Chapter 27 #2
Cold earth pressed against Alvara’s cheek. The stone walls around her flickered with an orange glow, but there was no sunlight to be found. An imposing silhouette she couldn’t quite make out blocked the entrance to the cave, and the creature stretched its furry paws in front of it and yawned.
“Boden.” Her voice was more rasp than substance, but the animal’s ears perked up, and soon her friend knelt at her side. His tunic clung to his skin in shreds of scarlet. “Your back.” She reached out a trembling hand, and an inferno seared along her injuries.
Boden clasped his warm hands around hers, and her fingers curled and spasmed through the pain, sinking her nails into his skin.
He shook his head, jaw tight. “If you think mine is terrible, I wouldn’t recommend looking over your shoulder.
Damn it, Alvara, what were you thinking? I’ve survived far worse.”
She hadn’t been thinking at all. She just knew, somewhere deep down, she had to protect him from more brutality at the hands of King Einar, even if it cost her life.
Streaks of dried blood ran down Boden’s skin, much paler than its usual tan, and purple shadows hung under his eyes, but he was alive. “How did you…”
He lifted a roughly hewn stone bowl to her lips, and she gulped down the liquid.
“I found one of the king’s horses farther in the Grove.
We should be far enough to stay safe for now, but you need food and a healer.
I washed your wounds as best I could, but if we wait too long to heal them, they’ll become infected.
And the scarring…” He emphasized the last word as if it were a worse fate than a life-threatening infection.
Alvara let little bits of air dribble into her lungs. “The scars don’t bother me. They never have. We can match.” Each word burned hotter than molten metal, but she meant it. None of his scars bothered her—the ones she could see and the ones she couldn’t.
“I would’ve preferred tattoos.” The faint twinkle in his eyes faded. “There’s a town in Nyr not far from here. I have friends there who may be able to help. We can try to make it there before heading to the human realm.”
That was wasting time the humans didn’t have. Not with King Einar’s destruction of the magic barrier. Alvara spoke through clenched teeth. “The humans. You have to go.”
Boden leaned in closer and swept away the strands of gray hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “I meant what I said. I won’t leave you. You can’t take a lashing for me and then expect me to toss you aside like day-old bread.”
If she had the energy, Alvara would have explained that day-old bread could actually be turned into a dessert that some would argue tasted even better than the original.
But Boden scooped her into his arms once again, and she settled her head into his chest, letting his steady heartbeat lull her into a deep sleep.
Something wet touched Alvara’s skin and dragged her to the realm of the living. An ice fox sat a fingerbreadth away, its furry white head tilted in what was surely curiosity as to why she was face down, alone in the middle of gods knew where.
Alone?
Alvara scraped her fingers through the dirt and wriggled to her knees, swaying back and forth. Her palms drove into the ground. Had he actually left her? She was trying to be heroic, but she obviously hadn’t meant it.
The fox scampered into the trees, leaving her alone to inspect the strange stone structure that curved around her. Boden must have built it with what little magic he had to try to keep her from view.
She could either sit in the forest, waiting to be kidnapped or eaten by whatever beasts lurked about in the first few days of nyr, or she could grit through her injuries and find help. Dalviri knew how far the nearest town was or when he would be back, and Alvara was hungry.
The new season had started to breathe morsels of life into the animals and plants, cracking through ice and warming the air just enough to hold back the bite of dalvi, but it wasn’t enough to grow vegetation, let alone anything edible.
And the last thing Alvara needed right now was to eat something poisonous out of sheer desperation.
She moved as fast as she dared, and an unpleasant heat coursed through her body.
Hopefully the large paw prints she followed were Boden’s and not a wild animal.
She leaned on a tree and crushed her eyelids shut, pulling air in and out of her nose to quell the nausea that simmered in her gut.
A mixture of voices bounced through the trees, and her already rapid pulse dashed after the fox. King Einar’s elves.
Hide. Hide. Hide.
She sunk to the base of the tree and tucked her body into a tight ball. It only occurred to her moments later that the trunk wasn’t even wide enough to cover a quarter of her frame.
“Alvara?” Boden crouched down in front of her and pulled her curtain of snarled hair away from her face.
“Hi,” she rasped. She was an idiot for wandering into the woods. Gods, it was so hot in this kingdom, and Boden’s touch so unusually cold. She dropped her head against the tree trunk and flapped the collar of her shirt.
A female she didn’t recognize leaned in, laid a hand on her forehead, and clicked her tongue. “Poor thing’s got a fever. Arnik, help her to the house.”
Another stranger approached Alvara, a male covered in Nyrian tattoos whom she had no intention of letting touch her. She recoiled, scraping her wounds against the coarse bark. Her back flared, and she cried out, but her weak body only managed a small squeak.
Boden shifted his weight and blocked the male from her view.
The softness in his eyes unlocked some of the tension holding her muscles captive.
“They’re only here to help you, I promise.
” He stepped aside, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides as the other male picked her up and carried her.
“The humans,” Alvara said. Did they even know they were in danger? Kat. Ravanel. Aurilena. Lilja. Even Pyry. Had any of them survived?
“We’ll worry about that later. You’re the only thing I’m worried about right now,” Boden said softly from her side.
The couple’s home smelled of roasted meat and firewood, the balmy temperature enough to suffocate Alvara right then and there. She would’ve preferred to stay in the snow with the fox.
Arnik laid her on a soft bed, so white and clean that Alvara felt a pang of guilt for marring it with her blood and grime.
But as she sank her face and chest into the mattress, her body relaxed in a way it hadn’t in days.
She would buy them ten bars of soap for the stains if it meant she could bleed all over their sheets.
“It’s going to scar,” the female said, probably thinking her voice quiet enough that Alvara wouldn’t hear.
“We could try to find an Elan healer, but with the state of the kingdoms, it’s a risk.
” Scars be damned, Alvara just wanted a plate of the meat she could smell and a nap in this bed, and she would be happy for the rest of her life.
“I know. Thank you, Pira, for helping us.”
Alvara twisted her head to focus on the one familiar thing among all the uncertainty. Boden leaned forward in a chair next to the bed and tapped his fingers along his leg at a frantic pace.
Pira tugged at what little remained of the shirt on Alvara’s back. “You know we would do anything for you and your family.”
The material ripped, and Boden sucked in a breath through his teeth.
“Did I ever tell you about the day I discovered I could shift? My earth magic had shown up early, even for a youngling, and I had wreaked more than a little havoc on my poor father’s garden, but I had never felt the pull to shift.
” He was trying to distract her from the pain to come—the pain he knew all too well himself.
So Alvara latched on to each of his words, tethering her mind to his voice as much as she could instead of her body.
“Sorry, love,” Pira said. “It’s going to hurt, but it will be better soon.”
Liquid blazed along Alvara’s skin. She buried her face in the pillow, clawing at the mattress to keep herself from bucking backward.