Page 109 of Forged in Fading

And she hoped she never had to think about last night again. She tapped her stomach and pointed outside before shoving him playfully out the door toward whatever bland breakfast awaited them. Their food had gradually improved until the invasion, but now Alvara found herself tearing at yet another piece of stale dark bread.

She twisted the dry chunk between her fingers. Throat be damned, she had to at least try to apologize. If she waited any longer, the guilt would swallow her. “Me…” Alvara coughed. “Me is apologize,” she said in the human tongue, the words poking at her throat like shards of glass.

Boden’s narrowed his eyes. “Did you hit your head? You’re not speaking Elvish.”

Alvara ignored him and blasted through the words she had rehearsed with Oda over and over again while they worked. The young woman had been delighted when Alvara had requested her help in learning more of her language…until Alvara proved to be a rather inept student.

“Me was…idiot. Made vast mistake. Please forgives?”

“Vieru miker?” His lopsided grin pried at the flimsy boards Alvara had hammered around her heart.

“What?”

“How much? How much did you miss me?”

That was what he found important? Alvara would have laughed if she could have made the noise without inflicting more agony upon herself. “More than I’d care to admit. It scared me, Boden. When I heard you were injured.” Her voice grew quieter, rougher with each word. She quickened her pace and tossed any plans for an elaborate speech out the window. “King Einar has taken so much already. I can’t lose anyone else. I was scared of that feeling, of knowing you meant something to me.”

He swallowed and placed his pathetic breakfast back on his plate. “It hurt. I won’t pretend otherwise. With everything we’ve been through, I thought I had begun to see glimpses of the real you. And then to hear I was nothing more than a distraction…I can confidently say I spent more time in the woods than in the town.”

The intensity in Boden’s gaze made her stomach flutter. “I see you, Alvara. You try to convince yourself you don’t care, but I see how you spend every bit of your energy making others comfortable. Making my sister feel at home in Malva, giving Pyry a purpose, helping the demi-elves and humans. You pour yourself into other people, whether you see it or not.” He placed his hand on top of hers. “Those moments, those choices, they make you stronger, so much stronger than him.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with the last shreds of strength her voice possessed. To think he might’ve never returned from his bear form. Unless… “Can a shifter get stuck in their animal form?”

He removed his hand, and hers suddenly felt unbearably cold. “Of course not. Who told you that?”

Gods damn it. She was going to beat Rav to a pulp in sparring, one arm and all. “I bet he made Kielana up too.”

Boden shuddered. “Good gods, that name still makes my ears bleed. Unfortunately for me and anyone who has had the displeasure of encountering her, Kielana is in fact real.”

Who was she? Not that it mattered to Alvara, but she hated knowing anyone had hurt him enough to leave a scar. Yet here she was, trying to undo that exact same thing. She held up a finger and disappeared inside the hall to find the package she had intended to give to him today, albeit with less cuts and bruises.

She placed the crinkled bundle in his hands and immediately regretted it. It had been a silly idea, and there was no guarantee he would even like it.

“You’re giving me a present?” Boden asked, his wide eyes and amazed tone reminding her of a youngling on one of their first Jolvals. He pulled at the paper and revealed a short, wide blade.

Alvara only produced a squeak instead of an explanation, so she chopped her right hand in her left palm and pointed to Boden.

“A knife for chopping?” He squinted at the blade, where Alvara had painstakingly engraved the symbol of Nyr: a bear formed from leaves and delicate swirls, a lush forest underneath its paws, and the symbol of Gosibik: a sword and crescent moon, with roaring waves lining the moon’s inside edge. “You added the Nyrian crest and Gosibik’s too. This is…” He paused and cleared his throat. “Thank you. I almost don’t want to use it, it’s too perfect.”

It wasn’t nearly enough to mend what she had broken, but it was a start.

The joy in Boden’s face faltered. “The chief would like to speak with you, but only if you’re comfortable doing so. I can always speak with him on your behalf if it feels like too much.”

Alvara tapped her chest and jutted her chin in the direction of the meeting hall. She would go. She needed to, for the safety of her people.

“Then I will bring you to the healer before we meet with him. And if you’d like to bathe or change clothes—not that you need to, you look wonderful⁠—”

She pointed toward the chief’s meeting hall and tugged on his arm. The chief needed to see what his people had done.

“Are you sure? They can wait.”

She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

Boden wrapped his gift up and tucked it under his arm, then tipped his head toward the water jug. “Drink. Maybe you’ll be able to manage a few words by the time we arrive. Afterward, healer, tea, and rest. Please.”

Alvara guzzled a hefty dose of water and bowed her head. Honestly, his regimen for healing sounded like just what her sore body required, if not for the unnatural amount of tea he would likely force upon her. Maybe she could find one of those apple cakes to make it more palatable.

“I’ll see if I can find something sweet, maybe an apple cake?”