Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Liquid dripped onto Alvara’s face, and something cold and moist nudged her cheek. Vigi. He hadn’t left her side all night, even when the blacksmith had left for home, though the dog’s breath might just be the thing to push her stomach over the edge.
She flapped her hand in his nauseatingly joyful face and stretched her muscles, sore from sleeping on the hard ground. Thanks to Oda’s convincing and Pyry’s support, the young woman’s father had agreed to let Alvara stay the night instead of throwing her out into the street.
Though none of it mattered—her throbbing head, the dizziness. Not when she needed to fix everything she had broken.
And she knew where she needed to start.
After checking the docks, Alvara headed to the chief’s meeting hall, where Rav lingered outside the building, deep in conversation with a few members of the new council.
“Rav, where is he?” she asked, averting her gaze from the other elves who looked about ready to toss her into the nearest river.
“You’ve done enough.” Rav turned his back to her and addressed the council members. “The Eskenti settlement is our only option. Find Aurilena, she’ll know what to do.”
“Please. I need to make it right, all of it. I’ll do anything.”
“There’s nothing any of us can do now.” Rav opened the door and stepped inside, but he paused. “The forest on the southside of town. He deserves more, Alvara. More than what this life has given him.”
Boden deserved the world. It was a fact like the air she needed to breathe. “Thank you. I’m sorry. For everything.”
Rav slipped into the darkness, and Alvara ran.
The forest was quiet and calm, with the exception of a few chirping birds that squawked upon Alvara’s arrival. Soft green moss covered the ground, and rays of sunlight pushed through the leaves of the trees, but it was the massive bear resting at the base of a trunk that caught her attention.
“Boden,” Alvara said. The creature’s ears twitched, but it didn’t turn, and her heart lurched into her throat. Please be him and not a real bear. A strong possibility she should have considered with ela being at its peak, but it was a chance she was more than willing to take.
The scent of the forest cleared the last of the mead from her mind and settled her breathing into a slow and strong rhythm. “You were right.”
Its head snapped up, and the full force of the creature’s gaze settled on her. At least if it wasn’t Boden, she would be able to unload her guilt and apologies before it ate her for breakfast.
“I spend my time focusing on my own pain, instead of thinking of the people around me. I think it feels like if I stay stuck in my grief, I don’t have to move on and leave them behind.
” She inhaled a shaky breath. “It’s easier for me to live in the past than risk getting close to someone, knowing I might lose them too. ”
As she spoke, the bear transformed. Boden stood before her, muscles tensed as if he might shift back and leave at any moment.
“I’m afraid,” Alvara said. “I’m afraid of losing more than I already have.
I let my pain consume me, so I didn’t have to feel anything else.
I didn’t have to worry about feeling a connection with anyone that I might break one day because I’m broken.
” Her voice cracked. “I’m afraid of losing you, Boden. ”
Her walls fractured, and every emotion, every drop of grief she had shunned for three years rushed into her body, in a torrent she could no longer control.
And she didn’t want to. “It feels wrong to live when they don’t get the same chance.
And my own parents stopped living as soon as my sister was gone.
As if I wasn’t worth living for. But you are, Boden, you’re worth living for.
The world you want to build is worth living for. ”
He had stepped closer now, his stony features softening back into the demi-elf she cared for so much.
“I know I’ve ruined our only chance at winning this war,” Alvara said quietly, “but I will find a way to fix it. No matter the cost.”
Even if it meant forfeiting her own life, she would do it for the survival of hope.
Such a fragile thing, but it held more power than a hundred armies.
Tears pricked at her eyes as she looked at the person who had changed her so completely, but she held them back.
This wasn’t about her—this was about Boden and everything he had given, not only to her, but to countless others.
The sound of his voice alone was almost enough to make her crumble right then and there.
“I’m still furious with you for what you did, but I need you to know something.
” He was close enough to touch now, and every part of her wanted to.
“You are worth every fight, every sleepless night, every bruised knee. You are and always have been utterly irreplaceable. And no one will be able to convince me otherwise, not from now until the day I fade.”
Alvara let out a shaky breath, and the snuffed flame within her ignited. She became molten metal, the blaze separating the things that served her and those that no longer belonged.
Boden wrapped his arms around her shaking body and tucked her head into his chest, where his steady heartbeat hammered into her own. She would forge something new. Something stronger. And she didn’t have to do it alone—not anymore.
She pulled her head back to look him in the eyes. “I’m so sorry. For all of it. The things I said—”
“I know.” He skimmed his thumb over her wet cheek, and warmth bloomed from her head to her toes.
She could never tire of his touch. “I’m sorry, Alvara.
I should have told you the moment I suspected Erun had killed your father.
You had come so far, and I didn’t want to risk losing you to your grief. I was selfish.”
“I understand, I really do.” She grinned in spite of everything. “And I didn’t exactly prove your fears wrong, did I?”
Boden chuckled. “No, not exactly.” He trailed his fingers up her back, leaving an all-consuming fire in their wake. “I’m afraid of losing you too, Alvara,” he murmured. “Even when you smell so strongly of mead, I think it might make me drunk.”
It was hard to think with her body pressed against his, that woody scent washing over her.
If anything, she was drunk on him, intoxicated by his very soul.
She had told herself it was better not to cross that line, that it risked too much, but that line wavered with each breath they shared, each touch.
But those thoughts were for a different time, not when she had almost murdered the chief’s brother, broken a blood oath, and exiled her people, weeks before a major battle. Those probably took precedence. Though the thought of kissing Boden’s lips threatened to change her mind.
She cleared her throat and stepped back. “I need to speak to the chief. I know I broke the blood oath and more than deserve the consequences, but we need to mend our alliance.”
“I wish it were that easy, but blood oaths are sacred. When you break one, it’s nearly impossible to come back from.”
Sten’s words echoed in her mind. An oath made before gods cannot be broken without consequences.
And yet…
“The barrier,” Alvara breathed. It had to be.
“The barrier?” Boden tilted his head. “It’s gone, and there’s no way to restore it.”
They didn’t need to restore it. It had been right in front of her all along.
“Come with me.” She grabbed his hand, pulling him toward the town.
“Where are we going?”
“It will be easier to show you.” She had to be right, and there was only one way to find out.
The smell of eggs struck her nose as they weaved through throngs of elves packing up their few belongings, and her stomach finally decided to revolt.
“Good gods, Alvara, are you all right?” He pulled her hair back as she unloaded the contents of her stomach in the nearby bushes. “Exactly how much did you drink?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sucked in fresh air. There was nothing like saving an entire realm while fighting the aftereffects of mead. “At the time, not enough. Let’s go,” she said, forcing her leaden legs toward the town wall.
“I really think it’d be best for you to eat something. Can I—”
“Boden, I love your mother bear mode more than anything, but food can wait. This could change everything.” Alvara studied the outer perimeter. She can’t have imagined it.
There. A hundred or so paces away from the town itself, delicate crimson plants grew, snaking a perfect path where the magic barrier had once existed.
“Go get Lilja and meet me just ahead.”
Boden furrowed his brow. “Why—”
“Boden!”
He grumbled something to himself before setting off, and Alvara advanced on what she prayed to Vitharen was what she thought it might be.
She settled her knees into the dirt, plucked a leaf off one of the plants, and sniffed it. It had no discernible odor, nothing odd other than its placement or color.
“I love that you’ve developed an interest in plants, but…I’m just wondering if now is the best time for all of this?” Lilja said behind her.
“I need you to look at these,” Alvara said. “Are they anything you’ve seen before?”
Lilja crouched beside her and ran her fingers over one of the plants. “No, not that I can think of. At least I haven’t seen anything like it in Ela.”
“Would you please tell us what’s happening?” Boden slid to the ground next to her.