Page 140 of Forged in Fading

One more wave of powder, and they were left to fight the soldiers untouched by its red dust. Alvara had already revealed herself as a magic user, but many wielders still hid under human disguises. King Einar’s army approached them with a confidence that was stolen from their very lungs by Rav and the Malvan elves.

The blows to Alvara’s muscles, the thorns that ripped her skin open, she hardly noticed them as she stabbed and skewered and stepped over corpses. She was waiting.

For him.

King Einar broke through the hordes of bodies on a horse, of all things. As if he wanted to flaunt the power of Helvati’s blade. To prove that with it, he couldn’t be defeated. He only watched the bloodshed, dagger in hand, not bothering to offer his magic in aid to his own elves.

Bastard. It was time for this all to end.

Alvara sliced her spear across the stomach of an Elan elf, spilling his putrid guts. One step. An ice shard punctured the heart of a Valonian elf and poured her lifeblood into the dirt. Another step. A Nyrian elf, a wolf, frozen in a glittering cage, soon demolished by a demi-elf.

Each life she added to her conscience, each soul she stole, it formed a gruesome path toward the only one that mattered.

Paces away, King Einar’s vile green eyes found her. No recognition crossed his features. Didn’t he know what he’d done, everything he’d taken from her? He pressed his horse forward, trampling elves and shattering bones with a prideful sneer that made Alvara even more sick to her stomach than she already was.

Her magic was tired, but it wasn’t empty. Eloisa. Her mother. Her father. The love, the guilt, the rage—she let all of it feed her powers as she hurled the bleeding heart of her kingdom at his horse’s feet.

She chained its hooves to the earth with ice, and the animal lurched forward, throwing King Einar to the ground. Helvati’s blade flew from his grip.

Now. Her magic swallowed him as she ran, encasing him in sparkling ice that stunted his movements. It left only his neck exposed, the strike that would end it all.

She tossed her weapon aside and wrapped her shaking fingers around the hilt of Helvati’s dagger. Everything dimmed around her, except the murderous being lying at her feet. At her mercy.

Which she had none of.

“This is for my family!” Alvara stabbed the blade into the base of King Einar’s skull, twisting the dagger with a squelch to ensure his demise. Without him, his army would fall. Victory would be theirs. They had won, they had⁠—

As his wound spurted, staining the soil a sticky scarlet and forcing the lifeblood pumping through his poisonous heart into the earth, King Einar…changed.

Long, black braids replaced his ash brown hair, and his skin turned a deep brown instead of its regular tawny hue. The dagger Alvara held became nothing but a simple blade, devoid of Helvati.

She hadn’t killed King Einar.

She had killed his bait.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Green, that stomach-churning green, swarmed their warriors.

Barbed plants impaled humans and elves alike, flinging their corpses to the side like they weighed no more than pebbles. King Einar was still nowhere to be found, his powers heightened so much by the blade that he didn’t even need to show his face as he obliterated their forces. And Alvara had fallen right into his trap, wasting almost all of what was left of her magic.

Vines burst through the dirt and wriggled toward her, and Alvara dove for her shield. Her body slammed into the ground, her muscles stretching far enough to snap as she barely grasped the handle. She swung it in front of her chest just in time to stop the king’s magic from ending her right then and there.

Her spear. Alvara crawled through thick, red mud toward her weapon lying just out of reach. One breath away. Thorned tendrils erupted from the earth, ripping away her shield and wrapping around her arms, her legs, her torso. No, gods, no. Another slithered up her back and bound her neck. She gasped for air. Her frantic showers and shards of ice did nothing to stop the vines from squeezing tighter, crushing her throat. She choked, her muscles spasming as stars flashed in her vision.

Just when she could feel her body giving into the inevitable, the relentless pressure released, and every living weapon of the king’s that touched her fell away. Her lungs swelled with the rotten air of the battlefield, and her muscles sank into the gore-splattered dirt.

“Alvara.” Boden rolled her on her back, and she looked at him through a blur of tears.

“I thought I did it. It wasn’t him. Boden, it wasn’t him,” she rasped. She had been the exact fool King Einar thought her to be.

He sat her up, and walls of earth shot into the air, surrounding them. The plants that lay around them had been severed by the very dirt they needed to grow.

He had saved her. Of course he had.

Boden removed his helmet and brushed a wandering whisp of hair from her face. “We will find another way.”

Bait. She had fallen for the king’s bait like a mindless fish. But maybe she wasn’t the only one who would let her rage blind her enough to focus on the wrong target.