Page 140 of The Arrow and the Alder

“Are you all right?” Alder asked, studying Josephine.

She stared at her home, unblinking and unmoving, but Alder suspected what had rooted her feet.

It was hard to come home when one had left as averydifferent person.

He grabbed her hand and gave it a good squeeze. “Josephine, you took on a Fate with your bare hands. You can face your family.”

Josephine inhaled deeply. She didn’t look so sure.

“Would you like me to wait here?” Alder asked softly.

“No.” She shook her head. “Just…please don’t put a tree in the middle of the house.”

“Do you know, that’s actually a fantastic idea…”

She gave him a look, and he smiled, taking a small step closer as he cupped her chin. His powers had dimmed, somewhat, insofar as them bleeding out of him without his being aware of it. He could still grow a forest with the mere flick of his fingers, but at least he was no longer sprouting trees in their bedchamber. It’d made that glorious part of their relationship…exciting, to say the least.

“Come on, love,” he said, planting a soft kiss upon her beautiful mouth. “You’re stalling.”

He tugged her forward, holding tight to her hand as they trudged up the small steps to the door. Josephine raised a hand to knock but froze when voices sounded on the other side.

Male voices.

Alder eyed her, waiting for her direction, when she suddenly released his hand, threw back her hood, and shoved in the door.

Two men glanced up from the table, one old and one young, and both carried such strong hints of Rys that Alder’s chest constricted. It had to be Ronan and Levi, Josephine’s father and younger brother. Ronan’s hair was fully silver, and though Levi’s was black and long and pulled back into a knot at his nape, it showed a few sprigs of age. Undoubtedly from the war. Alder was so thankful they were alive. Josephine could find relief in this, at least.

But neither man had noticed Alder. Their gazes were fixed on the trembling and unexpected visitor standing just inside their doorway.

And Josephine suddenly burst into tears.

“Sephie…?”

Alder wasn’t sure who spoke first, her father or Levi, but then Levi was bounding from the table, wrapping Josephine in his arms. The father limped after them—it looked like he’d sustained a knee injury—but then he was there too, embracing them both.

The scene was so beautiful, so poignant and personal, that Alder considered slipping outside to give Josephine privacy. But he couldn’t get his feet to move. This was the kind of reunion he’d wished for with his own family, and while that’d been stolen from him, it was as though the Fates were gifting him a piece of it, through Josephine.

Shewas his family now, and he shared in her joy of this moment as if it was his own.

“You’re alive,” her father whispered through his tears, stroking her hair. “I thought for certain we’d lost you…”

His voice trailed off as he suddenly noticed Alder. Levi did too.

“I say, what is going on over there?” a woman’s voice echoed from the next room. “Nora is trying to sleep—” Josephine’s mother appeared in the doorway and stopped in her tracks.

She glanced from Josephine to Alder, who stood just inside their front door. Recognition slowly dawned, and then she seemed trapped somewhere between wanting to embrace her daughter or beat Alder out of the house with a broomstick.

“What ishedoing here!” The mother pointed a furious finger at Alder, who fought very hard not to smile.

Josephine extracted herself from her father and Levi and wiped her tears. “Mama.”

This one word seemed to tip her mother’s scales of justice in favor of joy for her daughter, and the woman ran at Josephine in a flurry of tears and waving hands before she wrapped Josephine in a suffocating embrace. “You ridiculous girl!” her mother wailed. “Have you any idea how worried I’ve been? After what happened to the baron’s guard, and then you and the baron disappeared…it’s been months, Josephine! You haven’t sent a single word, and we’ve been left to think the worst…” The woman’s voice trailed off as she sobbed into Josephine’s shoulder.

Linnea appeared then, standing in the doorway to the other room. Another little girl peeked out from behind her legs, eyes bright and giving Josephine the largest, toothiest grin Alder had ever seen. This had to be Nora, Josephine’s youngest sister.

Linnea took one look at Josephine and crumbled, leaving Nora leaning on the doorpost as she ran at her older sister in one huge heaving sob, and Josephine’s expression broke all over again.

“What happened to your hair, Sephie?” the mother said once the tears became manageable. She stroked Josephine’s hair, then froze, her gaze fixed on Josephine’s ears, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

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