you think you’re doing?” Victor stepped closer to Aldrik.
“You cannot speak to me that way!”
“Don’t play the prince with me, Aldrik,” Victor snapped. To Vhalla’s surprise, it worked.
“It was under control.” Aldrik tried to smooth back his now-hopeless hair.
“This is not ‘under control!’” Victor shouted, pointing at the bed. Vhalla saw she had already bled through the sheets.
“So help me fix it!” Aldrik’s voice rose as well. The two men stared at each other for a long moment before the prince’s facade crumbled into the panic she’d seen earlier. Betraying the history that Vhalla knew the men had, he sighed heavily. “Victor, I need you—please.”
“I’ll need help.” The minister began rolling up his sleeves.
“What do I need to do?” Aldrik pulled off his heavy black coat, revealing a fine black silk shirt underneath, also sticky with blood.
“I will need someone around the clock. Your hands are fine for right now, I need them now, but I will need someone to stay with her.” Victor stormed into the other room, furiously selecting concoctions.
“Who do you have in mind?” Aldrik asked.
“You pick. I know you want to, but do it fast.” Victor went back into the room to begin working on Vhalla’s corpse-like body.
Vhalla followed Aldrik out as he ran down a few Tower levels, stopping at an equally familiar door. She felt his tension, his hesitancy. The prince knocked. Aldrik waited stiffly as shuffling was heard from within, the door creaked open a sliver.
“My prince?” Larel yawned.
Aldrik stepped in and shut the door behind him. “Larel,” he whispered, nearly collapsing against the wall. “I need your help.”
“Aldrik, what is it?” Just like that, Larel knew it wasn’t the crown prince addressing her, but her friend.
“I made a mistake,” he breathed heavily.
“I am always at your disposal, Aldrik. What do you need?” Larel’s caring manner shone through.
“It’s Vhalla, come.” Aldrik opened Larel’s door, slamming it closed behind them.
A blistery fall gust rattled Vhalla’s window in the early dawn, calling her from sleep. She blinked away the haze of dreams, Aldrik’s memories lingering as sharply as the morning’s chill. Running a hand through her hair, Vhalla tried to tease away the tangles and find motivation to face the day.
Like a petulant child, the wind rattled the window again, and Vhalla pulled herself from the bed, unlatching the glass. Fall was heavy upon them, she thought as she observed the trees rustling in the breeze far below her. Vhalla rested her elbows on the iron railing lining the small balcony that turned the large window into a doorway to the outside world. Her eyes scanned the greenery making its annual shift to red.
Vhalla turned away the second she caught herself searching for a certain garden with a rose-filled greenhouse. She remembered her promise to the prince—that she would tell him of all the memories she witnessed in her sleep. Vhalla debated the scope of the promise as she began dressing. Technically, the memory was one that involved her, one she knew about, and it held no real secrets.
She ran her fingers over the dark apprentice robes of the Tower.
When will I see you in black? Aldrik’s words echoed in her mind.
Vhalla shook her head and shrugged on the robes. The palace was full of too many memories—memories of other lives, of a man who was capable of both hurting and loving her, of a man who had promised his future to her when he asked her to be his bride.
Determined, Vhalla ignored the Tower kitchens as she strode down the curving, sloping hall. If she was going to drown in memories, then there was somewhere in particular she wanted to do it in. Vhalla knew many of the unlabeled doorways in the Tower were passages into the palace at different levels and places, secret to all non-sorcerers. But Vhalla had never had an opportunity to learn them. She’d only ever come and gone out of one location.
It took a long time to reach the library, longer than she expected, as Vhalla had become turned around at one point along the way. The main Tower entrance was on a much lower level than the Imperial Library, and winding up toward it from the Tower of Sorcerers was something she’d never done before.
Vhalla paused at the large doors of the library. Like the soft breathing of a slumbering beast, she felt air pulsing through the crack between them. It was inviting, a heady dose of too-sweet familiarity.