Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
BODEN
“Alvara!”
Her body had gone limp in his arms, her head lolled back. Boden’s chest tightened to the point of breaking. No, please, no. This was not how it was supposed to end, never how it was supposed to end.
He squeezed his trembling grip around her even tighter.
“Please, Alvara. Wake up.” There was no battle and no faded king at his feet, only her.
The weak rise and fall of her chest. “ALVARA!” Tears clouded his vision as he shook her over and over, but her eyes, those blue eyes that consumed his soul, refused to open. If he never saw them again…
No. He wouldn’t lose her. He refused. More than that, he couldn’t. She had witnessed every part of him, every despicable part, and hadn’t shied away from his shadows, his ghosts. They needed more time. They were supposed to have a lifetime, so much more damn time than this.
Boden waded through carnage and chaos, but all he could feel was the blood, her blood, soaking through his shirt and sticking to his skin. She was losing too much. And there was nothing he was able to do to stop it.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!” The blinding rage pounding through his body ripped open another layer in his power, tearing holes in the earth where anyone stood in his path, while his bear clawed at his insides and thundered to be let free.
Kill.
He shoved aside the animal instincts that scraped at his skull. If he allowed himself to shift, she would be gone. Gone. He choked on his next breath.
A healer. Green eyes. He needed to find someone with green eyes.
Boden forced himself to concentrate on the battlefield instead of the precious life he held in his shaking arms, and he spotted an Elan elf waging a war that had already been lost. What did that war matter if she was gone?
He yanked on his magic and ignored the burn that warned him he was digging too deep, reaching a place he might not return from. Earth swallowed the male’s body up to his waist, and Boden stretched Alvara toward him.
“Can you heal her?” Damn it, she was so cold. Too cold.
The elf’s eyebrows knitted together as he looked at Alvara. “I’m not sure anyone can.”
That would never be an answer Boden could accept. He wrestled the urge to shift and tear the male’s throat out and instead stepped close enough that he could whisper, and the useless Elan elf would still hear him. “You either heal her, or I rip you limb from limb, taking my damn time.”
The male swallowed. “I could strike you where you stand.”
Boden didn’t have the time or the patience for this bastard’s arguments.
She didn’t have time for this. “Turn me into a corpse for all I care. Just. Heal. Her.” He spoke the last words through clenched teeth, not allowing himself to look down at his heart, bleeding out in his arms. He would break beyond repair.
“Fine.”
Warm green light coursed from the elf’s hands, and his eyes flicked between Boden and Alvara. The light vanished. “The external bleeding has stopped, but internally…that’s beyond my capabilities.”
Then Boden would have to make do with what had been offered. He released the elf and pressed on, his drained muscles quivering with each step. He would drag himself across the nine realms, burning himself to ashes before letting Alvara fade in his arms.
Gosibik had suffered at the hands of both armies, the guts of buildings and bodies strewn through the street, but there was only one home he needed to see still standing.
It was the only thing in the world that mattered.
If elven magic wasn’t able to save her, nothing could, least of all a human healer like Heila, but he had to try.
He risked a glimpse at Alvara, and what little control he had left slipped through his fingertips.
Her skin had taken on an ashen appearance too damn close to the bodies he had bled dry under the king’s orders.
Her lips bore little resemblance to his dreams—now bluish gray, they hung open in an unnatural way that sent his knees to the ground.
He pressed his forehead to hers, and her clammy skin ruptured something inside of him. His shoulders shuddered. Take anyone else, please. Anyone but her.
“Boden?”
His breathing halted. That voice. Heila.
The heaviness in the woman’s green eyes told him everything he needed to know and everything he didn’t care to know. Alvara was beyond saving. This irreplaceable piece of him, the person that had changed everything—he could do nothing but watch as she disappeared forever.
Heila’s hand grasped Alvara’s wrist and closed her eyes, only for them to fly open a moment later. “Come quickly,” she said in Elvish.
His body responded before his mind or mouth could. Boden followed her to her home, his scattered thoughts flocking to the fact the old woman—with piercing green eyes—could speak perfect Elvish.
Could it be…
The thought dissolved as he laid Alvara on a nearby cot as gently as he could. She couldn’t feel anything anymore, he knew that, but he couldn’t stop himself from interlacing his fingers with hers.
Heila laid her hands on Alvara’s chest. “She is on the brink of no return, but I will do what I can. I am one of the strongest Elan healers, but to save someone with so little life force left…”
Boden stroked his other hand over Alvara’s silver hair. It was silver, despite what she believed, and it was stunning. It always had been. If he could offer his own life, his magic to help mend her—
His dagger.
He unsheathed the damn thing and cursed himself for being the exact kind of wielder the dwarves despised. He offered it to Heila, who had already begun the tenuous process of funneling her healing magic into Alvara.
“Stab me.”
Heila balked, and he forced the hilt into her hand. “The blade is able to drain power from whomever it strikes and transfer it to its wielder.” If the dagger decided to cooperate. If not, Boden would launch it into the sea, dwarves and gods be damned.
“You could fade. The amount I need—”
“Do it.”
It was the only way. The scars Alvara already bore in his stead, the burdens she had lifted from his shoulders, there was no life in which he would allow her to fade without giving every drop of his lifeblood first.
The blade dug into his skin, and hot, red liquid trickled down his arm. Even as his vision dimmed and his strength waned, Boden never once let go of Alvara’s hand.
The darkness seized him, and he prayed to Vitharen, to the gods, to anyone who would listen, that he would not meet her there.