Water's Wrath (Air Awakens Series Book 4) (30 page)

Vhalla grabbed his hand. Aldrik stopped instantly at her touch. “You still haven’t told me what that means.”

“It means my father and Baldair’s mother know you are on your way.” Vhalla didn’t miss Aldrik acknowledging the Empress as only Baldair’s mother. “It means they know I am with you now, this very moment. It means you will have to endure the delicate dance that is my family, and who knows what that really ever means.” Aldrik swallowed and grimaced. “It means you are going to see the girl.”

“I already met her, remember?” Vhalla tried to sound brave, unbothered.

“Vhalla,” he sighed softly. Time stopped a moment as his fingers intertwined with hers. “They aren’t allowing me in still.”

“I figured.”

“It means, I will—I will be waiting in her company.” His tone was apologetic.

Vhalla laughed softly, looking down at their laced fingers. He apologized to her for time spent with his intended. She realized that however good they were struggling to be, some lines had already been crossed.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I figured you to do that a lot. Be in her company.”

“I don’t,” Aldrik breathed, and his other hand found her face. “I don’t want to.”

“We should go,” she reminded him.

Aldrik nodded reluctantly. His hand fell, but he allowed his fingers to remain entwined with hers until they departed through the castle-side door.

Vhalla was led in an upward direction. The staff hall gave way to a more public walkway. This opened into a larger hall that led upward to a pair of golden gates. They had a pattern of suns that were thin and delicate, like lace. Their purpose was clearly more metaphorical than functional, as they’d be useless at actually keeping out anyone trying to forcibly gain entry.

Two guards snapped to attention as Aldrik walked upward. His hands were folded behind his back, his shoulders were tall, and he was every inch the prince. Vhalla looked at him and could see her future Emperor. She had no doubt he would command respect, but she prayed he could do so with love more than fear.

“My prince.” The guards saluted in unison, hastily opening the gates.

“Lady Yarl, this way.” His voice was detached, and he hardly even glanced back at her.

She tried to play her part and look as uncomfortable as any average citizen would be in tow of the Fire Lord. It still behooved them both to conceal their affections.

They walked through the dazzling central atrium Baldair had led her through months ago, navigating down a side hall that Vhalla recognized instantly. Clerics passed them hastily, their hands laden with crimson rags that made her heart lodge in her throat.

Aldrik led with his cold and distant mask as he brought her into the hive of activity of Baldair’s sitting room. Clerics flitted about and mixed potions, but Vhalla’s eyes rested on the one outsider to the group.

The princess’s hair was tied atop her head with delicate white lace. The girl was swathed in the Imperial color, white fabric trimmed in gold flowing elegantly down to her feet. She turned from her place at the window when Vhalla entered. Sehra and Aldrik must have attended the same school for training their expressions, as her eyes gave nothing to Vhalla’s searching stare.

“Lady Yarl,” a cleric called for her attention. Vhalla jerked her eyes away from the princess before her stare could linger too long. “Thank you for coming. The prince personally requested to see you.”

“It’s hardly trouble. An honor to be called on by the family Solaris,” she replied dutifully. Vhalla’s eyes widened a moment; she recognized the gray hair and bushy eyebrows as the cleric who had come earlier to attend Baldair.

“You see, the prince is quite sick,” he explained as though it was Vhalla’s first time in the room. “We have been told you have contracted Autumn Fever before?”

She nodded. “I have.”

“Excellent; your risk is far lower then. Still, for your protection.” The man handed her a mask.

“I understand.” Vhalla tied the mask around her face adeptly.

“Given the prince’s condition, we ask that you limit your time. We do not want to exhaust him, so please try not to let him talk too much,” the cleric explained as they started for the door.

Aldrik settled himself on the couch, a book in his lap as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

The bedroom door opened suddenly to reveal the Empress. Vhalla saw the woman’s normally youthful radiance had been reduced to red and puffy eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was pulled into a single braid. She inspected Vhalla up and down.

“No one other than family,” she announced sharply.

“My Empress,” the cleric faltered. “The Lady Yarl was only brought here because of his direct request.”

She continued to block the doorway. “I did not hear such a request.”

“You had stepped out a moment,” the bushy-eyebrowed cleric explained.

“Isn’t it convenient that the request occurred then?” she murmured with a nasty look to the back of Aldrik’s head.

“I don’t want to make trouble.” Vhalla was sincere, which shone through enough that it made the woman pause. Vhalla could only imagine the pain the Empress was shouldering; now was not a time for Vhalla to insist on her pride. “I am more than happy to depart, if that is best.”

The woman opened her mouth to speak, only to be cut off by a tired wheezing. “Vhalla, don’t be crazy,” Baldair managed from the bed within. “My mother said only family. Clearly—” He coughed, and Vhalla heard the blood come up. “Clearly, the little sister I never had is included in that.”

The woman looked toward her son in shock, then back at Vhalla. A lot of eyes were on her at once, and Vhalla gripped her hands more tightly. Clearly Baldair’s condition had made him fearless, and Vhalla knew she had to also be so in order to give the prince what he was asking for.

Vhalla followed the Empress into the room, startled to see the Emperor on the opposite side of Baldair’s bed. The Empress assumed her seat next to her husband, and Vhalla awkwardly took the seat on the opposite side of the bed. She tried to ignore her sovereigns as much as possible, focusing on Baldair instead.
His normally brilliant eyes were listless and dull
.

“Come now, Vhalla.” He coughed. “Don’t give me those sad eyes.”

Her hands moved before a cleric could. Vhalla mindlessly picked up the cloth from his bedside table so she could blot the blood from the corner of his mouth gently without a thought,
just as she had done for her mother
.

“Forgive me, my prince.” She forced her voice to sound strong.

“Baldair,” he wheezed. “I don’t have time for pretense anymore.”

Vhalla finally glanced at the Emperor and Empress. She couldn’t make much from their expressions. The Emperor’s was hard and shut off. The Empress’s eyes glistened.

“Don’t say that, Baldair,” she whispered. Vhalla turned her eyes back to him, and the world went away. “Please don’t.”

“I know.” Baldair lifted his hand, and she took it gently. “I can feel it.” He coughed again, and a muffled whimper escaped her lips.

“No,
no!
You’re going to keep fighting. You’ve been eating right? I told you to keep eating and—” Vhalla blinked several times in quick succession, her eyes burning frustratingly.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” Baldair coughed again, and Vhalla’s hand quickly caught the blood. The other held his tightly.

She shook her head. “You-you’ve never disappointed me.”

“How foolish is it?” He leaned against his pillows. “The mighty golden prince, felled by a cold.”

“No.” All she could do was shake her head and refuse. It was a never-ending loop, refusal at the world, at fate. “No, Baldair, please. Don’t talk like this. You will get better, you will. My mother couldn’t because we didn’t have anything, because I couldn’t save her. But-but,” Vhalla took a shaky breath through her nose, her chest ached. “But they can save you.”

“Your mother?” Baldair asked softly.

Vhalla blinked. She wanted to laugh or cry, a strangled noise of pain was her body’s compromise. “I had the fever. So did my mother. I got better, she-she didn’t.” Vhalla hung her head. Before he could say anything else, she looked up suddenly, swinging between emotions. “But like I said, you are much stronger. You can keep fighting.”

“Oh, Vhalla . . .” Baldair looked at her sadly. “I am so sorry.”

She shook her head, knowing the cause of his guilt.
He wouldn’t have a reason for it
, she insisted to herself. He would get better.

He sighed softly. “I’m tired.”

“No.” Vhalla shook her head. She was completely oblivious to the clerics around her, the hovering healers who did not know how to react to her proximity and actions toward healing the dying man whom she clung to. She did not see the looks from the Emperor or Empress. All she saw was the golden haired prince, the heartbreaker, wasting away from an evil that could not be fought with swords or arrows or wind. “Please, please . . .”

“Do you remember . . . when we met?” Baldair breathed. “You were . . . so . . . jumpy.” He laughed, which only lead to more coughing.

“My prince, please,” a cleric finally pleaded.

Baldair shook his head at them and continued, “You had, you have still, a beautiful heart, Vhalla. I’m glad I somehow found a place in it. You healed things, things I didn’t think could be healed. I don’t think I have spoken as much to my brother in years as I have in these past months. I am thankful for it.”

He spoke of her healing things, but she couldn’t heal what mattered. She couldn’t escape the curse of her existence that threatened to consume everyone and everything she loved. Vhalla clung onto him and his words.

“Tell him—they don’t let him in here now—tell him I am sorry, I don’t think I’ll live up to our agreement.” Baldair coughed again.

“It’s fine,” she whispered.
It didn’t matter whatever the brothers had agreed
. “Aldrik just wants you well.” Vhalla had completely forgotten herself as she used the name of the crown prince loosely, without title.

“I know he does,” Baldair confessed. “I love that idiot brother of mine. Will you tell him that for me?”

“You will tell him yourself,” she insisted. Vhalla threw a bold look to the Emperor and Empress.
There should be a fourth
. There was another soul who needed to be present more than she did.

“Don’t change,” Baldair continued on. “Don’t let the world change you.”

“Stop saying goodbye!” Her voice was louder than she intended it to be. “Don’t you do this! I did
not
come here for this!”

“Vhalla, please.” He coughed again, and she was right back to tending to him. “Listen. They do not see you for what you are. Or perhaps, they see you
only
for what you are upon the surface. Don’t let them define you.”

Vhalla shifted her clean palm to his forehead as Baldair’s eyes fluttered closed. Beads of sweat dotted his skin.

“He needs more fever reducer,” Vhalla observed aloud.

The cleric shook her head. “We can’t give him anymore.”

“Then cool him with water.” Her mind drifted back to the icy feeling Victor had put in her veins earlier. “Are any of you sorcerers? Waterrunners?” They all shook their heads.
Aldrik was right, they were all incompetent
. “Then get someone from the Tower!”

“Who are you to order our clerics?” The Empress’s voice was shrill and thin.

“I am the woman who is going to try anything I’ve ever seen or read to save your son’s life,” Vhalla proclaimed with ferocity. “Because clearly no one else will step up to the task and try whatever needs to be tried.”

“It
is
a method common folk use in situations without medicine.” Bushy eyebrows stroked his chin. “Go, tell the crown prince.” A cleric raced out of the room.

“Vhalla,” Baldair chuckled weakly. “You’re scary when you let your ferocity show—a little twister.”

“Don’t talk too much,” she whispered softly and ran her hand through his hair. “Save your strength. Elecia is coming, did you know that? She’s so strong, Baldair. She will fix you, I know it.”

Coughing was his only response, and Vhalla clutched his hand all the tighter.

Vhalla shouldn’t have been surprised when Victor was the one to appear not long after. A mask around his mouth and nose, he walked into the room with purpose. A short briefing from the clerics, a once-over of Baldair, and he set to work. For an hour, the minister lightly cooled the prince’s skin, each time colder than the last to not send his body into shock all at once. Vhalla retracted all negative thoughts she had on Victor, mentally sending a sincere apology—if he could save Baldair.
She’d do whatever the man wanted if he healed Baldair
. Eventually, nothing more could be done, and the sorcerer departed.

Baldair shivered. “It’s too cold.”

“You need it to be,” Vhalla soothed gently. “It won’t work if it’s not.”

“Vhalla, let me rest?” he asked.

“No, not now . . .” It was the third time he’d asked. “Stay awake, stay with us.”

His fever was down, thanks to her idea, and it had allowed enough time to lapse that the clerics could give him another round of potions. Baldair struggled to swallow. The first batch he coughed up, and Vhalla was the one to clean up the mix of blood and potion off his chest. She was going to fight. She was going to lead him by her example.

“Do you remember when I got in trouble on the march?” Vhalla said softly as she cleaned his collarbone and neck. “Grun, he really hated me, didn’t he? I guess a lot of them did. They were afraid.”

“They didn’t know you yet.” Baldair looked at her from under drooping eyelids.

“I suppose not,” she agreed.

“They didn’t know how . . . strong . . . the little girl from the library was.” Baldair struggled to keep in a cough.

“No, let the blood come up,” she insisted. “Or you’ll choke.”

He obliged her, and Vhalla set to cleaning again, covered in his blood.

“Vhalla, I am tired,” he reminded her.

“Don’t sleep yet,” she begged again and looked across to the Emperor and Empress. While Vhalla knew they’d never acknowledge it, her presence had saved them from being in the position of calling the shots around their dying son. How she hated her sovereigns.
But this wasn’t about her
. “Tell your mother about your favorite memory with her. Tell your father what the best thing he taught you was. Tell them how much you love them.”