Page 10 of Forged in Fading

Pyry collapsed to the ground. His strangled cries crushed the air from Alvara’s lungs, and her tears mingled with his precious lifeblood seeping over the stones. Any anger she held against him, any animosity, it drowned, bathed in his blood.

“Pyry.” Alvara stretched her chains as far as they could go, but it wasn’t enough. She could do nothing but watch him bleed.

Oh gods. Oh gods.

The guard wiped his short sword on Pyry’s mangled clothes and pulled a few hunks of stale bread from a pouch at his hip, tossing them to the ground. “I’ll be back. Tell us what you know. Or don’t, and he’ll lose something more precious than skin next time.”

His words gained no purchase in her dizzy mind. All she could see was Pyry. His back. His blood. She couldn’t reach him. She couldn’t do a godsdamned thing to help.

“Pyry?”

He grunted as he crawled to the nearest wall and leaned his shoulder against it. His clothes were soaked, his contorted face damp with sweat.

“I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I can ask a guard⁠—”

“No.” He let out a sharp exhale and opened his blue eyes, foggy with pain.

“It’ll get infected. You’re losing too much blood. You could fade.” Her voice cracked, the weight of her terror snapping it in two.

He hung his head. “I wasn’t the best to you, Alva. I⁠—”

“Stop.” It sounded too much like a goodbye. “We’ll find a way out of here.”

Alvara pinched her eyes shut and focused on steadying her breaths, even as her body trembled.

Pyry had been the center of her world once, someone who understood her in ways she had never experienced. The way they had parted would always taint those memories with bitterness, but she still couldn’t lose him. Not after everything she had already lost. Not like this, right in front of her.

She refused to add him to the list of souls she would meet in Levahem one day.

He was so pale.

Pyry’s chest rose and fell weakly, but he was still alive. The bleeding had slowed, but the metallic scent filled her nostrils, and her gut roiled. He needed healing, or he would fade.

Feet shuffled down the hallway, and her hands shook, rattling her chains. If the guard came back, she needed to think of something to tell him. She couldn’t watch as he stripped the life from Pyry piece by piece.

A drooping form with weathered gray hair entered the cell, carrying a bucket and mop in their scarred hands.

“He needs help. Please!” Whoever it was didn’t seem to have a weapon on them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t here to hurt Pyry. Or Alvara.

“They sent me to clean cell. Guards no like mess.” The female exaggerated each consonant, her broken Elvish heavy with an unfamiliar accent. She dunked the mop in the bucket and pushed it through the gore as she spoke, the scrape of the mophead on the uneven floor setting Alvara’s teeth on edge.

“And what? You just do whatever they tell you to?”

The mop paused, and the female—no, woman—lifted her head and pulled back her hair, exposing her human ears. A raised white scar marred her wrinkled face and a cloudy eye that was clearly blind. “I have no choice.”

Alvara couldn’t bring herself to feel pity for this creature. Not when Pyry sat paces away, his skin growing colder with each minute that passed. “There is always a choice. And he’s going to fade if he doesn’t see a healer. You have to help him!”

The woman’s lips parted, but she said nothing. She looked down at her bucket and placed the soiled mop inside. “I go get fresh water.”

With that, she was gone. Godsdamned useless humans. Alvara buried her face in her hands and released a scream that should have reduced the dungeon to rubble.

She had already lost Eloisa and Mother. If she had to watch Pyry slip away too, no matter their past…No, she didn’t want to think about it. But tucked away in this dim corner of the palace, there was nothing she could do. She knew nothing of healing, even if she had been close enough to touch him.

Hinges squeaked, followed by the scuttling of the servant lugging a bucket behind her. She set it down and lifted her hands up, palms out. “I move him. That is all.”

“If you hurt him…” Alvara had nothing to back her threat. The woman could bludgeon him, and she could do nothing to stop her.

The servant wrapped her arms around Pyry’s chest and heaved him toward Alvara at a painstakingly slow pace. He didn’t so much as flutter an eyelid as the human leaned him next to her.