“We should go.” Aldrik’s palm fell on the small of her back. “Before the clerics come.”

“See you, Baldair.” Vhalla gave him a small wave as Aldrik closed the door behind them. She crossed over to the bar that had been turned into a medical supply stand and removed her mask completely. “He seems better.”

“He usually is after company,” Aldrik agreed.

“The Golden Guard?” she guessed and Aldrik affirmed. “You should send for them, then. I think they are quite worried.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Aldrik mumbled.

Vhalla beamed brightly, for in Aldrik language, that meant he was about to throw around the weight of the scary crown prince on his brother’s behalf.

“Wait a moment.”

Holding up his hand, he cracked open the door and took a glance down the hallway. Aldrik opened the door halfway, gliding across to his own room. He fit a key into the lock and unlocked it with a soft click. One more glance, and he was motioning for her to join him. Vhalla eased closed Baldair’s door and slipped into the safety of Aldrik’s haven as he shut out the world.

In the daytime, she could appreciate the stunning nature of his quarters. Vhalla looked up, and she lost all breath. A staircase wound up the far wall to a landing that looped around the circular room. There were more staircases and ladders leading up to additional landings and levels of books. She looked up into the roof area of one of the golden spires she had admired from below so many times, only to discover that it held Aldrik’s personal library.

“Aldrik,” she breathed, walking into the room. The white marble floor was covered with a large, circular black rug that almost took up the whole space. There were two leather chaises near a couch that was reminiscent of the Crossroads and a desk with chairs to the right side. “This is yours?”

“It is.” His expression was unreadable.

“It’s—” she fumbled for words. Vhalla felt dizzy at the notion. Aldrik took a step forward to stand at her shoulder, holding his breath for her review. “Amazing.”

“Would you like to see the rest of it?” he asked softly.

“The rest of it?” Vhalla blinked up at him.

Three doors lead out from his initial sitting room. One he had led her through the night before—his bedroom. The second went into a smaller, cozy office. Vhalla realized the large, dark stained desk in the main room was just for show as she could immediately tell that this office was reserved for his real work. Papers littered the surface in an order only he understood. There was a smaller bookshelf that contained stacks of titles he’d squirreled away for immediate reference.

Vhalla paused. Tentatively, her fingers reached up to a stack of books that rested to the side of the middle shelf. She took one off the top of the stack. Aldrik said nothing as she opened it. Vhalla looked down at handwriting she knew very well.

Earthen magic tends to have deep roots.

The magic can take days or months to remove.

Remove carefully, please, or shock.

Please live. Earthen, magic, can,

create, please live, sensitivity to cold,

please live - or hot - please live, plaese lvei plselav pl—

Her writing had started neat and tidy but digressed into scribbles. She placed the book down and grabbed the next one. Her note from long ago, when she was doing research on that fateful rainy night, fell out. Vhalla leaned down and picked it up off the floor. It was much the same, though her writing was even messier. She returned it and grabbed the third book. Her note wasn’t even legible.

Vhalla looked back at Aldrik, speechless. He had told her what had happened that night. But to see the actual vessels themselves, the ones that carried her magic to him and formed their Bond, brought a whole sense of world-shaking reality that she had not experienced before.

“I wanted to keep them.” He gently took the book from her hands and returned it with care to the shelf. He considered the stack of books that saved his life. “They are very precious to me.”

“I still have all your notes,” Vhalla confessed. “They’re in my wardrobe.”

“I assumed you would have thrown them away.” Vhalla saw through the thin veil of indifference he threw over the words.

“I thought about it,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t. They, too, are very precious to me.”

“Yours are in the bottom drawer of my desk.” Aldrik shared a smile. “I look at them from time to time to remind myself of how foolish you were.”

“Oh?” Vhalla laughed in relaxed amusement. “Perhaps I should look at yours to remind myself of how much of an ass you are.”

“As if you need a reminder,” he snorted. It sent her into a fit of laughter.

Vhalla walked around the room, her amusement fading into a bright smile. He did not stop her, and he did not deny her access to anything. The most private man in the world allowed her to lift papers, open drawers, nose through books and more. Vhalla shifted aside the numbers of the Imperial coffers to look at some reports from ministers. He leaned against the bookshelf as she shuffled through them.

“The Minister of Coin didn’t agree to half of the funding for the Festival of the Sun this year?” She blinked at Aldrik. She had no idea, missing it during her time away. “Why?”

“He’s trying to rein in the spending,” Aldrik explained. “We have a lot of soldiers still on retainer. After my demand of spending at least half of the spoils from war on rebuilding the North, we didn’t come back with as much.”