Page 78 of Forged in Fading

She moved as fast as she dared, and an unpleasant heat coursed through her body. Hopefully the large paw prints she followed were Boden’s and not a wild animal. She leaned on a tree and crushed her eyelids shut, pulling air in and out of her nose to quell the nausea that simmered in her gut. A mixture of voices bounced through the trees, and her already rapid pulse dashed after the fox. King Einar’s elves.

Hide. Hide. Hide.

She sunk to the base of the tree and tucked her body into a tight ball. It only occurred to her moments later that the trunk wasn’t even wide enough to cover a quarter of her frame.

“Alvara?” Boden crouched down in front of her and pulled her curtain of snarled hair away from her face.

“Hi,” she rasped. She was an idiot for wandering into the woods. Gods, it was so hot in this kingdom, and Boden’s touch so unusually cold. She dropped her head against the tree trunk and flapped the collar of her shirt.

A female she didn’t recognize leaned in, laid a hand on her forehead, and clicked her tongue. “Poor thing’s got a fever. Arnik, help her to the house.”

Another stranger approached Alvara, a male covered in Nyrian tattoos whom she had no intention of letting touch her. She recoiled, scraping her wounds against the coarse bark. Her back flared, and she cried out, but her weak body only managed a small squeak.

Boden shifted his weight and blocked the male from her view. The softness in his eyes unlocked some of the tension holding her muscles captive. “They’re only here to help you, I promise.” He stepped aside, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides as the other male picked her up and carried her.

“The humans,” Alvara said. Did they even know they were in danger? Kat. Ravanel. Aurilena. Lilja. Even Pyry. Had any of them survived?

“We’ll worry about that later. You’re the only thing I’m worried about right now,” Boden said softly from her side.

The couple’s home smelled of roasted meat and firewood, the balmy temperature enough to suffocate Alvara right then and there. She would’ve preferred to stay in the snow with the fox.

Arnik laid her on a soft bed, so white and clean that Alvara felt a pang of guilt for marring it with her blood and grime. But as she sank her face and chest into the mattress, her body relaxed in a way it hadn’t in days. She would buy them ten bars of soap for the stains if it meant she could bleed all over their sheets.

“It’s going to scar,” the female said, probably thinking her voice quiet enough that Alvara wouldn’t hear. “We could try to find an Elan healer, but with the state of the kingdoms, it’s a risk.” Scars be damned, Alvara just wanted a plate of the meat she could smell and a nap in this bed, and she would be happy for the rest of her life.

“I know. Thank you, Pira, for helping us.”

Alvara twisted her head to focus on the one familiar thing among all the uncertainty. Boden leaned forward in a chair next to the bed and tapped his fingers along his leg at a frantic pace.

Pira tugged at what little remained of the shirt on Alvara’s back. “You know we would do anything for you and your family.”

The material ripped, and Boden sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Did I ever tell you about the day I discovered I could shift? My earth magic had shown up early, even for a youngling, and I had wreaked more than a little havoc on my poor father’s garden, but I had never felt the pull to shift.” He was trying to distract her from the pain to come—the pain he knew all too well himself. So Alvara latched on to each of his words, tethering her mind to his voice as much as she could instead of her body.

“Sorry, love,” Pira said. “It’s going to hurt, but it will be better soon.”

Liquid blazed along Alvara’s skin. She buried her face in the pillow, clawing at the mattress to keep herself from bucking backward.

Boden’s words quickened. “After a particularly rough day at the academy, I came home in quite the mood. My mother told me we were having peas with dinner that night, and I hate peas more than anything.”

Pira slathered a smooth paste over Alvara’s back, and it tingled in a strangely enjoyable way. The pain started to retreat, little by little. She sighed, relaxing into the bed once more as Pira wrapped her gashes in bandages.

“What happened?” Alvara murmured into the pillow.

“Before I even knew what was happening, my mother was screaming for my father, and I was standing in my bear form in the middle of the living room. Only a cub at the time.” His soft laugh enveloped her. “I couldn’t figure out how to shift back for an entire day, so instead, I walked around the house and scared the living moonlight out of the servants. I don’t think they ever recovered.”

“I missed so many chances to put peas in your food,” Alvara said. Food. Her stomach grumbled, and Pira spoke.

“You go get her some food. I’ll help her change.” A chair scraped, and the door clicked. “I’m going to sit you up, love.”

Just as Pira had finished dressing Alvara in soft, loose clothing and settled her into a fresh pile of pillows, someone knocked.

Pira patted her shoulder and piled the bloody aftermath into a bowl, slipping out of the room past Boden, who held a tray piled with enough bread and meat to feed twelve people, along with a blessed jug of water.

She hadn’t realized how parched she was until the first drops of liquid passed her tongue. Boden just sat and watched her quietly from his chair.

“What?” she asked. His sober expression was the only thing keeping her from digging into her food like a rabid animal.

“Why did you do it?”