Vhalla gripped the watch around her neck. “But you-you’re not. You weren’t un-promised.”
“What?” Baldair blinked.
Aldrik breathed heavily, his eyes accusatory as if she’d dare speak the words.
“Aldrik, you’re not. You asked me and I said—”
“Quiet, woman!” The crown prince glanced away, running his hands violently through his hair. “My father did not know that. Even when I—” Aldrik swallowed. “He’d hear nothing of the idea. He wanted one of theirs under our control, to inspire loyalty through the pain we could afflict on them if nothing else, and because it will make the North loyal. He’d planned this all along, and we were stupid and blind.”
He was speaking, but it was a different language. Nothing seemed to make sense. Nothing added up. It wasn’t possible that what she was facing was real. “So, what do we do?”
“What do we do?” Aldrik stared down the bridge of his nose at her. “
What do we do?
I told you, there is no
we,
Vhalla. There is you, and there is me. You go off and be a lady. I have the stunning privilege of watching you safe and sound about the Court. I marry this girl and fulfill my duty.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No!” Her voice cracked. “You always have a plan, an out, a silver tongue, a clever half-truth or way around.” She picked the paper off the floor and held it before him. “Look!
Look
! You-you made me a lady. Me! A farmer’s daughter is now worthy to be the love of the crown prince. If you can do that—”
He swatted her hands away as though the paper was nothing, and Vhalla gawked at him in shock.
“It is over!” Aldrik alternated between frustrated anger and desperate pleading for her to understand and take pity on his plight. “I fought all day. When I told him I would refuse any woman but you, he countered like a coward. He brought you here to threaten me, to force me.”
Vhalla’s eyes widened, thinking of the unheeded warnings of Lord Ophain:
she was the chink in the crown prince’s armor
.
“I tried everything I could to formulate an alternative surrender, up until the moment he had you here with a man who was going to
kill you
if anyone other than my father walked out.” Aldrik stared down at his bloody knuckles, injured from where he’d smashed them against the table. “I traded my hand for your life. The best I could do was to insure your safety as a lady, to see you set for life with my family’s gold.
That
was my play.”
She stared at him in slack-jawed shock. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had half an idea of what had been occurring. Vhalla gripped the bottom of her tunic. It was her fault.
“If I, if I’d worn my armor.” Her shoulders quivered. “Then, then—”
“No.” Aldrik sighed, involuntarily softening at her apparent turmoil. “Schnurr would have put the point of his blade as soon through your eye as anywhere else, and I knew you were in no condition to fight after last night.”
“There has to be something else we could have done.” The volume of her voice was inconsistent, changing with each shaky breath.
“Vhalla, enough. It’s over.” Aldrik turned away from her tiredly, his shoulders hunched.
“No!” she cried and scampered in front of him. “No!” She shook her head furiously. “What about everything we said? All we planned?”
“Gone.” Aldrik couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye.
“How can you be like this?” she snapped.
“How can you?” He turned it back on her. “I thought you knew so clearly how this would end.” Aldrik sneered down at her.
Vhalla’s world stilled briefly from a memory that she had let herself forget, a memory of a woman, a curiosity shop, fire, and red eyes. A future telling that she had shoved away. Tears welled up in Vhalla’s wide eyes. She had known:
she would lose her dark sentry
. How could she have been so foolish to believe she’d beaten fate in the Pass?
Vhalla absorbed her prince’s face, still handsome to her despite brimming with anger and pain. It was as though all she was to him now was torture. Vhalla shook her head once more, as though she could wake from this living nightmare. Her face dropped into her palms and Vhalla sobbed.
It was broken, all was broken around her. The beautiful yet delicate thing that had been built between them was torn to shreds. She heard the ripping sound of her heart over her tears.
“No,” she repeated, her eyes closed. “No,
no
! This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen! We—” It was a physical pain, it was an awful wrenching deep in her gut. “I can’t, what do I do now?”
Aldrik hovered, blurry through her tears.
“You’re free now. You do whatever you want.” Aldrik averted his eyes away, his jaw taut. He was struggling with her suffering, struggling with not comforting her.
Vhalla saw it, but she did not care. “Without you?” she pushed him.
“Yes, without me!” he bellowed. “Your purpose here is done!”
“My purpose?” Vhalla gaped. Her voice became shrill, “Was that all I was to you? A-
a thing
? A conquest? Did you just keep me neatly for your father? Or did you want the honor of saying you took the Windwalker to bed first?” Vhalla yelled petulantly at him. Her words weren’t fair. Life wasn’t being fair.
“How dare you,” he growled, taking a step toward her.
“How dare you, Aldrik Ci’Dan Solaris. How dare you make me believe!” She tugged at the chain around her neck, the watch on display. “How dare you make me love you! How dare you go back on your word!” Vhalla couldn’t stop herself. “I wish I’d never said yes. I wish I had never met you!” she screamed.
“Is that so? Well then, let me assure you that the feeling is mutual,
Lady Yarl
.” Aldrik drew his height, prepared to give her what she wanted. Somehow he knew as well as she that they needed to break beyond repair. That they couldn’t survive if they could still believe in the love they so obviously still harbored. “You, us, it was all one great lie. None of this was real from the start. You’re right, you were just my trophy.”
“Brother, stop this,” Baldair demanded. The younger prince took a step closer to the feuding lovers, seeing the fever pitch they were being worked to.
“Stay out of this, Baldair!” Aldrik froze his brother to the spot with a deadly stare before returning his attention to her. “Our promises meant nothing,
we were nothing
.”
Vhalla knew he was lying. She could see it written across Aldrik’s face. But it didn’t absolve his words either. They grated against her heart and tore her insides to pieces. Grief wasn’t logical, it was a self-feeding fire.
“What a pathetic creature.” Aldrik looked on in disgust. “As if I would ever love you. I played you like the naïve girl you were.”
She began to laugh. Lips quivered and shoulders trembled with a new madness slipping out along the undertow of grief.
He had to keep pushing
. He couldn’t stop when he had clearly accomplished his goal. He had to drive things so far into the ground that there was nothing more than a husk of ash left where they stood.
“You’re wrong,” she rasped. Vhalla had never felt so dangerous. She had a weapon far greater than his lies. “I was the one who played you.”
“What?” Aldrik took a half step away. He saw something on her face, the point that they had pushed to.
Vhalla had half a moment to absorb that fear and regret, if only she’d sympathized with him and stopped her words.
“Our Bond is the biggest lie of them all,” she whispered. Aldrik stood frozen with horrific attention. “I never meant to save you. I thought I was saving Baldair that night. I poured myself into those notes for his sake.”
Aldrik had suddenly been reduced to a lost lamb, his eyes darting between her and a confused Baldair.
But Vhalla couldn’t stop herself now, it was her turn to push too far. It was a sinister sort of pleasure to unleash pain, and she couldn’t refrain. He’d cut her so deeply that she wasn’t thinking about right or wrong, fair or unfair. She wanted to drink from the toxic potion of revenge and unleash the only thing that could slay a liar: the truth.
“What are you talking about?” Neither of them paid attention to Baldair’s confusion.
“You’re not the only one who can lie, Aldrik.” Vhalla laughed bitterly.
Aldrik stared at her in stunned horror. It served as kindling for rage, and she watched his body tense. Aldrik clenched his fists. He jerked his head toward Baldair. “
You
.”
Baldair held his hands up harmlessly.
“You could not let me have this
one joy
untainted,” Aldrik snarled.
Vhalla was so startled by Aldrik’s shift back to describing her as his “one joy” that her better sense clicked back in. She hadn’t meant for Baldair to be wrapped into their fight, only to bring Aldrik’s rage further upon herself, upon the fading embers of their futile love. She was crushing her and Aldrik’s future. Not his and Baldair’s.
“Aldrik, he had nothing to do with this.” Vhalla took a half step in front of Baldair, stopping the older prince’s advance.
“A new low, even for you, brother,” Aldrik said with disdain. “Getting your whore to protect you.”
Vhalla’s arms hung limply at her sides, suddenly at a complete loss.
“Don’t call her that! You don’t mean it.” Baldair’s defense was touching, but completely ignored by Aldrik.
“Oh? Slut then?” Aldrik grimaced as the word tore itself from his tongue. “Who’s next, now that you’ve had both princes? Going to crawl into bed with my father?”
Vhalla stared in disgust that such a thing could even be voiced.
“We never slept together!” Baldair bellowed.
“I should have known from that day in the garden,” Aldrik continued, ignoring them. “When I found out you had met before.” Aldrik focused on Baldair. There was a surprisingly honest torrent of hurt behind his eyes. “You had to do it
again
. To think, I really thought things could be different between us.”
Baldair had met his limit now. “Why would I want them to be? So I can spend time with my bastard of a brother?”
“Do not call me that,” Aldrik roared.
“What? We know it to be true,
black sheep
.”
Aldrik lunged faster than Vhalla had time to react. He was quick, but Baldair was large, and the younger prince only needed to brace himself against his brother’s swings.
“Stop, both of you!” Vhalla clenched her fists. Her wind wasn’t strong enough to pull them apart.
The brawling siblings didn’t hear her.
It dawned on Vhalla what she’d done. She’d backed the man who had just lost the one person he’d loved into a corner. And now, she was crumbling the last lifeline Aldrik had. If he didn’t have Baldair on his side, who would look out for him?
Fire roared and Baldair fell to his knees, hissing.
“You,” the younger prince gasped for air. “You never use your magic on me.”
Aldrik drew back a fist, alight with flame. “Perhaps you should get your sword and we’ll make this a real fight? We’re not boys anymore.”
Baldair roared and lunged for Aldrik, tackling him at the waist. They rolled, a tumbleweed of fists. They couldn’t seem to stop hitting each other long enough to get upright.
“Stop!” Vhalla cried. “Stop it, both of you!”
She was unheard. The men had reverted back to children, unwilling to listen to any reason. Aldrik was the first to his feet, landing a solid hit on his brother.
“Aldrik, stop!” Vhalla jumped into the fray, finally taking action. She put herself between the princes, but only after Aldrik had begun moving his fist for another hit. She watched as his dark eyes widened,
how she loved those eyes
.
Vhalla took Aldrik’s strike clean to the cheek and was sent reeling by it.
Aldrik stopped, panting. His hands twitched, jerked in her direction to hold her, to comfort her. Vhalla stepped away from him, righting herself.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered.
“Vhalla, I didn’t mean to hit you.” The prince was instantly pleading. “You-you moved and I-I couldn’t stop—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Vhalla shook her head. “This is the destruction anger reaps.”
Baldair said she had inspired change in Aldrik, but it hadn’t been enough. People didn’t change when asked by others, no matter how important the asker was. True change had to come entirely from within. He wouldn’t change until he saw the full extent of his actions as a liar, a puppet master, as a destructive man to both himself and others. He didn’t know how much his anger, even when it was directed at himself, hurt the world around him. Every moment spent with him was silently condoning it all.
He’d never know unless someone had the strength to stand up and show him
.
The mantle had fallen to her. Vhalla prayed he could rise to the challenge, rather than being broken by it.
Aldrik took another jerky step toward her.
“Don’t come near me.” Vhalla stepped away.
“Vhalla, you must understand—”
Aldrik was stopped by a strong palm on his chest.
“Didn’t you hear her?” Baldair stared murderously at Aldrik. “She doesn’t want you near her.”
“You can’t keep me from her!” Aldrik shouted.
Vhalla picked up the parchment detailing her title from the floor.
“Vhalla! Vhalla, wait!”
She ignored him, the last of her heart shriveling.
“I am your prince. I order you to come here.”
“What?” Vhalla spun. He said the one thing that could make her return to him, but certainly not in the way he’d been hoping. “I want you to have one thing perfectly clear, Prince Aldrik Ci’Dan Solaris.” Vhalla refrained from using the words
my prince
any longer. “You do not
own
me.”
She held out the paper as proof of her words. The only thing she had left to her name was the name itself.
“What more could you possibly want from me that I have not already given you?” Vhalla panted softly, worked to a frenzy. Her question wasn’t hypothetical, and she waited for his response. The only benefit of doing so was watching the truth dawn on him.
Then again,
Vhalla mused, she was not innocent. Vhalla dropped her hand holding the paper with a sigh. She had fed into him, she had ignored his problems and idolized his secret mannerisms that made him shine in her eyes. She’d mentally made him into the man she’d wanted him to be; she hadn’t loved the man he truly was.