“You always were the wild one! Running in head first, not thinking, letting your emotions and that unstoppable rage of yours get the better of you,” Victor bated.

Aldrik reacted quickly to the ice that formed beneath his feet. A spiral of flame swirled about him, blocking any further attempts to freeze him in place.

“Aldrik!” Vhalla cried, hoping he would hear her over the din of the flames. “Free me!” She struggled against the ice that held her. If she could get free she could get the axe and remove the crystal blocking her sorcery. Victor was strong and bloated on magic-altering crystals, but Vhalla doubted he would be able to handle them both at once.

The prince’s fire vanished at her words, and Aldrik looked, really looked, for the first time past Victor. Vhalla witnessed his rage deepen upon seeing her entrapped. He threw out a hand.

At first, his fire was a welcome warmth. Like the familiar caress of an old lover or well-known friend. It weakened the ice and melted it around her. Victor wasn’t the only one who was trained to leverage the crystals, and Aldrik’s magic could stand toe-to-toe with the minister’s.

But warmth quickly turned to heat and then to agony as Vhalla was burned for the first time by Aldrik’s flames.

The ice vanished from around her, removing the barrier between flame and skin. She rolled on the floor, trying to snuff out the blaze. Every nerve in her body screamed in unison, alerting her to a blisteringly hot agony that seared across her flesh until it bubbled.

The moment her screams echoed through Aldrik’s ears, the flames vanished. Victor turned curiously, and both men seemed to be stunned out of their assault upon each other by the woman sobbing and rolling on the floor. Vhalla tried to catch her breath, but her skin was alive with red-hot burns. Everything hurt; it was a pain beyond all previous thresholds, and she saw stars behind her eyes.

Victor turned and took a few steps toward her. He stared down at her writhing form. There was interest alight in his eyes at her pain.

“Vhalla, Vhalla!” Aldrik began running once more. He sprinted through the first archway into the antechamber just before the inner-most sanctum of the caverns. Vhalla opened her eyes weakly. In a moment of desperation, she reached out to him. Victor stepped upon her hand, crunching her fingers with a twist of his boot.

Aldrik was just at the doorway when a thick wall of ice covered it, stretching out from the crystals Victor had placed around the doorway. It was solid and almost perfectly transparent. Aldrik slammed into it hard, his momentum forcing him to collide. He barred his teeth in a frustrated grunt, banging his fists against it. He tried to burn his way through but the ice repaired itself as quickly as he could conjure flames to expel it. Aldrik punched it with a cry of frustration, blood smearing against the wall.

“You fool,” Victor chided darkly. “You would burn her alive in your rage.” Aldrik’s jaw was so tense Vhalla could almost hear his teeth cracking. “Everything you love, or that makes the mistake of loving you, dies. Doesn’t it?”

Aldrik gave a frustrated cry and tried again to destroy the wall. Crystals around the doorway glowed with the same light as Victor’s crown, responding to the madman’s will and foiling the prince’s best efforts.

Vhalla stared at the ceiling, trying to piece together the world as it crumbled and fell into the howling winds of change that now blew around them. His fire had burned her. “The Bond . . .”

“What?” Victor turned and looked at her.

Even Aldrik stopped his assault on the barrier for a moment. His shoulders heaved with his rough breaths from the magical exertion and stress.

The barrier had needed Aldrik’s magic to open it. When the young prince had opened it all those years before for Egmun, he had certainly exhausted himself, but his Channel would have begun supplying him with more magic instantly so long as it hadn’t been completely depleted. But, Vhalla did not have an endless supply as he had.

The Bond had given her Aldrik’s magic, but Vhalla knew what power she had of his had been completely exhausted when Victor forced it out of her. Vhalla turned to Aldrik, tears welling up in her eyes. If a Channel could be blocked by exhausting a sorcerer’s magic and a Bond was nothing more than a Channel between two people, then it could break if the magic was completely ripped out of one person all at once.

“Oh, I see.” Victor blinked and tilted his head, glancing from Aldrik to her. He leaned in close to Vhalla’s face. “Why, Lady Yarl, it seems I have done you a grand favor. I cannot find one ugly trace of the crown prince’s magic on you.”

With a cry, Vhalla ripped off the crystal at her throat, the ice taking strips of skin with it. Victor allowed her, confident to the point of arrogance that she would not be a threat to him, even with her magic. Vhalla shifted her vision and stared at her hand, knowing what to look for. It was void of any of the brilliance that Aldrik was swathed in. The one shining hope that Vhalla had was that she could see traces of her magic still within him.

“Aldrik, why don’t you have a look for yourself?”

Aldrik glared darkly at the minister in reply. She was not sure if she had ever seen him look so bloodthirsty before.

“Oh, wait, that’s right. Magical sight was yet another thing that you just couldn’t excel at wasn’t it?” The minister laughed and turned away. “You think you are so strong, but you are just a wildfire. You destroy everything in your path without restraint—”