Tripping on an arm, a leg, or over her oversized footwear, Vhalla landed across a woman’s body, face-to-face with a girl who had a piece of wood lodged in her skull, one eye staring at her blankly.
Vhalla screamed and tried to move away, but all around her was death and carnage. Two strong hands helped lift her up and back onto her feet.
“It is not far now, is it?” Aldrik asked almost mechanically. She shook her head. “Go on.” He pushed her gently, and Vhalla found her feet again.
She rounded the corner and broke into an all-out sprint. Half of The Golden Bun had collapsed, the rest was aflame. The building next to it had been reduced to rubble, and a small crater in the street suggested one of the explosions’ epicenters.
“Sareem!” Vhalla put her hands to her mouth and called frantically. “Roan!”
Her voice was raw after shrieking three more times. She looked at the bodies on the ground, turning them over or trying to imagine what their faces may have been. By the outside patio she shifted a fat man and saw a tuff of familiar, cropped, blonde hair beneath.
“Aldrik!” Vhalla screamed frantically. “Aldrik, help me!” He was at her side in an instant, pulling the fat man off Roan. Vhalla looked at her friend, she was bruised and broken but in one piece. Vhalla put her ear to the other woman’s breast.
“She’s breathing!” Vhalla cried. “We have to find Sareem.”
Vhalla looked around; if Roan was here, Sareem had to be close. She began to shift more bodies, treading closer to the former bakery. Vhalla tore at the rubble, leaving bloody handprints behind, no longer sure if the blood was hers or others. Aldrik took control of the nearby inferno and kept the fire at bay while she searched. Larel had said that Firebearers could not feel heat, so the beads of sweat that rolled down his temples could only be explained by exertion.
“Vhalla,” he said faintly, looking around.
“He’s here somewhere,” she pleaded, more with the universe than her companion, hoping that she was not wrong.
“Vhalla.” Aldrik’s voice was sterner.
“I know he’s here. He wouldn’t leave Roan, and he was waiting for me.” Her voice was frantic as she lifted a rock and heaved it aside. “I-I never told him I wasn’t coming. He thought I was still going to come for him.”
“Vhalla!” Aldrik shouted.
She let out a scream.
Underneath the rock was a face—half of a face—that she had known since she was a girl. A face who had made her laugh, who had taken care of her, who had been a friend, like family. Vhalla fell to her knees over Sareem’s burnt and debris battered body, her shoulders heaving with sobs.
“Sareem, Sareem, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She placed a hand on the cheek that wasn’t crushed and oozing. “I...” She hiccupped, snot dripping from her nose. “I didn’t want this. Oh, Mother, I-I-I’ll never keep anything from you again, Sareem. See, see I came, so wake up now, Sareem. Please, please.” Her stomach hurt from her sobbing and her shoulders ached, as though all the nightmares that she had endured threatened to tear apart her body. Vhalla leaned back on her feet, not caring who or what else she sat on, and stared hopelessly back at Aldrik.
“Aldrik, how do I save him?” she asked, tears staining her soot-covered cheeks.
“Vhalla...” he said faintly, taking a step closer.
“How do I save him?” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“You can’t do that.” He shook his head. There was a sorrowful kindness under each word.
“I saved you.” She took a shaky breath. “How do I save him?”
“It doesn’t work that way.” He knelt down next to her, putting a hand on her back. “You can’t fix this.”
“Then why have magic?” she screamed at the prince as her tears forced their way out again. Aldrik spread his fingers across her back.
“Because,” he said very softly, his voice strained and tense. Aldrik glanced over his shoulder, careful to move only his eyes and not his whole head. “You need to get down.”
Vhalla hiccupped. As the words registered in her brain as not making any sense his hand was pushing her down forcefully into the bloody carnage of her friend. Aldrik ducked too as a quiet swoosh cut through the air above their heads.
He pushed off her back and spun upward, his hands alive with fire and Vhalla heard a woman’s laugh.
VHALLA TURNED TO look at their attacker. The silver embellishments on the woman’s arms glittered in the firelight. She wore base leather armor overlaid with a strange piece of clothing over her shoulders and chest, like a rectangular pennon with a hole cut in the center for the head. Embroidered upon it was a foreign script that Vhalla had never seen before. At the woman’s waist was a large belt, an empty sword sheath hanging off of it.
“Well, well, this makes things easy,” the woman spoke, her voice barely audible from behind the faceless mask. If the green skin wasn’t enough, the attacker’s accent was proof that she was one of the jugglers. “I never expected the mighty Crown Prince Aldrik to come running all by his lonesome. It’s too noble for the man who torches babes in their beds.”
The woman rounded them slightly. To the couple’s backs were piles of rubble, to their side was an inferno, and before them was a sword-wielding Northerner. Vhalla knew nothing of combat, yet she was able to see that they were not in a good position.