Then Vhalla was only watching, Elecia’s beautifully long fingers were across the pale of his face. They leaned closer, and Vhalla let out a cry.

She gasped in the night air, waking with a start. Vhalla looked around frantically, remembering where she was. Daniel was fast asleep in the chair Larel had previously occupied. The Westerner and Fritz were still out eating dinner, oblivious to Vhalla’s shattering world, and Daniel had refused to leave her alone. Vhalla collapsed back onto her pillow, forcing her eyes closed.

The next time, her hands were his. The fingertips ran over a shadowed face in the dark. She couldn’t make out the features but Vhalla knew they were not her own. Were they Elecia’s? Her mind wandered while trapped in the prison of the dream. Her heart beat fast and she felt blood shifting its attention. There was a carnal desire it wanted to attend to.

Vhalla rolled over and opened her eyes, staring blankly at the wall. She whimpered softly and pulled the blankets over her head.

She ran through streets of fire and death. The bodies were already mutilated, their battered limbs and shattered skulls littering the ground. Vhalla sprinted through the streets, through the shadow people. Tonight, tonight she would be fast enough, her feet told her, and she allowed the wind to pick up beneath her.

Vhalla came to a skidding halt before the demolished building and she tore at the debris. Each rock that moved made her heart beat a little faster. Eventually she saw a face beneath the rubble. Vhalla paused; he wasn’t supposed to be there. She tore away the remaining remnants and took Aldrik’s body into her arms, weeping.

She awoke for a third time, and then a fourth and a fifth. Her mind was too heavily armed with the stuff of nightmares. Daniel was gone, and she heard talking muffled through the door. Vhalla instantly recognized one voice as Larel’s and waited for the other woman to slip silently into the room.

“Larel,” she whispered weakly, feeling the bed shift to accommodate the new person.

“What happened?” Larel ran her hands through Vhalla’s hair lovingly.

“Aldrik—” Vhalla choked on his name. “He and Elecia ... they ...”

“They what?” Larel coaxed gently.

Vhalla recounted the events from earlier in the evening, and Larel listened dutifully. She said nothing, good or bad, absorbing the whole story. Vhalla broke down again when she retold the moment of seeing Elecia and Aldrik together.

“I know she’s noble. The way she acts around him, the way she calls him by his name ... There’s something there, Larel. I just—I didn’t want to see it.” Vhalla sniffled loudly.

“She is,” Larel said softly.

“She is what?” Vhalla rubbed her eyes.

“She’s noble,” Larel confirmed.

“What?” Vhalla stilled. “How can you be certain?”

Larel sighed and averted her eyes. Whatever she was about to say Vhalla knew she wouldn’t like. “She didn’t start coming around until he was older. During the few years we were very distant from each other. He spent a lot of time with her, when she was around. I didn’t remember until I heard the reception for her here in the Crossroads. She’s a Ci’Dan, a noble family from the West with ties to the crown. I never really studied history—that’s Fritz’s area—but I always assumed she was a potential bride, given his age when she appeared.”

“You knew.” Betrayal was a hot poison. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“Vhalla, listen,” Larel demanded, pinning her to the bed with an arm. “Listen.”

Vhalla stopped fighting, but that didn’t stop the anger pulsing through her veins. The world was out to lie and cheat her; maybe Prince Baldair was right.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t believe—I still don’t believe—that you have anything to worry about.”

“How can you say that? She’s a noble woman, she’s known him for years—I saw them together!”

“Hush.” Larel tried to calm Vhalla’s hysterics. “When you are together, Aldrik looks for you, only for you.”

“He spent a lot of time with her.”

“He did,” Larel conceded. “But he never looked at her the way he looks at you. He never reached for her the way he reaches for you. Vhalla, Aldrik cares for you deeply, I know he does.”

“You don’t know anything,” Vhalla mumbled.

Larel just sighed and rubbed Vhalla’s back as the younger woman cried softly.

Vhalla was shocked later when a messenger brought her an Imperial summons. It was a tri-folded card sealed with the blazing sun of the Empire in black wax.

“Are you going to open it?” Larel asked after Vhalla’s tenth lap of the room.

“I will,” she said with false confidence.

“Today?” Larel had the audacity to tease her.

Vhalla shot the other woman a glare, and Larel was only moderately apologetic. The Westerner hadn’t changed her tune that Aldrik had no interest in Elecia.

“I will,” Vhalla repeated, placing her finger under the seal. She took a breath and unfolded the note before her hands dropped it from shaking so much. “Your presence is requested,” she read aloud. “Prince Aldrik C. Solaris.”

“That’s it?” Even Larel seemed surprised.

“It’s better this way.” Vhalla threw the note onto her pack, rummaging through the clothes on the floor that had never made it into drawers. “It is. I’ll go and tell him I know everything.”

“Vhalla,” Larel sighed.

“We can stop this sham, and I’ll just do what I need to for my freedom,” Vhalla vowed, tugging on a clean shirt and leggings.

They walked down the stairs in silence, Larel seeing her out of the inn and all the way to the fancy hotel where the Imperial family was staying. Vhalla spent the walk attempting to shield her heart as much as possible. She imagined each rib a barbed wall that nothing could enter into or get out of. She would do whatever Aldrik and the Emperor needed, and then she would go. She didn’t even want to bring up what she’d seen. It wasn’t her business after all; she had trespassed on his privacy.

By the time Vhalla arrived at the glittering building on the main square, she had scripted and repeated so many conversations in her head that she felt prepared for every possible outcome. No matter what, she would keep it together and leave as quickly as possible. Yet none of this stopped her heart from threatening to burst out of its thorny cage as she pushed open the door, leaving Larel behind.

“How may I assist?” the woman behind the desk asked stiffly.

“I’ve an appointment with the crown prince.” Vhalla didn’t allow herself to say his name. “Vhalla Yarl, the Windwalker.”

The woman pulled out the same ledger as the man from the night before and ran her finger down the pages. “Ah yes. Go ahead—second floor, right wing,” the woman instructed needlessly. Vhalla had already started up the stairs.

Each step coincided with the pounding in her ears. Every scrap of common sense screamed for her to leave a message that she was indisposed. But she knew she could only run so long. In four more days they would be riding together, with Elecia too.

Vhalla paused and took a deep breath, focusing only on the sound of the air moving. She could do this.