Page 76 of The Arrow and the Alder

This woman was going to be the end of him.

“So your nani taught you to ride?” Alder pressed. He was trying to understand. He wanted to understand everything about her.

“Yes,” she answered after a moment. “My grandfather was the one who bought me the horse,andhe built the stable for her. A spotted white mare.” Josephine swayed with her horse, smiling at the memory, and Alder wanted to see that smile more––he wanted to be the one who drew it out of her.

Unfortunately, her smile was short-lived. “Of course, we had to give Maven to the war, because they deemed her necessary for the front lines.”

This fact pained her even now; he could see it on her face, hear it in her voice. Maven had been very dear to her.

“And what about you?” Josephine asked, looking at him with the brilliance of the sun, burning right through every dark cloud in his soul.

“What about me?” he asked, surprised she’d asked him anything.

“Where did you learn to fight like that, especially if you spent so much time indulging in all your land had to offer?”

Alder sighed. “Ah, Serinbor. Always clinging to past grievances so that he can excuse his present failings.”

“And you haven’t answered my question.”

Alder glanced at her. “You are relentless.”

“So you’ve said.”

He smiled, and a beautiful color rose to her cheeks again. It gave him hope he shouldn’t want. “I’ve had a long time to learn and the privilege of many different tutors,” he said at last.

A little crease formed between her brows. “How long?”

He realized she was remembering their extended lifespans.

“Long enough,” was all he said, though he’d almost saidtoo long, and he couldn’t help but think of her grandfather. Of the kith who’d given up his immortality for love. Alder had never understood it before, but he thought he was beginning to understand it now. Time was its own sort of curse, for it numbered the days as surely as it numbered all his sins, and Alder was growing quite weary of carrying them all.

They reached Basrain’s by the eve of the third day. The mist and tree cover broke, and Alder stopped his horse at a cliff’s edge. His steely grays scoured the valley below, and a frigid wind tossed his hair and tore at his coat. Seph thought he looked like a god of war come to exact his vengeance.

She sidled her gelding up to the ridge, alongside the others, and they all gazed down upon a structure that reminded her…well, of a priory. It was a large and sprawling monument of white marble buildings nestled into the rolling hills, hemmed in by a magnificent colonnade that wrapped like arms around its entirety.

Perhaps the saints would claim her lifelong servitude after all.

“I don’t like this,” Alder was saying. “It feels like a trap.”

“He’d have to know we’re coming for it to be a trap,” Tyrin countered.

Tyrin, one of Abecka’s elders, was a stable force in their company. A man of few words and steady countenance, he was a well of calm waters, rising only with the storms.

“Rasia didn’t scry anything amiss,” Evora encouraged as Rian drew up his horse behind hers.

“Nor did she scry the danger to my family, yet here we are,” Alder said, and the others fell quiet.

Seph halted her gelding beside the Weald Prince as she scanned Callant’s highest perches. “I don’t see anything unusual.”

“That’s easily hidden with glamour,” Alder replied. “Enchantress, do you detect anything?”

Abecka inhaled and closed her eyes. The wind combed through her silken white hair. “No,” she said, opening her eyes. “I sense only the usual protective enchantments.”

Alder looked unconvinced.

“You don’t trust Basrain?” Seph asked him.

“I never trust a man who doesn’t take sides, because it means he only ever takes his own.”

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