It wasn’t long after that they all collapsed on the floor. Fritz and Elecia were asleep in moments, Jax not long after. Their cloaks served as blankets; Rex’s clothing was rolled to create makeshift pillows. After spending so many nights in the open, having two nights in a row under a roof was pure bliss.

 Rex insisted that Aldrik take his small rope bed, but Aldrik refused, opting for the small palette that would’ve been Vhalla’s. When he realized they couldn’t both fit, he offered it to her, but it was Vhalla’s turn to refuse. Her Emperor had a hard enough time sleeping, and if the thin layer of straw helped, she wasn’t about to take it from him.

 Everyone fell asleep quickly. Everyone but Vhalla. She was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come.

 She watched the red glow of the hearth fade into the darkness. The moon played hide and seek with the clouds, which she viewed through the window by their table. She listened to Fritz’s soft snoring, the shifts as Elecia rolled around, Jax’s boot scrape against the ground as he twitched in his sleep.

 Vhalla pulled herself to her feet, glancing to her father’s bed. He was curled in the opposite direction, the rise and fall of his chest slow and even. Like a child, she crept out the door.

 The ladder was where it had always been, propped near the chimney. It was worn and old but could bear her weight without trouble. She situated herself near the stones and used the radiant heat they still held from the baking earlier to fend off the night’s chill.

 All her worries and assessments were correct. The roof needed to be re-built. But for now, the beams below the thatching were protected enough that they hadn’t rotted and gone soft. Vhalla reclined back on the slope of the roof, looking up at the endless sky.

 The ladder creaked and shifted, and then her father’s head popped over the roof.

 “I thought I’d find you up here,” he said softly, climbing up the rest of the way. Vhalla shifted closer to the warmth of the hearth and pulled her knees to her chest to make room for him to sit. “You’re still seeking places like this to roost?”

 “I suppose so.” Vhalla thought back to her window seat in the library, how it offered her a view of the entire capital. She thought of her Tower room and the small balcony she so loved. She thought to her fearlessness the night Aldrik had brought her to the top of a spire. She’d never connected her love of high vantages before. “You knew what I was, didn’t you?”

 “What you were?”

 She finally had her father all to herself. She had the opportunity to ask the questions that had been burning for weeks. And now Vhalla was terrified of the answers.

 “You and Mama, you knew I was a Windwalker,” Vhalla asked in spite of her fear.

 Her father was silent for a long moment, speaking volumes. “We had suspicions.”

 “And you never told me?” Vhalla twisted in shock. “You hid it from me?”

 “Little bird, what were we to say? That we thought you may wield magic? Neither of us possessed such powers, and we barely knew what they meant. All we knew was what your grandmother had taught your mother.”

 Even her father’s pet name for her suddenly had new meaning, even as he revealed new facets to her past. “What grandmother taught?” Vhalla knew her grandparents had worked in the post office of Hastan, but she’d always been told they had fallen out with their daughter when she’d married Vhalla’s father.

 “She also possessed the gift of winds.” Her father sighed heavily, visibly pained by Vhalla’s hurt. “When your mother expressed concerns, you were just a toddler. Your grandmother demanded we send you to her so she could teach you how to live hidden.

 “But your mother wouldn’t give you up. She read and heard as many tales from old Cyven as she could, learning what she could about the Windwalkers. She loved you, Vhalla, and she wanted to raise you.”

 Vhalla rested her chin on her knees. She debated internally if it would’ve been better to have been sent off. To know what she was. If she had been, if she had never been removed from the East, perhaps none of the current events would’ve happened.

 But Vhalla didn’t know what it felt like to have a child and be faced with the choice of giving up that child. She tightened her arms around her knees. She never would. Because if and when she did give birth to her first child, he or she would be taken to the North—it was already decided. There would be no opportunity for conflict.

 “Don’t harbor any anger toward your mother,” her father sighed.

 “I don’t,” Vhalla replied back before he could misinterpret her contemplations. “I just, wish I’d known sooner. I wish someone had told me.” So she wouldn’t have had to be pushed off a roof.

 “If I’d known what would’ve happened, I would’ve done things differently,” he confessed.

 “What’s done is done.” Vhalla shrugged it away. “I know why you and Mama tried to hide me. I know what the East teaches about Windwalkers and magic.” Vhalla considered it for a long moment. “But in the end, while I wish I had done a few things differently . . . I wouldn’t change all of it.”

 “And why is that?”

 “Because I stopped reading and started doing.” Vhalla smiled faintly at the memory of Aldrik’s words at their first meeting. “I messed up so badly. I didn’t love some friends enough. Sometimes I focused on myself more than others. But if I hadn’t made those mistakes, I wouldn’t be strong enough to look to the future now and not be afraid.”

 “A future that involves you being Empress,” her father probed.

 Vhalla relented easily. “I should’ve written you more. I should’ve found a way to tell you sooner. I should’ve come home.”

 “You were off ending wars.” He laughed his hearty laugh. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, little bird.”

 She sighed. “Papa, do you think I will make a good Empress? I’ve done so many horrible things.” Vhalla wanted to confess her sin of unleashing Victor upon the world. But some guilt was too heavy to share with her father.

 “The best,” her father said without hesitation. “I have no doubt in you; I know the sort of Empress you will be. But about our young crown prince, I know little more than the rumors from the soldiers during the War of the Crystal Caverns. Tell me the sort of Emperor we will have.”

 Vhalla obliged her father. Words spilled from her mouth as though she were the font from which they were created. In telling her father about Aldrik, she had to tell him how she came to meet Aldrik, how she came to know the man that had the reputation for being one of the most shut-off, cold people on the continent.

 She didn’t make him out to be perfect. Vhalla knew Aldrik was horribly flawed. But so was she. He was prone to anger and she prone to selfishness. But they strove together to be better, for themselves and for each other.

 In it all, she told her father of everything that happened since she had last seen him. Years were summed up in minutes and hours. He frowned at her pain, and praised her for overcoming her trials.