“If he was going to break the rules and let a book outside the Tower, there are better ones.” Aldrik punctuated his self-serving comment with a scratch of his quill.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know much, so anything is welcome,” Vhalla pointed out.

“Very true. You do not know much,” he agreed casually.

Vhalla laughed aloud. “You are a royal pain, you know that?” She shook her head, but she wasn’t even angry. Some part of her much preferred this cocky and arrogant side to him over the quieter more insecure glimpses she’d seen earlier. They didn’t seem to fit what little she knew of him. It was safer for the prince to remain a stuck-up royal than someone with a heart and soul.

“You are not the first to think such. You will not be the last.” He shrugged, relaxing back into his own work. She looked back down at her book and flipped the page again. He was back to staring at her.

“What?” Mild annoyance was apparent in her voice.

“Do it again,” he demanded.

“Do what again?” Vhalla sighed.

“What you just did,” Aldrik pointed to the book.

“I know I am a farmer’s daughter, but I can read.” Vhalla glared at him.

“Not read, turn the page.” He kept staring at the book.

She looked at him and flipped a page with emphasis. “Ta-da.” Sarcasm dripped from the noise.

He raised his chin and stared at her with those endlessly black eyes. “You do not even realize it.” He spoke softly at first, their faces close. Sitting back with a laugh, he repeated himself, “You do not even realize it!”

Vhalla was outwardly annoyed with him now. “Thank you, Aldrik the parrot,” she muttered.

He stopped laughing and stared at her. She paused, it was the first time she used his name without title. After a moment he grinned and stood.

“Put it down, I want to see something.” He held out his hand to her.

“You’re not going to push me off a roof again, are you?” Vhalla instantly wished her tone had been more jovial and less flat.

An unusual mix of emotions crossed his face, and his hand relaxed a little before falling to his side. “You said that you would accept me as your teacher,” he spoke softly. She inwardly cursed breaking the lighter moment. “I want that honor again.”

He extended his hand back to her and waited. Vhalla swallowed hard. Prince or not, he was asking too much of her in one day. She avoided his intense stare.

“You have to earn it.” Vhalla didn’t what else to say. She had trusted him, to lead her, to teach her, and he broke that trust. It wasn’t as though it was something she could simply start again on command.

“That is acceptable,” was his surprising remark. She looked back to him; he still stood there hopefully expectant.

Vhalla took his hand. His skin was soft and his palm warm, it almost tingled beneath the pads of her fingers. But she had little more than a moment to reflect on that as he pulled her to her feet and out of the gazebo, back into the autumn day.

“How do you feel?” he asked, leading her into the garden.

“Well enough. Larel stopped in this morning and checked up on me. She said I’m healing well,” she reported.

Aldrik glanced at her. “If something goes wrong, tell me. I could control your healing when you were in the Tower, but now that you are back in the castle proper it is harder for me to oversee directly.” He kept his long strides in pace with her.

“Control over...my healing?” Vhalla considered the implications of this.

He nodded, stopping. They arrived at a small pond.

“After what happened,” he paused, “I wanted to make sure you had the best care possible. It was the least I could do.”

She stared at him and part of her wanted to yell. Didn’t he claim he was not a puppeteer in her life? But she remembered the words of the minister; the prince had been the one who had taken her to the Tower in the first place, and she likely would’ve died without that.

He cleared his throat. “In any case, back there, you were flipping the pages without touching them,” Aldrik announced.

“Huh?” Vhalla said dumbly.

He nodded. “You kept flipping the pages only by moving your hand over the book, but you never actually touched them. You did not even notice.” His tone was a mix of excitement and severity. “Your powers are showing, Vhalla.”

“That’s impossible.” She shook her head.

“For other sorcerers, but not for you, clearly.” He crossed his arms on his chest.

“I’m sure you could do something even better without thinking about it,” she protested and grasped for the idea that what she was doing was not special.

“Yes, I very likely could.” He closed the gap between them, looking down at her. She looked up defiantly. “I am the most powerful sorcerer in this Empire. Therefore, I am not a good benchmark of what is possible or easy to do.” He gave a confident grin before strolling around and behind her.

Vhalla kept her gaze forward.

“Tell me, have you ever skipped stones?” He knelt, picking up one of the flatter, circular rocks.

“When I was a child.” Who hadn’t? “Though I can’t remember the last time.”

He tossed the stone from hand to hand a few times before sending it flying over the still water of the pond. It skipped across the surface three times before sinking. Vhalla intentionally did not look impressed.