know about it until the day he broke through. He could have left that night, but he stayed and waited for me and a few others. So one evening, when we were returning from the mine, we saw an opportunity and took down our depraved guard and then escaped through Rys’s cell. Unfortunately, it alerted the other depraved.”

Alder looked at Josephine, into the depths of her watery gaze. It was the confession she had wanted, the confession she deserved. This part, at least, was true.

“You mentioned others with you?” Tyrin asked.

Alder squeezed his hands and peeled his gaze from Josephine. “Three, but they were taken by depraved as we fled, and it was then that I…Neither Rys nor I realized he’d been infected with depraved poison. He lost control of himself quickly, and I…I killed him.” Alder closed his eyes and forced these next words out. They weremostlytrue. “I put a blade through his heart, and then I took the ring from his hand and left his dead body in the woods.”

Alder stood there like that, the room quiet, and even though his eyes were closed, he could still see Josephine’s face. Her sorrow, her pain, and her fury.

“But why go to Harran instead of returning home?” Tyrin asked.

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