Page 11 of Forged in Fading

Pyry had to survive. He just had to. There was no other option.

The woman pressed a wet cloth into Alvara’s hand, tightening her fingers around Alvara’s palm for a brief moment before leaving the way she came.

Something poked Alvara through the dripping rag—a small needle and a spool of thread. It wouldn’t mend his injury for long, but she had to try. If she’d had even a trace of Elan healing magic, she could have done so much more.

She drew a shaky breath and began.

Pyry’s stillness during the grisly proceedings didn’t instill Alvara with much confidence, and she couldn’t even reach a sizable section of his wound because of her chains. The stitches were lumpy and horribly uneven, but at least his skin was no longer split open to the foul things that lingered in the air.

She stared at her blood-soaked hands. The color. The gods-awful stench. None of it would ever leave her, even if she were given hours to scrub her skin raw.

The door opened, but Alvara didn’t even bother to look up. There were hardly worse things they could do. At least if they chose her as the next victim, she might lose consciousness for a few hours.

“Little time. I am Noma.”

“What?”

The servant stood before her again, except this time she had begun to remove her overgarments. How much ale had this woman had?

“Give me clothes.” Her apron landed beside Alvara.

“What?”

She muttered words in another language and freed Alvara’s hands with a key.

“How…”

“They ignore us. Think us stupid, weak. No care what we do, how we look. Stealing easy when they no care we exist.” Noma helped Alvara to her feet. “Switch clothes. I stay. You leave. Keep head down. Ears covered.” She pointed to her head. “Both have gray hair. Go up stairs, down hall, down staircase. There is door leads to servants’ hall. Separate entrance to palace. You need help, find Ylva. Tall, long braid, green eyes.”

This woman…human was helping her escape. Alvara willed her fingers to move despite her shock, shimmying out of her pants and tugging the servant’s dress, brown as mud, over her head. Her hands stilled as the weight of Noma’s words pressed on her mind. “You’ll fade. When they realize what you’ve done.”

Noma smiled, but nothing about it was joyful. “You remind me of daughter. Words you say, ‘There is always choice,’ she say them too. She always help others, put them first. Do right thing. I made choice to come here. Need help with daughter illness, but she gone now.” Her eyes roamed the cell around them. “I have nothing left. Few years to live. You have life left, choices to make. Go and live. This she would want.”

Alvara’s bleak life seemed a pathetic trade for this woman’s, who had undoubtedly done nothing wrong to deserve her fate at the hands of the king. But Alvara had her father to think of. She would go.

“Pyry.” Her fingers brushed sticky strands of hair from his ashen face. “I can’t leave him here.”

“You stay, they heal him. Hurt him. Heal him. End always same. You both die. This is only chance.”

“Die,” Alvara whispered the word to herself. It sounded familiar, like something she had heard in one of her father’s stories.

Noma rubbed her temple. “Fade. He fades. You fade. We all fade. Stupid elves.”

Right. Humans had always been mortal. Unlike Alvara’s ancestors in the distant past, who had chosen to fade when an endless lifespan became too boring. And yet here Pyry’s lifeblood was dripping onto the stones, and Noma wanted her to leave him. But it was also the only possible way Alvara could find help.

“Why are you bothering to help me?” She couldn’t stop herself from asking as she chained her rescuer to the wall and tucked the key into her apron pocket.

The woman’s eyes settled on Pyry. “We all bleed same.”

Alvara absorbed her words for a single breath before she hunched her shoulders, tugged her hair over her ears, and snuck out of the cell with the wretched bucket at her side.

The guards paid her no mind as she hobbled down the hall, her hand clutching the handle so tightly her fingers screamed from the pressure.

Up the stairs. Down the hall. Down the stairs. Step by step, Alvara ascended into the palace at a relaxed pace despite her rushing pulse. She couldn’t appear to be in any kind of hurry without raising questions. She needed to look broken.

She focused on putting one foot in front of the other, only looking up to confirm her course, until the door that led to her freedom stood before her. Her fingers trembled so fiercely she had to discard the bucket to avoid spilling it all over the spotless floor.

One tug, and she stepped into the crisp air with a quick glance over her shoulder. No one had followed her. She had done it.