Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
True to his word, Boden allowed Lilja to attend training the next morning. While Kat’s movements through the footwork were graceful and fairly accurate, Lilja’s almost seemed worse than the few days before.
They had even neared the end of their time together without Lilja pointing out a withered plant and describing what it would look like come ela. Alvara normally would have reveled in the quiet, but it was far from the comfortable kind.
“Have you had a chance to speak with the farmers about helping with the crops?” Alvara asked as she pivoted Lilja’s hips—she always managed to move them out of line with the rest of her body, leaving her unstable enough that Alvara could probably knock her over with a puff of air.
“No, but I will, I promise. It’s just…I’m afraid it will remind me too much of home. I’m not sure if it will be a good thing or not. And who knows if Boden would even let me.”
Alvara should have ignored how Lilja’s spark had dimmed to a dull pile of embers, but it pained her to see such life devoured by shadows.
A small piece of Ela might give her something to cling to.
“He would do anything to see you happy. He didn’t want you to train, but I talked it through with him. He’s easy to reason with.”
Lilja’s brow crumpled. “He didn’t want me to train? It’s like he thinks I’m not capable just because I’m young. I want to learn so I can help. I know I can.”
“It’s not that,” Alvara said. “He lost your father and doesn’t want to lose you.”
“Gods, he can turn into such a mother bear sometimes,” Kat grumbled. “Did you know that one time I strained my arm from flying too much, and he told me I shouldn’t fly for a month?”
That seemed…unreasonable, even for Boden. “A month?”
“Now that I think about it, it may have only been a few days, but it felt like forever. And then there was this one time—”
Alvara patted her friend’s back. “Thank you, Kat. What we’re trying to say is he means well. He’s done things for me that many people I know wouldn’t have. He’s your brother, Lilja. Just talk to him. I’m sure he would understand.”
Lilja’s eyes gleamed. “You two sound very close.”
Alvara snorted. “Boden and I are not close.”
“For someone you’re not close to, you sure seem to be willing to defend him,” Lilja said as she tossed her long hair over her shoulder.
Oh gods, she had been defending Boden, hadn’t she? Alvara did not like the turn this conversation had taken. “That’s beside the point—”
“Is it?” Kat shared a look with Lilja that only spelled trouble.
Alvara felt like a teacher trying to control a class of younglings. “Yes, it is. Talk to your brother, Lilja. His desire to keep you safe is written in his blood, but I also know he wants you to be happy.”
So did Alvara. She saw small pieces of herself in Lilja’s struggle to adapt to a new life and even larger pieces of Eloisa in her vibrancy and her desire to make something of herself.
Or maybe Alvara just wanted to assuage her own guilt for telling Lilja that Boden hadn’t wanted her to train at all.
Whatever the reason, she skipped dinner and instead hovered at the edges of the market. She had just begun to convince herself this was all a foolish idea when Ilona, the spice vendor, waved her down.
“Alvara!”
Damn it, she had been spotted and couldn’t leave now. She did her best to mirror the vendor’s warm smile as she approached her stall.
“Back for more?”
Alvara shook her head—she had been using the kardevar in her food, but she was nowhere near needing more.
Ilona’s face faltered. “I was very sorry to hear about Vorianta.”
Alvara shifted on her feet, unable to look the female in the eye. “Me too.” She drew a shaky breath and looked past the vendor to the other stalls. Would anyone here even sell goods from Ela? With war brewing, it seemed unlikely.
Ilona followed her line of sight. “Looking for something?”
“I have an odd request. Do you know if any of the other vendors sell seeds?”
“For what?” Ilona asked as she rearranged a handful of vials and bottles.
Like she had any clue. Alvara had never grown a thing in her life. “Flowers? That sort of thing.”
“Ah. Well, as you can guess, the elves here don’t have much of an affinity for growing things that remind them of King Einar.
” Ilona tapped a finger to her nose. “But you might have luck with Havur. He came from Ela and runs a farm on the outskirts of the city. They supply most of the vegetables to the food hall. Helps keep us fed during dalvi.”
After reciting the directions to the farm ten times to herself, Alvara thanked her and followed the taunting scent of honey to a neighboring stall, where she snagged a loaf of sweet bread for the walk.
With only the half-eaten loaf of bread to accompany her, Alvara wove through the city toward the sprawling lands beyond. The days were exceedingly short at this time of year, and she needed to maintain a quick pace if she hoped to be back before nightfall.
Alvara’s limbs sagged from exhaustion when a large farm finally came into view, with little sign of life except for the noises of the livestock. She tugged her shirt over her nose to block out the awful stench and hurried to the door of the small home.
It only took a single knock before quiet shuffles sounded from inside. An elf, at least three hundred, swung the door open and smiled, accentuating the plentiful wrinkles on his tanned skin. Probably from decades, if not centuries, spent in the sun.
“Can I help you?”
What was she doing here? Asking a farmer for seeds for someone she hardly knew? But it was too late to turn back now. “Do you by chance have any seeds I could buy? Maybe for flowers?”
He nodded and headed back inside, and Alvara lingered at the door. “Come in,” he said from somewhere inside the house. “You’ll catch a cold waitin’ out there.”
The setting of the sun had chilled the air, so she didn’t argue. Alvara wandered down the entry hall, where a mix of dried and fresh blooms in every color of the rainbow hung all over the walls in thin vases.
She followed the rhythmic tread of footsteps and what sounded like the crackle of fire and ended up in the kitchen with who was likely the farmer’s seluri.
“Are you hungry?” the female asked as she stirred a large, steaming pot full to the brim with vibrant beans and vegetables.
“Oh no, I’m fine,” Alvara lied. “Thank you.” Her stomach, once a staunch enemy of food, now required sustenance at all hours of the day, something she was hardly used to.
The female glanced over her shoulder and pointed with her spoon to a small, weathered table at the center of the room. “Sit. I know a hungry face when I see one.”
Gods knew what possessed Alvara to speak her thoughts aloud, but she said, “You don’t even know me. I could be an Elan spy or a Valonian elf wielding illusions.”
The farmer’s seluri guffawed. “I doubt a spy would trudge out to a farm under the appearance of a Dalvian elf, holding what looks to be a loaf of bread that didn’t quite survive the journey.” She placed a bowl in front of Alvara, the scent of the herbs alone making her mouth water. “Eat.”
Alvara mumbled her thanks and dug into the food, unsure how she had even ended up in this situation. It would definitely be dark by the time she left, but at least she would return to the city with a full stomach.
A sun-kissed hand laid a handful of packets on the table.
“We’re far from our best growin’ season, so we don’t have much.
” Alvara reached into her pouch for coins, but the farmer shook his head.
“Take them. I only have the flower seeds for myself. It’s nice to see someone with an interest in growin’ things. ”
“Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for…a friend.” She was suddenly using that word much more often these days. “Is it true you grow most of the produce for the food hall?”
“We do. Though it’s been harder ‘cause of the block on trade with Ela in the last few years. We used to have friends there who would give us what we needed, but the king’s been closin’ off trade with the kingdoms that won’t follow him.
And with more elves and demi-elves fleein’, our numbers here are only gettin’ bigger each year. ”
Alvara had never pondered the other ramifications of King Einar’s reign.
There had been less variety at the Vorianta markets in the last few years, but she hadn’t cared since she had no other mouths to feed.
“Would it help to have my Elan friend”—there she went with that word again—“stop by to see what she could do?”
“Send her by,” Havur said, nodding. “Elamara knows we can use any help we can get. King Ulivar gives plenty to those who work hard for the refugees, but times are tough.”
They were kind people; anyone could see that. Lilja would gloss over any reservations they held in a matter of minutes. “Thank you.”
Alvara pocketed the seeds, and the farmer’s seluri held out two lumpy bags, piled high with vegetables. “If you’re heading back, will you bring these to the food hall? Keep anything you like.”
Unsure what she would do with what felt like at least fifty potatoes, Alvara hoisted the bags on her shoulders for her walk back to the city.
As she suspected, the sun had set, casting a soft sheet of darkness over the path as she groaned under the weight of the food.
It was the least she could do after they helped her, but gods, it was heavy.
The trilling of birds and howling of wolves probably should have made Alvara nervous since all she had on her person was her dagger and an obscene number of vegetables, but it seemed tame compared to all that she had experienced in the past few months.
She would take a wolf over imprisonment in King Einar’s dungeons any day.
Just when her muscles could stand it no longer, the dim lights of the food hall flickered before her. She fumbled for the door, her fingers almost numb from the cold.
“Doing some light shopping?”
Alvara jolted, and a few errant potatoes rolled to the ground. “Damn it, Boden! You scared me.”
He bent down and gathered the strays. “Sorry. May I help you? You look moments away from dropping whatever it is you’re carrying.”
Alvara dumped the bags into his waiting hands. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“I just finished up a rather long day working on the trenches. Are you going to tell me what exactly I’m carrying?” Boden shifted his goods to one hand and pulled the door open, letting Alvara into the warm building first.
“Food.”
“Thank Vitharen, I was worried it was severed body parts. I can see that it’s food, Alvara. What is it for?”
“It’s a long story. I was looking for flower seeds and ended up at a farm. And they wanted me to bring this back to the food hall.”
Isathir eyed their cargo with an excited glint in his eyes. “What have you brought me?”
“We’ve established it’s not body parts,” Boden said as he set his load on the counter.
Alvara ignored him. “It’s from Havur, the farmer. His seluri told me to bring it by.”
The head cook rifled through the contents, examining each item with the scrutiny of a Dalvian jeweler inspecting gemstones, while Boden leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets.
“They’re for my sister, aren’t they?”
Her ears heated, though why she felt embarrassed for doing something nice, she didn’t know.
Perhaps because it was a sign she was becoming more comfortable and adjusted here.
In some ways that felt impossibly wrong, knowing her own city lay in ruins.
“She just seems to miss Ela so much. I thought it might help. The farmer could use her help too if she’d like.
Kat and I have mentioned it before, but she seems unsure. ”
“Are you going to take up space in my kitchen or do something useful?” Isathir’s sharp tone sounded like Alvara’s mother, when she and Eloisa would chase each other around the kitchen.
Boden dipped his head in the direction of the door. “I’ll walk you back.”
At night, Ilmanir basked in the golden glow of the lampposts, cocooning Alvara in a sense of safety she had never expected to feel in this place. The simple beauty of the city and its people had grown on her and wormed its way into a small crevice in her heart.
Though nothing outweighed the unusual silence that hung over them like a cloud as they ambled through the mostly empty streets. No doubt Boden had words sitting on the tip of his tongue that he was holding back for her sake.
“You can say it,” Alvara said. “You know you want to.”
Boden’s lips twitched, and he pressed them into a tight line. “It’s very kind, what you’re doing for her.”
“You sound surprised.”
He nudged her in the direction of her room—she hadn’t even realized she had been veering toward the path that skirted the lake.
“I’m not surprised, I’m grateful. Lilja and my mother mean everything to me, and I never feel I’m doing enough for them or for the people we’re helping.
To know someone else is there for her, it truly means the world to me. ”
Was that really how he saw himself? To Alvara and countless others, he was the glue that held the city and its movement together. “Can you give them to Lilja? And don’t tell her they’re from me.”
He took the packets she offered and frowned. “You’ll never cease to confuse me.”
“I do my best.” Alvara slowed to a stop, her eyes drawn to him.
His chiseled features that softened with warmth and care whenever he spoke; his short, disheveled hair that made her wonder if he even owned a comb; the soft ring of brown in the center of his amber eyes that she had only come to notice as they spent more time together…
She had become undeniably comfortable around him. No, not comfortable, comforted. He brought peace to her disarray each time they spoke, and even the times they didn’t.
In the light of the lampposts, Boden’s eyes had turned to liquid gold. A rare and precious metal resistant to many of the elements that would try to corrode its beauty.
He didn’t look away even as the seconds dragged on. “Lucky for you, I rather enjoy a good puzzle.”