Page 125 of Forged in Fading

“What if it is?”

“Then you can tell me yourself tomorrow, sober. And please, for Elamara’s sake, stop looking at me like that.” He shuffled backward, shaking his head.

“I don’t want to wait.” She lurched toward him, but Boden caught her arm, stopping her once again from almost careening into the ground.

“I think it’s time to get you to bed.”

He didn’t want her. The sweet aftertaste of the mead soured in her mouth and filled her stomach with awful nausea.

They traveled the last few paces to the sleeping halls in silence. Alvara’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she refused to let them fall.

He didn’t want her.

Boden tucked her into her sleeping hide after insisting she drank at least three glasses of water. Head snuggled into her pillow, she let the warmth lull her into sleep. But even as she drifted off, the same thought hung over her like a dark cloud.

Boden didn’t want her.

Chapter Forty-Three

Alvara’s head pounded with an intensity she hadn’t experienced in years. She groaned and peeked one eye open, letting in a small sliver of light. Why was it so bright?

She sat up as slowly as she could manage, rubbing her throbbing temples and breathing in slowly through her nose to quell her churning stomach.

A soft snore sounded from the floor next to her, where Boden lay, limbs stretched in all directions. The messy sight warmed her heart in a way Alvara was much too sick from mead to handle, even as she fought the urge to sweep his hair out of his face. She eventually settled for combing her fingers through her own gray mess.

What had even happened last night? She pressed her palms into her eyes in a poor effort to block out the sunlight as she did her best to sift through her alcohol-soaked memories. The night had started with Kat, but everything turned fuzzy rather quickly, until Boden’s face flickered in her mind.

She lowered her hands and stared at his tattoos. The inked animals tugged at something familiar. Had she…touched him?

Oh, holy mother of gods. “Burn me to ashes,” Alvara muttered. Her face heated from the memories of her hands on his skin, her insistence they share a bed. And not in the innocent way they had before.

What had she been thinking? She couldn’t remember the specifics, but he had stopped her, thank Vitharen. He must have been absolutely mortified.

“That terrible?” Boden words were mumbled and drowsy.

Her blinding headache paled in comparison to the panic that now gripped her. She had absolutely no idea how to handle this. The kiss on the ship had been nothing, an act of desperation. What she had done last night was something she would have only done with the courage of alcohol, not in broad daylight, completely and painfully sober.

Boden’s hand grazed her arm, and she jumped. “Are you all right?”

She avoided his gaze—it would only horrify her all the more. “About last night. I was drunk out of my mind. Did I…touch your tattoos?”

“Petted would be a more accurate term, but yes. It’s nothing to worry about, we’ve all had worse nights than that. Trust me.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” She chanced a look at Boden’s face. He watched her in that thoughtful way that made her soul feel naked, every thought and emotion plain for him to read.

“You made it quite clear what you were thinking.”

“It would have been a mistake. We would have both regretted it.” She blurted the words before she could think too hard about them. She wasn’t even sure if she was speaking them for his sake or hers.

The images of what the night could have been flashed through her mind, all skin and tongue and teeth, and her heart skipped. She wanted to deny it, that no part of her desired something more between them. To know what his body would feel like on hers, what it would be like if he was hers.

But she had gone down that road once before with Pyry, and, well, that hadn’t exactly turned out. A friendship that could have lasted a lifetime, broken by a relationship that should have never happened in the first place.

More than anything, Alvara was still a mess, if last night was any indication. She couldn’t offer Boden the all-encompassing love and companionship that someone like him deserved. Maybe after the battle, if—when they defeated King Einar, when that part of her had healed. Maybe then, she could be enough.

“I need some food.” Actually, the mere concept of putting anything in her mouth made her want to gag, but she needed to escape this conversation and breathe in fresh air to clear her fogged mind. She hurried out of the sleeping hall and found a pile of leftovers from the feast the night before, surrounded by equally miserable-looking elves.

She didn’t need to turn around to know Boden had followed her outside. Without looking up, she spooned meat and vegetables into two bowls, dug the peas out of his, and added them to her own before handing him his food.