Page 19 of Forged in Fading

“I’ll go with you.”

Chapter Seven

Alvara forced herself to stand, to walk into the room where her father’s corpse rested. To lift the blanket and take in his face for the last time.

This would be her final memory of him. Bloodied. Frozen. Alone.

“We have to bury him, before we go. Please. I know we can’t risk starting a fire for his ashes, but I can’t leave him out in the cold like this.”

Leaving him buried would disrespect his memory, but Jalomir would help prepare her father for ashes. There was no one she trusted more to do it. She would have to leave a note explaining as little as possible, but enough that he wouldn’t go looking for her.

Alvara expected the Nyrian elf to argue, but he nodded. “Are you ready?”

She shook her head and padded down the hall, running her fingers across the wooden walls that had housed so much love. There was one more thing she needed to do. Alvara didn’t allow herself to hesitate at the threshold of her parents’ bedroom and instead found her way to her mother’s nightstand, a shrine to her short life. She slid the drawer open with a creak and retrieved the pair of earrings that had sat untouched since her mother’s fading.

They were simple, the way Mother had always liked things. Two ruby studs encased in silver, the markings on the front and back of the metal faded through countless generations of their family. She slipped them into her ears, discarding a plain pair of earrings from a long-gone birthday that meant nothing in comparison to the precious heirlooms she now wore.

A few moments and a hastily scribbled note for Jalomir later, Alvara emerged, her breath stuck in her throat at the renewed sight of her father’s body. They would meet in Levahem one day, if the gods cared enough to send Alvara there instead of dumping her in Helvati’s domain.

Scattered and destroyed carcasses of her father’s treasured books, the only things that had ever brought him comfort after her mother’s passing, surrounded him even in fading. She needed to keep a piece of him, something likely to survive the harsh conditions.

His dagger. It sat on his bookshelf, always proudly on display as one of the first weapons Jalomir had allowed Alvara to make on her own. The blade was functional but terribly ugly, yet it had never stopped her father from proudly sharing it with anyone who would listen.

She exchanged the dagger for hers and laid her own blade next to her father’s body. It was all she had with her, and leaving a treasured remnant of herself with him as he passed onto the next realm was the least she could do for his departing soul.

“Ready?” the Nyrian elf asked again.

“No. But I won’t ever be.”

He carried her father out in silence, laid him on a fresh sheet of snow, and gouged a hole in the ground with his Nyrian magic. “My name is Boden. I would say it was a pleasure to meet you, but with all this…well, I feel like you at least deserve to know my name before I…” He pressed his lips together tightly and placed her father in the soil.

A whimper crept out of Alvara’s mouth, unleashing a new torrent of tears that threatened to freeze to her cheeks. These past few years, she hadn’t been as good to him as she should have been. All the time lost…shudders racked her frigid body. Her teeth chattered as her magic seized control.

Boden offered a hand, and his body heat stunned her powers, at least for now. “You need to stay as calm as you’re able to. It may feel impossible, but until you eat something more substantial and rest, you’re at risk of burning through your life force.” His magic traced delicate patterns of animals native to Dalvi into the mound of earth that cradled her father and outlined his temporary resting place with stones. An easy way for Jalomir to find the body. “Is there anything you would like to say?”

Not say—sing. She didn’t want to, not really. But her father had always loved her singing and used to bribe her in just about every way possible to share it with him. Really all she could do was barely hold a tune, but he had always stopped whatever he was doing to listen.

She hadn’t sung a single note since her sister’s and mother’s funeral, when her voice had melded with the others who mourned them, a haunting sound that would forever inhabit a place in her soul. The song inside her had quieted that day.

But now, the notes of the traditional Dalvian mourning song dug their way out from her grief, weaving a melancholy melody in the frosty air.

“You changed me with your life, your soul,

Without you my heart is no longer whole.

Your precious light shall never leave,

I hold it close even as I grieve.

May Mother Perhalia welcome you home,

Her fields of gold may you forever roam.

With love and sorrow our hearts will flow,

But this one comfort we do know.

This is not goodbye, my friend,