Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
During the week that followed, Alvara kept herself so busy that she collapsed into bed each night, her mind blissfully blank as she drifted into sleep. Optimism brewed in her bones as she watched and helped the town prepare for the incoming attack in only two weeks.
Each day warmed slightly more than the last, a pressing reminder of the threat that loomed before them. The smiths produced weapons at a dizzying rate, and the finished defenses provided some comfort that maybe they could make it through this.
“They’ve made progress,” Rav said, his arm crossed over his body as his gaze bounced between humans and demi-elves sparring at the morning’s training.
Alvara reached her fingers toward her toes and winced. She would have traded her left boot for a long bath in the hot spring, but there was no time. “Do you think we can win?”
“There’s no winning in war. But I think we have a chance at surviving.”
One chance to live or fade as they watched Gosibik burn to the ground.
“Alvara?” Erun stood before her, knee bouncing and eyes darting around the clearing.
“What is it?” Something had clearly agitated the man, though she couldn’t begin to guess what. She could see no immediate threats in the vicinity.
“I need to speak with you.” His quiet voice was unusually strained. “Alone.”
Rav raised his brows in a silent question, and Alvara nodded. She had nothing to fear from Erun. He had proved to be kind and caring, and the furthest thing from dangerous.
“What is it, Erun?”
His nervous energy calmed somewhat as Rav granted them space. “With the battle coming, I…I needed to apologize.”
“What could you possibly need to apologize for? You’ve done nothing but help us.”
Erun swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. “It was me, Alvara. I killed your father.”
Alvara’s lungs collapsed. Her chest squeezed so tight she could barely manage her next words. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t want to. The king threatened my son. He claimed he knew where my wife was and he would…”
His words faded into a distant hum. “What was his name?” Alvara whispered. She leaned into her spear, her limbs suddenly weak. Maybe it was all a cruel joke. Gods, she hoped it was.
“Alfris. Alfris Himren.”
It didn’t mean it was true. Her father had been well known in Dalvi and likely the other kingdoms too. Anyone could have known his name. “How did you do it?”
Erun was shaking now. “A dagger. At his home in Vorianta, and it has haunted me ever since. I am so sorry, Alvara…”
Her father. He killed her father.
Cold crawled up each of her limbs, and her stomach churned so hard she thought she might be sick.
Before her stood the reason her last family member had faded, had been ripped from her without thought or reason.
She had to get out.
She stumbled away, crashing into warriors left and right as she ran. Anywhere. She needed to go anywhere away from that man. Who knew what she might be capable of if she had to bear his presence for one more moment.
Frost swallowed her fingertips and crept up her skin. Her father’s corpse, drenched with blood. Drained of life. And Erun, his murderer, that twisted man, had spent weeks watching her, getting to know her. He had even asked about him, the very soul he had stolen from this earth.
Footsteps sounded behind Alvara, and ice slithered out of her body, forging a slippery path that led directly to the chief’s meeting hall. Boden. Kat. Someone, anyone needed to be there who could help calm her growing tide of emotions.
She yanked the door open, flung herself inside, and threw the weight of her body backward to pin it shut. If she held out long enough, maybe Erun would leave. If he didn’t…she didn’t want to think of the things she might do.
“Alvara?”
Her body sagged. Boden.
The wood vibrated against her back with repeated knocks, and Boden pushed through gawking humans, his eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
Breathe. You have to breathe. Alvara inhaled, but the rush of air did nothing to slow the lethal shards of ice forming in her gut. “He’s here. I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I tried to leave…”
“Who? Did someone hurt you?” Boden spoke in a rush as he knelt in front of her.
“No. But I want to hurt him.” But a piece of her also didn’t. She wanted someone to suffer for destroying her family, but she knew Erun had been forced to do it, and it was eating him alive. She had seen his scars, the years of his life King Einar had taken.
But her father’s blood was on his hands…flurries swirled from her fingertips, and Boden’s brow knitted as he watched her. He lifted her to her feet, placed her behind him, and opened the door, his muscles coiled tight enough to snap.
Erun stood outside the hall. The guilt dragging down his features, that face Alvara had come to trust over the past month and a half, they hammered crack after crack into the walls caging her magic, the powers that were only growing more turbulent with each passing second.
Boden’s hand found hers, and he squeezed with an intensity that confirmed he knew Erun.
Boden had known.
“Please,” Erun said, his voice trembling. “I cannot live another day knowing what I have done without making it right.”
“If you value your life,” Boden said, “I suggest you leave and never come near her again. You were granted a second chance, free from the king. Don’t waste it, Erun.”
The words only spilled out of Erun faster. “I didn’t want to do it. The king threatened my family, and they mean everything to me.”
“And my father didn’t mean everything to me?” Alvara shook off Boden’s grasp and stepped around him toward the open door.
“Alvara—”
She ignored Boden’s warning and moved outside, closer to Erun, whose bulging eyes locked on her face.
“I didn’t know any better. To me, he was simply another elf, another of King Einar’s kind. But a part of me did want to do it. Wanted to make him bleed for what they had done to me.”
“Simply another elf?” Alvara choked on the last word. Her father had been so much more than that, and he had deserved so much better than what fate had decided for him.
She clenched the shaft of her spear and shut her eyes.
This was too much, digging at a wound that had hardly begun to heal.
She had spent month after month chasing after revenge on the king, conquering the man who had taken everything from her, yet here stood before her the one who had bled her father dry.
Who had wanted to do it.
Erun lifted his hands up and took a small step backward. “I needed to free myself of the truth, Alvara. Before we face a battle we may not survive.”
Alvara fought the urge to scoff and instead drew a blistering breath, dropping her weapon to the ground. Some of the darkest threads of her soul craved this man’s blood, and her spear would only provide the perfect means of revenge.
“Alvara.” Her name on Boden’s lips, so damn precious, calmed the blizzard raging inside her, if only for a moment. “It’s best to leave it alone. He shouldn’t have approached you, and as I’ve told you, he had no other choice. With what the humans have been through—”
“What the humans have been through? What about what I’ve been through, Boden?
” She whirled on him and spat the words in his face as the hinges on the doors to her magic groaned under the weight of her rage.
“This man, willing or not, took the last precious thing I had left in my life, and you want me to worry about what he’s been through? ”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that—”
“You knew.” The words burned her throat, hurting more than she had ever imagined. “You knew who he was.”
Boden reached toward her before yanking his hand back and pinning his arms down at his sides.
“I knew Erun in the palace, yes. But I knew nothing of his relation to the chief. No one mentioned him over the years when I came to Gosibik. They had all disowned him under the belief he abandoned his son and people for the elves.”
Pain radiated up her jaw as she clenched her teeth together. “You know that’s not what I was asking, Boden.”
He inhaled a breath in and out his nose.
“I didn’t know which human had killed your father.
Servants arrive and disappear regularly, and there were many the king could have sent.
I hadn’t even realized Erun survived until the day the ships returned from the raid, when I saw him leaving your training.
” Boden reached out again, this time taking her hand in his.
“All I knew was it was a possibility he was responsible. What good would it have done to tell you something I wasn’t even sure of myself? ”
She hated the warmth and comfort of his touch, the way her skin craved more. She hated the familiar scent of him, the life he breathed into her lungs every time he was near.
Most of all, she hated that he had kept this from her. Hidden it away like a dirty truth he didn’t think she was strong enough to handle.
Alvara wrenched her hand out of his and shook her head. “It wasn’t your right to decide what I’m worthy of knowing, Boden.”
“Alvara, knowing which human was forced to kill your father is irrelevant. King Einar was the one—”
“Irrelevant?” Alvara snapped. Her magic tingled throughout her body, coating every limb, every finger, every hair in a thin layer of ice. Fragile and ready to break. “How is it irrelevant—”
“Forgive me,” Erun said behind her, and she froze. “Please, Alvara. I cannot go into battle knowing I may fade without earning back that piece of my soul.”
Forgiveness? Alvara trembled head to toe, shaking so violently the world around her shuddered. This man wanted her forgiveness? She couldn’t, not yet. Not now. He had taken everything—
“Alvara,” Boden said, stepping forward gently as if any sudden movement might fracture her into a hundred pieces. “You need to breathe, calm your…”
Erun spoke over him. “Please tell me what I can do.”
Alvara turned slowly, her temperature plummeting. “What you can do?”
He lurched backward, hand to his chest. “Alvara, please…”