Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Pyry?” Alvara stood in one of the city’s other forges the next morning, trying not to drown in memories as she watched him work.
His hammer paused mid-swing. Sweat glistened on his brow, another reminder of the unusual passion they had always shared for this blistering craft that went so strongly against the frigid nature of their Dalvian magic.
He had been waiting too, she knew. For news of their home, their people. She wished she had better news to share, and that she wasn’t the one who had to do it.
“Vorianta is…” She didn’t know how to say it, let alone to Pyry, who she had been shamefully avoiding.
“I know. I heard.” His hammer slammed into the hot metal on the anvil.
“I don’t have news about Jalomir.” Or anyone in Vorianta, for that matter. “But it means war is coming to Ilmanir.”
Another clang of his hammer. “Vorianta, gone. And now, war.”
That about summed it up. “I’ve been avoiding you—”
Pyry looked up from his work and quirked an eyebrow.
“I guess that was fairly obvious,” she muttered. “But Vorianta is home. I’ll talk to you, at least about that. If you need it.”
He set his tool on the anvil, his head hung low. “Do you think we’ll ever go back?”
The thought alone formed a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow past. “I hope so. Even if we can’t, it will always be home.”
Pyry looked up at her, long enough for Alvara to wonder if that was his way of asking her to leave. When he did speak, his voice was faint. Mellower like the old Pyry, before life toughened him into something she had hardly come to recognize.
“The dagger from Jalomir.”
She stiffened.
“The dagger—it wasn’t why I agreed to travel with you.” Each of his words was slower than the last, as if he wasn’t sure he should even continue.
Alvara’s mouth ran dry. “I find that hard to believe.”
He pulled the dagger from his hip and held it in front of him.
“I wanted to go, see you. Make sure you would be safe. But I didn’t think you’d want my company, after…
” After he had left her years ago. “Jalomir didn’t want you to go alone.
He offered to craft a weapon to make up for my time, and I…
it gave me an excuse to agree. I could convince myself it was a business transaction. ”
She took a small step back, her chest tight. There were so many things she expected him to say, but that was not one of them. “You hardly seemed like you wanted to be there. You barely spoke to me—”
“Seeing you was…harder than I’d thought. After all that time, I didn’t know what to say, and it seemed better to keep to myself. And after the palace”—he shut his eyes for a breath—“it was all too much.” Pyry stretched the dagger farther toward her. “Take it.”
It was a small gesture and probably the closest she would ever come to hearing the actual words “I’m sorry” from his lips, but it was enough to keep one of the few remaining threads that tied them together from snapping.
Alvara gently pushed the weapon back toward him.
“Keep it. With everything happening in Ilmanir, you may need it sooner than you think.” She moved toward the door and paused. “I’ll see you around.”
As Alvara made her way to the training grounds for her meeting with Lilja, her conversation with Pyry swirled in her head, mingling with agonizing thoughts of Vorianta in a potent mixture that left her ready for a distraction.
Hopefully teaching Boden’s sister in the way of the sword would wash it all away, at least for an hour or two.
Lilja, as it turned out, radiated sweetness and warmth, like a ray of sunshine on a cold dalvi day.
Though it became painfully apparent from the moment she entered the clearing in a vibrant pink dress, humming a cheery tune, that Lilja was built for tending to and creating beautiful things, not embracing violence.
But then again, losing your father to a heartless monster could poison anyone.
Alvara had started to demonstrate the basics of footwork, a boring but crucial piece of combat, when Kat burst into the clearing, her clothes a wrinkled mess and her hair sticking out at odd angles. “I may have slept in. What did I miss?”
“Nothing. I was about to show Lilja the proper starting stance,” Alvara said. “Though, she probably already knows some since she’s in academy.”
Lilja twirled a piece of light brown hair around her finger. “I’ve never paid much attention in our combat classes. I tend to…socialize.”
“Sounds like someone related to Boden,” Alvara said under her breath.
“Wait, wait, wait, what about swinging swords and other pointy things? That’s why I’m here, at least.” Kat scrunched her nose.
Alvara pinned her with a look. “You’re here because you’re my friend, and you support me.”
“Yes.” Kat drew out the vowel. “That is definitely why I’m here. Not to learn how to stab people.”
Gods, this was going to be a long morning.
Her assumption proved to be correct. Kat and Lilja chatted on and off throughout Alvara’s instructions, missing at least half of them.
She had to repeat herself to a nauseating degree, until an elbow to the ribs from Kat dragged her into their small talk against her will.
Apparently, her friend didn’t understand that the whole point of fighting was the physicality and delightful lack of conversation.
“How are you liking Ilmanir?” Alvara asked, and both Kat and Lilja relaxed their posture, giving up altogether on imitating her movements.
“It’s…different.” Lilja cast her green eyes toward the ground. Alvara tilted her head, and Lilja rushed out her next words. “It’s not bad, really! I like it. It’s just different than what I’m used to.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me.” Alvara was the first person to admit she had struggled to adjust to the Malvan kingdom.
Lilja laughed, a bright, lovely sound that reminded her of Eloisa.
“I hate it here. Well, not hate, that sounds harsh. But I miss the flowers, all the plants really. I know that sounds so typical for an Elan elf, but I’m not used to everything being…
brown. We have an orchard back home.” She swallowed, her eyes shimmering. “Had an orchard.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and Alvara looked to Kat to fill it, something that seemed to come naturally to her. But Kat jerked her finger toward Lilja and pointed to her moving but silent mouth with her other hand. Oh gods, why did she want Alvara to fix this?
“There’s nothing wrong with missing home.” Kat nodded so energetically while Alvara spoke that her neck could have snapped. “Uh…maybe you could help in the city with your magic. Grow crops and food?”
Lilja beamed, and a subtle warmth blossomed in Alvara’s chest.
After spending the first few days of training focusing on the first steps that preceded any attack (and learning what some might consider too much about Ela, its food, clothes, and plants), Alvara found herself standing a little taller and breathing easier.
She was doing something. Something small, but something, nonetheless.
Though it was easy to see how much Boden’s sister still longed for home.
Alvara had never heard anyone talk so much about flower species, growing habits, and soil, of all things.
Wasn’t all dirt just…dirt? But the sentiment woven into Lilja’s every word mirrored the void in Alvara’s own heart where her kingdom and people had once lived.
“You’re rather chipper this morning,” Boden said when he arrived for her magic training. “What’s put you in such good spirits?” He peered over her shoulder as if expecting to find someone hiding behind her. “Or should I ask who?”
Alvara rolled her eyes. “Very funny. I’m training a couple of others in the traditional fighting forms. But don’t you already know…” The blank look on his face gobbled up the rest of her sentence.
Oh gods. He had no idea what his sister had been doing.
“Don’t I already know what?”
She bent down and tugged at the laces of her boots. After losing his father, she was sure the last thing he wanted was Lilja engaging in anything with even a whiff of danger. “Nothing. I just got confused.”
Boden narrowed his eyes. “Who are you training?”
Alvara stood, scratching the back of her head. “Kat.”
“Who else? You said there was more than one.”
Alvara willed her face into neutrality. If she opened her mouth, she would only make more of a mess than she already had.
“Who else.” His tone had taken on the sharp edge of a blade. “If you say my sister’s name, so help me Vitharen—”
“I thought you knew! It’s nothing. I haven’t even handed her a weapon yet.”
“A weapon?” It was almost a shout, the loudest she had ever heard him speak.
Boden pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry for the outburst. But you will not be giving my sister a weapon.
She’s not even seventeen. She’ll start to believe that she can fight in the coming battle, and I would rather fade than let that happen.
Lilja won’t be training with you anymore. ”
This was absurd. Alvara had been handling weapons since a much younger age, and she still had all of her fingers. Well, there was one chunk missing from her pinky, but that was beside the point. “I’m not training her for war, Boden. So far all she’s done is stood on quite uneven footing.”
“I may not have a say in what you do, but I do have a say in what she does. She will not be training with you.”
“She needs it—”
“No!” His voice rang through the clearing, silencing the chatter of birds.
“What she needs is to stay safe. Our mother has already lost enough, and so have I. I will not risk my sister’s life just so you can prove to everyone around you that you’re more than your clumsy magic.
” Boden drew a long breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean that.”
But he had said it.
“Clumsy magic? I’m working my ass off training with you and that’s how you see me? She’s her own person, Boden. Whether you like it or not. If she wants to learn, that’s her choice, not yours. You’re not her godsdamned father!”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she would have given her favorite spear to shove them back where they came from and pretend none of this had ever happened. But hurt flashed in his eyes, and she scrambled for something, anything to undo what she had done.
She came up empty.
“I am painfully aware of that fact, Alvara. Thank you for reminding me.” Any softness in his features had hardened into the stone he wielded. “Go to the forge. I’m sure they could use your help with preparations.”
He turned on his heel, and Alvara called after him. “Wait! Please.”
Boden’s footsteps halted.
“I’m sorry. I know how much you’ve lost. I understand.
If I could have protected Eloisa—” Her voice quavered, and she took a slow inhale.
“But Lilja is drowning, anyone can see that. The training gives her something to focus on, and you can’t shelter her from the world forever.
What she’s learning might save her life one day. ”
Boden didn’t speak, but he also didn’t leave. Maybe he wouldn’t even dignify her outburst with a response. Could she blame him?
Torturous seconds passed until Boden finally faced her, arms crossed. “She can train. But she will not be anywhere near the city when the Elan forces arrive.”
“Understood. I’m sorry about what I said. Everything with Vorianta…it’s still so raw.”
His arms relaxed at his sides. “You know I don’t think your magic is clumsy.”
“It is a little though, right?” She risked a small smile.
The stone disintegrated, leaving a familiar grin in its place. “Maybe a little.”