Forged in Fading (Bones of Kings #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Perhaps when the world as you knew it sprouted from an unwilling corpse, it afforded you a less than positive outlook on life. The gods could have created the four other races from flowers or cake, but instead, Alvara lived in a reality where they chose a pile of sacrificed body parts.

Her boots crunched on the snow-packed path, toes no warmer than the icicles that dangled from the buildings she passed. The wooden homes and shops looked about as alive as she felt at this early hour, except for the warm glow radiating from the frosted windows.

Almost there. Whether that was a good or bad thing, she couldn’t decide.

All she knew for certain was that if her father told the story of the gods butchering Vitharen again today, she might actually throw herself into the fireplace.

Though that wouldn’t do much, since he likely hadn’t bothered to light it.

Or he would launch into another long-winded history of their family, insisting that her mother’s line descended from the ancient High King’s right-hand warrior.

But just about every elf claimed some sort of association with Vitharen, so his words meant about as much as saying her cousin was a selkie.

The freezing wind bit at her cheeks, and Alvara tugged her fur-lined hood tighter against her head.

The land already slumbered beneath a thick blanket of white snow, even though dalvi had only arrived a few weeks ago.

Despite it being the harshest of the five seasons, she had always found a strange comfort in the silence it brought to the world.

Clean and crisp air flowed in and out of her lungs as she quickened her pace.

Gods, had three dalvi seasons already passed since Eloisa’s and Mother’s fadings?

She shifted the bag on her shoulder, and the leather dug into her muscles, sore from the morning’s training.

Mikavar had pushed her harder than usual, even requiring her to wield a sword instead of her usual spear.

A way to distract her mind and keep her busy. He knew what today meant.

And then there was her father. Traveling to and from the Grove of Souls by sleigh would only require the day and meant everything to her, but he always argued they should ignore the anniversary of their loss, simply because the moon would disappear from view for a few hours.

Ridiculous. It meant nothing. No great evil would emerge from the darkness. Alvara held no such belief in omens—superstitions did no good when you had little left to lose.

She rounded the corner that led to the home of her youngling years and gazed at the aging structure.

It had always been small and simple, its tar-stained timber dulled from decades of harsh weather and boasting little ornamentation other than the painted white patterns framing the entry.

Her parents’ hopes and dreams for their life together.

How na?ve Alvara had been to believe she and Pyry might decorate their own doorframe one day.

She ran her fingers down the rough weathered wood and paused on her own crude depiction of an ice bear.

Much to their parents’ dismay, she and Eloisa had taken to adding their own touches to the exterior over the years.

In her defense, she hadn’t been aware that the magically imbued paint would never disappear unless forcibly removed.

Eloisa’s giggles echoed through her mind, tinkling like the silver wind chimes that swayed on her father’s porch.

It had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time to chase her sister around the house with the dripping paint brush—that is, until they had to endure days of baths and relentless scrubbing from their mother to remove the blatant evidence of their crime.

Alvara sighed and turned the house’s frigid handle, which stung like a shallow cut from a blade.

As usual, her father sat reading in his favorite worn chair by the dwindling fire.

She had no idea how the ancient thing hadn’t collapsed yet, especially when he did little else but sit these days.

Reading and recording the history and myths of their people, using his occupation as a tarinthúr as an excuse to remain locked inside at all hours.

And conveniently ignoring his other responsibility—to travel and recite the tales of old throughout the kingdom.

Alvara frowned. “You’re not reading another book, are you?

” Books falling apart at the seams towered in precarious piles on almost every available spot on the floor, leaving little room for walking.

The musty scent of leather and tomes that hadn’t seen the light of day in quite some time hung in the air.

Her father rocked in his chair, the creak of the wood the only noise that pierced the silence. He hadn’t even looked up since she entered.

Her throat tightened. He looked so much older.

Tired lines creased his sallow skin, and where his hair had once been golden, gray streaks had taken root, spreading further each time she visited.

He looked much closer to his own fading than he should, given that he was only a little over three hundred years old.

Alvara didn’t even want to consider how long it had likely been since he had last eaten.

She stepped closer and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Father.” Still nothing. “Alfris.”

He startled, as if he had been wholly unaware she was even in the room. “Alvara, my dear. What are you doing here?” His gray-blue eyes, almost the color of the metal she worked with so often, looked at her, but didn’t truly see her. His mind was years, if not centuries, away.

“You know what day it is,” she said as softly as she could manage. “We should head out now if we want to make it back before it’s too dark.”

Please don’t say it.

Her father removed his spectacles and placed them on the table beside him. “You know very well there is to be a moon darkening tonight. I am not leaving, and neither should you.”

Alvara busied herself with clearing books off the floor, kicking up dust that tickled her nose. “It won’t take long, I promise. We can’t let something so small get in the way of what today means to us.”

“Come here, my little bear.”

Her grip on the tome softened at her father’s use of his nickname for her. Alvara set the book aside and settled into the chair—her mother’s chair—next to him.

He wrapped his frail hands around hers and smiled, though the gesture didn’t reach his eyes. “You know how much you mean to me. How much they meant to me. But it is not in fate’s plan for me to go with you today. I hope you can understand that.”

Alvara’s eyes burned. “Yes, Father. I understand.”

No, she didn’t.

Nothing was more important today than remembering the lives of their family. But he had lost just as much as she had, and it wasn’t her place to tell him how to grieve.

“I brought you food. I’ll leave it in the kitchen.

You’re not eating enough.” She pulled her bag over her head and dug out the containers she had prepared, packed to the brim with her mother’s famous stew.

Though if Alvara was being honest, her own attempts never tasted the same.

The meat never browned the way it was supposed to.

It didn’t matter—all of it would likely spoil before her father ever touched it.

His frame had thinned over her last few visits, resembling more skeleton than elf.

She would go alone.

Alvara shouldered her bag once again and paused at the hearth to feed the fire with what little wood she could find.

The crackling of the flames, the whiffs of smoke…

so many dalvi nights they had spent as a family gathered around this hearth, listening to the endless tales her father wove while her mother knitted hats and scarves to keep them warm in the coming cold.

“Goodbye, Father. I love you.”

He didn’t respond, but that was no surprise. He mostly acted as if she had already faded too.

And sometimes she wasn’t completely sure she hadn’t.

Alvara sank to her knees in the freshly fallen snow and let her tears fall, blazing hot lines down her chilled cheeks. Today was the one day of the year she allowed herself to truly delve into the deep pool of grief where she had treaded water for years.

She could still feel the searing heat of the flames that consumed Eloisa’s and Mother’s bodies, the pungent smell of charred flesh and bone at their funeral. They had buried their remains here, where they would become one with the earth and all the elves that had gone before them.

Twenty-one. Eloisa should have had centuries left to live and yet…she was gone. And their mother, passed the same day. Sorrow over her daughter’s sudden fading had squeezed her heart so severely that it stopped beating altogether.

The forest surrounded Alvara in stillness, except for the breeze that seemed to whisper the lost dreams of the souls that had passed before their time.

Trees towered above her like araugs waiting in the shadows, bone-white arms stretching out to her as if welcoming her home.

Thankfully such creatures would never dwell here where corpses had been burnt to pieces—cursed souls required decaying bodies, not ashes, to inhabit.

Alvara breathed in the sweet and earthy aroma of the woods. Such a beautiful smell despite the lives that had been given to the dirt beneath her feet.

The snap of a twig rang through the air, and her fragile hope returned. Maybe her father had finally decided to come.

Oh, for Vitharen’s sake.

It wasn’t him, but an enormous bear instead, its brown fur marred by gruesome scars and speckled with fallen snow.

She had no interest in adding a fight with a wild animal to her list of unfortunate incidents that day, and if she faded at the hands—paws?

—of her own nickname, Eloisa would never let her forget it for the rest of eternity.

She had to admit—there was a small chance her father wasn’t completely insane for following his elven superstitions.

Alvara unsheathed her dagger from her side and cursed to herself as she palmed the weapon.

It would only allow her to defend herself up close with the creature.

The ground trembled as the bear journeyed to the center of the grove, leaving colossal prints in its wake that did nothing to bolster her confidence.

It lifted its nose to the air and sniffed. It was a miracle the thing couldn’t hear her heart striking against her ribs.

The bear swung its head in her direction, and its amber eyes settled on Alvara. What in the nine realms had dragged it out of hibernation? In her thirty-two years of life, she had never seen so much as a bird in the Grove. One time she had found a decaying moth carcass, but that hardly counted.

Her shallow breaths ravaged her throat. Outrunning the bear would be useless; it would catch her in mere moments. And fighting it with nothing but a dagger was a great way to get killed.

She could pretend she had faded…or was she supposed to try to scare it away? And why in Dalviri’s name did they not cover this in academy?

It bowed its head.

Oh gods, here we go.

And padded away into the woods.

Her muscles remained locked in place, even when the creature had disappeared. Maybe she had imagined it altogether. Or perhaps her pastry that morning had spoiled. Either way, she really needed to start limiting her intake of sweets.

Alvara closed her eyes, inhaling clarity through her nose and exhaling any residual fear out her mouth. This day. Tomorrow she would return to her routine, the reliable monotony she had clung to since losing Eloisa and Mother.

She sheathed her blade, wiped the snow from her pants, and began her journey back home.

She arrived back in Vorianta, making sure to stop by her father’s house once more to sit alongside him in silence as he read. He preferred it to sharing memories of her mother and sister, and Alvara knew better than to push the topic too far.

By the time she left, a thick white veil had covered the homes huddled together at the base of Dalvi’s breathtaking mountains, as if they too mourned her loss.

Very few lights dotted the capital, likely due to the belief that doing so would call less attention from the supposed dangers drawn by the ominous moon darkening.

The exception was Alvara’s dwelling, which boasted a glimmering lantern out front, much too small to make any impact in the vast darkness.

Jalomir would no doubt deliver her a scathing lecture on the topic at the forge tomorrow. She would need to bring him a spiced custard bun as a peace offering.

She knocked her boots on the icy doorframe and fumbled her key into the lock with shivering fingers.

Her cramped space had never been much to look at—the cheapest table and chairs she could find, a small bookshelf that leaned a little too far to one side, and a lumpy bed barely big enough for one person.

Well, and of course her weapons. She hadn’t minded the simplicity, but Eloisa had done her best to improve upon it just about every time she stopped by.

Alvara’s fingers brushed against the blue and silver embroidered curtains her sister had picked out. The hole in her chest twinged. Another year, another anniversary gone. At times it felt like she had lived two lives—one before their fadings, and one after.

Predictable. That was what she wanted life to be now. Nothing more, nothing less.