“If I could find a way,” he whispered.

“You can’t.”

“Believe in me!” Aldrik’s voice rose by a fraction before softening. “I have crawled out of deeper holes this past year. Believe I can do this, because if you will be by my side, I will let nothing stop me.” He took a deep breath and continued his earlier thought. “If I could find a way to keep the peace and allow us to be together, would you still take me? Would you forgive me? Would you want me?”

Vhalla bit her lip, containing her cry of, “Yes!” She pressed her eyes closed. He spoke of escaping pits, but they were about to be thrown back into one if they did this. He was risking everything.

“Vhalla, you are the dawn at the end of a seemingly endless night, and I never showed you enough appreciation for the essential part of my life that you are.” He leaned forward and caught her eyes.

“That’s not true.” She shook her head.

“It is,” Aldrik insisted, his tone suggesting how he would feel about further objections. “I kept you too far, and I let you slip from between my fingers. At the end of it all, I do not blame the Northern girl or my father, I blame myself for not being enough of a man at the moment I gave you the papers decreeing your nobility; instead of severing our relationship I should have taken you into my arms and comforted you, promised you that I would find a solution if you only stayed by my side. I should have never been the person I was that drove you to, alone, walk out of those camp doors.”

“I wish I could hate you, you frustrating man,” she breathed hopelessly.

“And I wish I could stop loving you, my frustrating woman,” he laughed. It was an equally hopeless sound. “I wish I could see the sun rise without thinking of how beautiful you are in the dawn, your hair an impossible mess and your body contorted in that weird way you call sleeping.”

He shook his head and stared up at the heavens, as if beseeching the Mother for help. “I wish I could go to my rose garden without thinking of sitting there with you, of reading, of just . . . just hearing you breathe.”

Vhalla’s back pressed against the cases.

“I wish I could see you smile without thinking of how it feels when your lips make that shape against mine.” Aldrik braced himself with a hand by her shoulder. “I wish I was not utterly, hopelessly in love with you, Vhalla Yarl.”

“But you are,” she finished for him, searching the prince’s expression.

“But I am,” he repeated. “And I have promised myself that if I was ever privileged enough to be in your grace again, I would hold you closer to all that I am, more than I have ever held anyone or anything before—that I would never lose you again.”

“What do you want from me?” She already knew, and she had long since given it to him.

“I need to know what you still feel for me.” He swallowed, his words becoming thick and heavy. “Tell me truthfully, what is your heart’s design? Do you still see me as the man who is wandering lost in his own darkness?” His breath quivered. “Or . . . could we, could you, see me as the man that I want to be and try to be every morning?”

Vhalla stared into the darkness of his eyes. Absorbing them, falling into them, into him. They’d been ensnared in a labyrinth of eternal night. Finding each other again didn’t mean absolution; if anything, it likely meant they may be trapped forever.

But it would mean they were together.

It would mean the long hands that slowly lowered the golden circlet atop her hair would seek her out. It would mean that the blazing sun that burned away their fantasies of the night would be a little more bearable. It would be torture. But it would be the most beautiful torture they had ever known.

“I love you, Aldrik, and I always will.” He leaned forward, and Vhalla stopped his progress with two palms, flat on his chest. “I love you, I respect you . . . and I respect myself. And, because of that, I will not become the other woman. I will not let you take me when you are engaged to another.”

Aldrik stared at her, stunned as though he didn’t understand what she was saying.

“If you find a way, Aldrik. Yes.” Vhalla enjoyed the feeling of his chest, his heartbeat, his breathing, underneath her palms once more. “But before then, we are no more or less than we are now.”

VHALLA NEVER DID talk to Aldrik about the crystals. He’d returned her to the Tower hallway after a somewhat begrudging acceptance of her condition. Their conversation put everything else far from her mind.

Vhalla groaned softly at herself, rubbing her now barren forehead. What were they doing?

“Vhal . . .” Fritz nudged her shoulder for the second time. Vhalla blinked and looked at him. “What’s the matter?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, it’s nothing.”

“You’ve been wandering away from the world today.”

“I haven’t moved from this spot all morning.” She motioned to the table they worked at in the library.

“Exactly, you’re like a statue. You’ve been on that page for over an hour.” Fritz flipped the book closed and glanced around the mostly empty library. “Talk to me.”

“Fritz,” she groaned, sitting back in her chair and burying her face in her hands.

Her friend grabbed her wrists, pulling her palms from her eyes and replacing them with his gaze. Worry marred the usual laughter that lit Fritz’s eyes. Vhalla relaxed, and he shifted her hands into his, holding them tightly.