Page 34 of The Arrow and the Alder

“What are you doing?” Seph asked.

In answer, he tossed his coat at her.

Seph barely caught it. “What’s this for?”

“So you don’t freeze to death.” He slipped his bow and quiver back across his shoulders and walked on.

What a boor he was!

Seph probably should’ve used this opportunity to do what he’d asked: let him go and leave him be. She was not his problem, and he most certainly was not hers. In fact, she should’ve rejoiced at being rid of the slippery kith. But as she stood there, watching that halo of silvery light grow farther and farther away, a tug persisted in her soul. It was like an invisible tether, connecting her to her grandfather’s coat, and the farther Marks walked away from her, the more it pulled and strained.

The more it beckoned.

Seph turned her back on them both to clear her thoughts but found herself staring at a world as black as pitch. She didn’t even know if shecouldgo back to Harran. She’d killed one of the baron’s guards—yes—but the baron was no longer alive to punish her. Still, the evidence of her crime lay bleeding all over her lawn, and Seph had no idea how Lord Bracey would react or if he would blame her for his father’s death, regardless of her account. Seph hadn’t exactly spent the last few years building trust with Harran’s elders, and she’d be damned before she placed any more expectations on Linnea and her connection to Lord Bracey.

Oh, saints, what a mess!

Perhaps she’d find employ at a local priory and devote the rest of her life in service to the saints, but that still required getting back to mortal lands somehow. Seph didn’t know what to do, but the one thing shedidknow was how to survive, and there would be very little chance of survival if she went on her own, in the dark and mist and cold.

Chewing her bottom lip, Seph glanced back at Marks’s little bobbing light. She didn’t know these lands, nor could she see more than ten paces in this cursed mist without light. Not only that, she had no weapon, no means of protection. If she’d been thinking straight, she’d have pried that dagger from the baron’s dead fingers. Instead, all she had was Marks’s coat.

But Marks knew these lands, even in the dark, and clearly he was adept with a weapon.

He wouldn’t like it, but she’d take his anger ten times over another encounter with those horrible depraved. With a grumble of resignation, Seph put on his enormous (and deliciously warm) coat, and trudged after the kith and his halo of moonlight.

“Leave me be, mortal,” Marks warned as she neared.

“It’sSeph,” she replied, “and trust me, I would like nothing more than toleave you be, but you have the only source of light in this cursed place.”

He picked up a rock, slipped a knife from his belt, and carved something onto it before tossing it over his shoulder. Seph ducked on instinct, but the rock did not strike. Whatever symbol he’d carved shone like moonlight, and the little rock floated before her as if suspended by some invisible string.

Well.

Seph glanced at Marks, who walked faster now, and she quickened her steps to keep pace with him while her little light followed.

He stopped and looked back at her. His eyes stormed. “What is it now?”

Seph stopped in her tracks, feeling fully exposed beneath that stare. She knew the kith were fickle, but his mood had shifted—and surprisingly fast. “I don’t know the way to the Rift.”

“I told you the way.”

“You said east, as if I have any idea which way east is.”

Before Seph could even register that he’d moved, Marks was standing immediately before her. He gave her a patronizing look as he grabbed her shoulders and turned her to the right. “That way. On foot, it should take you a fortnight.”

Afortnight? How could she survive that long? She had no food, no coin, nor anything to protect herself, but Marks had already released her shoulders and was walking away from her. Again.

Seph sniffed, straightening her shoulders as a dam broke inside of her. All of her frustration—past and present—came flooding out of her pores. She trudged after him while her enchanted light followed. “Is this what you did to my brother, you selfish boor? Did you bargain with him for freedom, and then abandon him to the depraved the first opportunity you had?—”

Suddenly, Marks was before her. In a blink, he had gone from being five paces away to standing immediately in front of her—so close, she had to tilt her head to look up at his face. His entire being bore down upon her, all that lethality and wildness, and in that moment, Sephfeltthat he was kith. Inhuman and otherworldly. Dangerous. There was not a drop of levity about him now. A visceral static rippled over her skin, raising the little hairs upon her arms, and the ring upon her breast flared with warmth.

Seph had made him very,veryangry.

He leaned closer still, and his fire-hot breath brushed her face. “You forget your place,mortal.”

Her place.

His words were a reflection of the baron’s, and the ever-burning inferno inside of her roared to life.

---