Page 142 of Forged in Fading

She reached out the hand she could still feel to touch him, but the effort was too much, and her arm dropped to the ground. “It’s too late.” Darkness encroached on her vision, leaving only his face visible. The most beautiful sight she had ever seen. “It’s all right, Boden. My family’s waiting for me.”

His hot tears drenched her frigid skin. “No. I won’t—I can’t accept that.” Boden scooped her up in his arms, and Alvara’s head reeled.

As her eyelids fluttered closed, as she faded from the world that had taken so much from her, Alvara thought of her family. Her sister. Her mother. Her father.

But most of all, she thought of a bear with amber eyes. An elf with the heart of a human, not fragile because of it, but so much stronger. He had brought her back to the land of the living, and she wasn’t ready to leave.

For once, she dreamed, not of joining her family in the afterlife, but of staying on this earth. With him.

Her Boden.

Chapter Fifty

BODEN

“Alvara!”

Her body had gone limp in his arms, her head lolled back. Boden’s chest tightened to the point of breaking. No, please, no. This was not how it was supposed to end, never how it was supposed to end.

He squeezed his trembling grip around her even tighter. “Please, Alvara. Wake up.” There was no battle and no faded king at his feet, only her. The weak rise and fall of her chest. “ALVARA!” Tears clouded his vision as he shook her over and over, but her eyes, those blue eyes that consumed his soul, refused to open. If he never saw them again…

No. He wouldn’t lose her. He refused. More than that, he couldn’t. She had witnessed every part of him, every despicable part, and hadn’t shied away from his shadows, his ghosts. They needed more time. They were supposed to have a lifetime, so much more damn time than this.

Boden waded through carnage and chaos, but all he could feel was the blood, her blood, soaking through his shirt and sticking to his skin. She was losing too much. And there was nothing he was able to do to stop it.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!” The blinding rage pounding through his body ripped open another layer in his power, tearing holes in the earth where anyone stood in his path, while his bear clawed at his insides and thundered to be let free.

Kill.

He shoved aside the animal instincts that scraped at his skull. If he allowed himself to shift, she would be gone. Gone. He choked on his next breath.

A healer. Green eyes. He needed to find someone with green eyes.

Boden forced himself to concentrate on the battlefield instead of the precious life he held in his shaking arms, and he spotted an Elan elf waging a war that had already been lost. What did that war matter if she was gone?

He yanked on his magic and ignored the burn that warned him he was digging too deep, reaching a place he might not return from. Earth swallowed the male’s body up to his waist, and Boden stretched Alvara toward him.

“Can you heal her?” Damn it, she was so cold. Too cold.

The elf’s eyebrows knitted together as he looked at Alvara. “I’m not sure anyone can.”

That would never be an answer Boden could accept. He wrestled the urge to shift and tear the male’s throat out and instead stepped close enough that he could whisper, and the useless Elan elf would still hear him. “You either heal her, or I rip you limb from limb, taking my damn time.”

The male swallowed. “I could strike you where you stand.”

Boden didn’t have the time or the patience for this bastard’s arguments. She didn’t have time for this. “Turn me into a corpse for all I care. Just. Heal. Her.” He spoke the last words through clenched teeth, not allowing himself to look down at his heart, bleeding out in his arms. He would break beyond repair.

“Fine.”

Warm green light coursed from the elf’s hands, and his eyes flicked between Boden and Alvara. The light vanished. “The external bleeding has stopped, but internally…that’s beyond my capabilities.”

Then Boden would have to make do with what had been offered. He released the elf and pressed on, his drained muscles quivering with each step. He would drag himself across the nine realms, burning himself to ashes before letting Alvara fade in his arms.

Gosibik had suffered at the hands of both armies, the guts of buildings and bodies strewn through the street, but there was only one home he needed to see still standing. It was the only thing in the world that mattered. If elven magic wasn’t able to save her, nothing could, least of all a human healer like Heila, but he had to try.

He risked a glimpse at Alvara, and what little control he had left slipped through his fingertips. Her skin had taken on an ashen appearance too damn close to the bodies he had bled dry under the king’s orders. Her lips bore little resemblance to his dreams—now bluish gray, they hung open in an unnatural way that sent his knees to the ground.

He pressed his forehead to hers, and her clammy skin ruptured something inside of him. His shoulders shuddered. Take anyone else, please. Anyone but her.