Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Alvara forced herself to stand, to walk into the room where her father’s corpse rested. To lift the blanket and take in his face for the last time.
This would be her final memory of him. Bloodied. Frozen. Alone.
“We have to bury him, before we go. Please. I know we can’t risk starting a fire for his ashes, but I can’t leave him out in the cold like this.”
Leaving him buried would disrespect his memory, but Jalomir would help prepare her father for ashes. There was no one she trusted more to do it. She would have to leave a note explaining as little as possible, but enough that he wouldn’t go looking for her.
Alvara expected the Nyrian elf to argue, but he nodded. “Are you ready?”
She shook her head and padded down the hall, running her fingers across the wooden walls that had housed so much love.
There was one more thing she needed to do.
Alvara didn’t allow herself to hesitate at the threshold of her parents’ bedroom and instead found her way to her mother’s nightstand, a shrine to her short life.
She slid the drawer open with a creak and retrieved the pair of earrings that had sat untouched since her mother’s fading.
They were simple, the way Mother had always liked things.
Two ruby studs encased in silver, the markings on the front and back of the metal faded through countless generations of their family.
She slipped them into her ears, discarding a plain pair of earrings from a long-gone birthday that meant nothing in comparison to the precious heirlooms she now wore.
A few moments and a hastily scribbled note for Jalomir later, Alvara emerged, her breath stuck in her throat at the renewed sight of her father’s body. They would meet in Levahem one day, if the gods cared enough to send Alvara there instead of dumping her in Helvati’s domain.
Scattered and destroyed carcasses of her father’s treasured books, the only things that had ever brought him comfort after her mother’s passing, surrounded him even in fading. She needed to keep a piece of him, something likely to survive the harsh conditions.
His dagger. It sat on his bookshelf, always proudly on display as one of the first weapons Jalomir had allowed Alvara to make on her own. The blade was functional but terribly ugly, yet it had never stopped her father from proudly sharing it with anyone who would listen.
She exchanged the dagger for hers and laid her own blade next to her father’s body. It was all she had with her, and leaving a treasured remnant of herself with him as he passed onto the next realm was the least she could do for his departing soul.
“Ready?” the Nyrian elf asked again.
“No. But I won’t ever be.”
He carried her father out in silence, laid him on a fresh sheet of snow, and gouged a hole in the ground with his Nyrian magic.
“My name is Boden. I would say it was a pleasure to meet you, but with all this…well, I feel like you at least deserve to know my name before I…” He pressed his lips together tightly and placed her father in the soil.
A whimper crept out of Alvara’s mouth, unleashing a new torrent of tears that threatened to freeze to her cheeks. These past few years, she hadn’t been as good to him as she should have been. All the time lost…shudders racked her frigid body. Her teeth chattered as her magic seized control.
Boden offered a hand, and his body heat stunned her powers, at least for now.
“You need to stay as calm as you’re able to.
It may feel impossible, but until you eat something more substantial and rest, you’re at risk of burning through your life force.
” His magic traced delicate patterns of animals native to Dalvi into the mound of earth that cradled her father and outlined his temporary resting place with stones.
An easy way for Jalomir to find the body.
“Is there anything you would like to say?”
Not say—sing. She didn’t want to, not really. But her father had always loved her singing and used to bribe her in just about every way possible to share it with him. Really all she could do was barely hold a tune, but he had always stopped whatever he was doing to listen.
She hadn’t sung a single note since her sister’s and mother’s funeral, when her voice had melded with the others who mourned them, a haunting sound that would forever inhabit a place in her soul. The song inside her had quieted that day.
But now, the notes of the traditional Dalvian mourning song dug their way out from her grief, weaving a melancholy melody in the frosty air.
“You changed me with your life, your soul,
Without you my heart is no longer whole.
Your precious light shall never leave,
I hold it close even as I grieve.
May Mother Perhalia welcome you home,
Her fields of gold may you forever roam.
With love and sorrow our hearts will flow,
But this one comfort we do know.
This is not goodbye, my friend,
This is the beginning, not the end.”
Alvara knelt in the snow and pressed her forehead into the heap of earth that held her father. “Goodbye. Hug Eloisa and Mother for me,” she whispered.
Boden shifted behind her. “I truly am sorry, Alvara, but we need to leave.” His voice was thick with a tenderness that didn’t belong between strangers.
Alvara rose, handed him his coat, and followed him to where a pair of Dalvian horses waited, their breath swirling like spirits ascending to Levahem.
They stopped at the forge to leave the note, though seeing the familiar building did nothing to soothe her raw heart. Jalomir would take care of things as he always did and let Mikavar know not to expect her again at training any time soon. Maybe not ever again.
The wind howled around them as they left Vorianta, heading toward…
Damn elf had never answered her question. “Where are we going?”
“Ilmanir. They are the closest we have to an ally, and you’ll be safe there.”
Alvara had never visited Malva, let alone the capital. One of the smallest kingdoms, they were known for keeping to themselves and not being overly hospitable to outsiders. Though anyone could say the same about Dalvi.
“Your magic is…something.” Boden’s words barely carried over the gusts that blew from every direction. “Do you normally let loose frightening displays of ice or was this an exception?”
Gods, this was going to be a long journey if this was his terrible attempt at distracting her with what he probably considered humor. “I was…overwhelmed. Also, you imprisoned me and let them torture Pyry. I don’t owe you any kind of explanation.”
“Technically speaking, I didn’t imprison you. I was following the king’s orders, so—”
“Pyry.” Alvara gripped the reins tighter. “I left him.” Would King Einar send humans after him too?
“Your seluri,” Boden said. “He slipped my mind. It would be dangerous to return to collect him, but if we move quickly, we may be able to manage it.”
“He’s not my seluri. He’s not my anything.
” Not anymore. They could turn around now…
but it would be pointless. Pyry’s entire life and work revolved around Vorianta.
He was much too stubborn and attached to what had once been his father’s forge to ever consider leaving.
Even if it meant living in danger. “Pyry won’t listen, no matter what I say.
But it feels wrong leaving him without at least trying to warn him. ”
“I can have a message delivered to him if you’d like, but it must avoid mentioning Ilmanir.
We can’t risk their safety.” Boden looked back past the shaking trees that lined their path.
Toward the city, her home, that grew smaller with each bump in the saddle.
“Pyry should remain safe, at least for now. The king has little evidence or belief that he is involved in our ranks. Your father, older and alone, was the easier target, especially since Pyry proved futile in forcing information from you.”
If Boden spoke the truth. Every question, every decision depended on trusting an elf she had barely met, let alone knew anything about. At least a letter could inform Pyry of the threat he faced and beg him to keep to himself and live as inconspicuously as possible.
“You asked about my magic,” Alvara said, though it was a topic she’d prefer to avoid. “I haven’t used it since Eloisa faded. I didn’t put much practice into it to begin with, and I’ve never had the kind of control she possessed.”
“You will have to learn to control it. Otherwise, you’re a danger to others.” Boden eyed her as if she might freeze him to his horse at any moment.
He was right. If her powers were bubbling to the surface again, she needed to learn how to restrain them in order to be helpful.
“But first, we travel to Ilmanir.” Boden pushed his heels into his horse’s sides, and Alvara did the same. “We’ll stay the night in a small border town.”
The town turned out to be a small village, if one could call it that. It consisted of only a handful of ramshackle buildings, and the neighboring trees bore none of the green needles of Vorianta. Instead, their trunks were thin and their branches empty.
The inn itself was barely bigger than Alvara’s youngling home, the dilapidated sign out front lit by a single flickering lantern, and the owner studied Boden with narrowed eyes as they entered.
Better for her to speak to the older elf, who would be more forthcoming with a fellow Dalvian. “Two rooms.”
Boden leaned an elbow on the counter. “And two meals if you have them, please, sir.”
Alvara cast him an irritated look. His excessive Elan pleasantries would do nothing here. Most Dalvians, especially in rural parts of the kingdom, didn’t waste time on such trivial things.
The owner scowled at the tattoo now visible on Boden’s wrist and pushed it away with the spine of a book, like the ink on his skin might stain the wood. “Ten coins.”
Money. She hadn’t even thought to bring coins for the journey. Even her pack full of food meant for her father was still lying out in the cold, forgotten.
“Thank you for taking us in at such a late hour.” Boden slid twelve coins to the gnarled hands that waited with keys.
Alvara hobbled after him up the uneven stairs. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.” She would need to find blacksmithing work in Ilmanir, along with a place to stay, clothes…gods, it was all too much to worry about right now.
“I did lock you in a dungeon, just as you said. One free night in a terrible inn with what is undoubtedly going to be inedible food makes us even, I think.”
He wasn’t incorrect when it came to the rooms—hers was barely large enough to fit a mattress as thick as three sheets of paper, along with a rickety side table that looked like it might splinter under the weight of the candle nub on top of it.
Alvara sat on the bed, pulled out her father’s dagger, and watched the moonlight dance along its blade.
He was gone. If she had visited him earlier, maybe she could have stopped it.
Instead, she had been too entrenched in her own burdens to summon the energy to take care of the only family she had left. And now she had lost him too.
A quick knock meant the arrival of food, which she sorely needed but had no appetite for. Yet when she looked up, Boden stood in the doorway, not the inn owner.
He laid the steaming plate of mush beside her. “I didn’t dare ask what it was.”
She chose not to respond, hoping he would understand the silent request to leave her in peace. But Boden lingered, his gaze fixed on her father’s dagger. The weapon weighed heavy in her hands.
“Were you close?”
She wouldn’t speak of him. Couldn’t. It would only fester the wound and weaken her already withering soul. Alvara set the weapon on the table and dragged the tines of her fork through the food next to her, a generous word for the sticky substance.
After Eloisa and her mother’s fadings, she could barely eat for weeks, the pain of their losses sending her stomach into cramping or nausea fits. Her gut roiled with the same affliction as a waft of butter reached her nose.
“With your father,” Boden added, as if his first question wasn’t clear enough.
“I know who you meant.”
He picked up the plate and placed it in her lap. “A meal and a decent night of sleep will do wonders, I promise. Good night, Alvara.”
Even the tasteless meal and scratchy blanket couldn’t fend off her exhaustion, though the sleep that claimed her was anything but restful. Her dreams were hazy, soaked with blood and the wails of fading spirits. Her father, crying out for help that would never come.
Taking his very last breath.
Alone.