REALITY HIT VHALLA like a slap across the face. Pinned to the man’s breast was a symbol she knew well. She would know that symbol—a symbol that hovered over her every waking hour— better than any in the world. Crafted in gold gleamed the blazing sun of the Empire.
She stood bare-footed and in her nightgown before the crown prince, the second most powerful man in the world. He shifted his feet to the floor, nonchalantly placing his book on the bench. Moving his elbows to his thighs, he rested his head in his palm with one dark eyebrow arched, as though he had already become bored.
His eyes held her to the spot with an unbroken gaze. They simply stared at each other and, while Vhalla felt her anger slowly rising to a boil inside, his demeanor was perfectly calm. As time dragged on, it gave birth to her nerves. Whatever had possessed her vanished, and she realized this was a dangerous course of action. She was playing with fire.
“Y-you, you knew I would come?” Vhalla finally stammered out. Wishing her tongue would obey her more eloquently before a prince.
“Oh, without doubt.” The prince’s voice was soft but she could feel it reverberating through her bones.
“How?” She blinked.
“Oh, Vhalla,” he chuckled and it made her tense. “Since when have I simply told you things?” He stood and she looked up at him, realizing he was head and shoulders taller than her, even taller than his brother. “I have never fed you information; you are far too smart for that. Where is the sport?” He rounded her, peering down the bridge of his nose. Vhalla felt like wounded prey snared in the trap of far bigger game. “Think, Vhalla. How did I know you would come running to me?”
“I don’t know...” she whispered.
He paused behind her, leaning close to her ear. Vhalla could feel the small hairs on the back of her neck move as he spoke.
“Vhalla.” She barely suppressed a shiver at his voice on her skin. “Show me that big intellect that the world seems to praise you for.”
“The dreams,” she breathed deeply and closed her eyes. He leaned away from her, and she let out a small sigh of relief.
“Very good.” It was a compliment, but it didn’t feel sincere.
“What about the dreams?” She turned to face him. A flame hovered magically over his shoulder. Her fascination with the tiny fire was only halted by her inability to catch her breath when she looked at him.
From this angle, the light was at her back and she could study his face properly. He had high cheekbones and a pronounced nose, his face was narrower and more angular than his brother’s. All of his facial structures were distinctly Western, save for Southern pale skin that seemed paper white even in the orange glow. Nothing about him was traditionally handsome, and for it all, he was astonishingly striking.
“Not thinking again,” the prince drawled, leaning against a bookshelf and looking bored anew.
“I don’t know,” Vhalla said weakly.
“Of course you do.” He yawned.
“No, I don’t,” she insisted, putting her hands on her hips defiantly.
“Then I thought wrong about you. You are boring, like everyone else.” He shrugged and turned, starting down the row of books.
Frustration and helplessness twisted her insides as she watched him go. She had no business speaking to the crown prince.
“Wait!” Her curious mind objected to that obedient, rule-abiding voice within her. “Wait, my prince!” She scampered after him blocking his way.
A small smirk played at the corner of his mouth. The arrogant royal had known she was going to chase after him.
“They weren’t just dreams,” she forced herself to continue. He crossed his arms over his chest cocking his head to the side. “I don’t know what they were, but they weren’t just dreams.”
“Well, that is something; twenty percent I would say. Not yet passing marks.” One corner of Prince Aldrik’s mouth curled upward.
Vhalla stood dazed; she really didn’t know anything more than that. But, she thought, there had to be more. How had he known?
“You knew, the dreams. When I was dreaming, you knew that I was here,” she realized.
“Very good. Now we are getting somewhere, my budding Windwalker.” His eyebrows raised and his grin turned into a smile that Vhalla assured herself wasn’t a sneer.
“Windwalker?” she repeated dumbly.
“You have heard this word before,” he reminded her.
“Sorcerers, from the East,” Vhalla breathed. “But you said there aren’t any more, there haven’t been for over a century.”
“There were not,” the prince corrected.
Vhalla frowned. “You said—”
He cut her off. “I am still your prince. You would do well not to forget that, apprentice. Do not question me so.” Prince Aldrik spoke low and slow.
The expression fell from her cheeks. For the first time Vhalla felt terrified of the man. His proximity gave off a fearsome heat that sent a chill through her. He straightened. She grabbed her hands and wrung them together.
“Forgive me, my prince.” Vhalla lowered her eyes, unable to handle the intensity of his gaze any longer. He turned, walking deeper into the library. “Where are you going now?”
“Stop asking questions and follow,” he ordered with a sigh.
She quickly crossed the distance between them. Vhalla looked down at her feet as she followed behind the mysterious being that was the crown prince.
In that moment of silence, she could appreciate exactly how odd it all was. It was some ungodly hour of the night and a library apprentice was being led by the crown prince to some mystery location. Fear and curiosity compelled her, making her all the more entranced with the man before her. Vhalla had every right to fear the prince and yet, after weeks of exchanging notes, she found him less frightening than she had the Minister of Sorcery.
She was certainly going mad.
“I would have expected you to have put it together. I had you reading books on Affinities to push you toward a realization.” He sighed again, letting out his disappointment. “You seemed so close, too; some of your questions made me think you were wondering about your own potential Affinity. Surely one of your Manifestations has given you a hint.”
“I still don’t believe I am really a sorcerer. I haven’t had any—Manifestations. Nothing about me is magical,” Vhalla whispered, thinking back to the Minister of Sorcery. “Reading the books, I’ve always loved reading. It was easier than talking. Like a child playing games.”
“You are a child.” He looked her up and down with apparent disapproval. “But we are not playing games.” She put her hands together and began to fidget. “And stop that!”
He slapped at her fingers then grabbed her chin, forcing her face up to look at his. The jerking motion was painful, and she barely managed to suppress a whimper. Vhalla was fairly certain he would’ve liked that even less.
“You are a sorcerer—albeit a small, untrained, helpless little slip of a sorcerer—but still a sorcerer! Stop shrinking or you will be an embarrassment to the rest of us,” he scolded at her shocked and helpless expression. His grasp slowly loosened, then relaxed until he was holding her chin with only his knuckles and thumb.
“Your Affinity is air,” Prince Aldrik revealed softly, dropping his hand and turning away from her dumb stare. There was a sudden and surprising gentleness about him, but the moment was fleeting.
“Air?” she repeated, her face hot from his fingers. His touch had felt different than his brother’s contact. Even months after Prince Baldair had caught her in the library, she still remembered the feeling of his calloused fingers on the backs of her knees. Then again, everything about the princes was night and day.
“It is like walking around with a parrot. No, I take that back, the parrot would be better conversation.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“How do you know?” Vhalla was forced to ask.
“Affinities of the self,” he answered cryptically.
Vhalla did not have time to ask anything further, a gasp stopping the words in her throat.
They had reached a wall bearing a tapestry. The prince pulled apart the molten metal of the tapestry’s frame, heated by only his fingertips, revealing a secret passage behind. He smirked at her expression.
“You did not think servants were the only ones with hidden ways of getting around, did you?” He chuckled darkly and entered the narrow passageway.
Vhalla glanced over her shoulder, she could still disappear into the library. She could go home. The light of the prince’s flame began to fade as he continued on without looking back. She never knew exactly what beckoned her to step into the passage after him, just before the secret door closed with a heavy clang.
“Where are we going?” Vhalla asked again.
“We are going to show you what you stubbornly refuse to believe, little parrot,” Prince Aldrik answered, his hands folded behind his back.
“I’m not a parrot.” She frowned. “And I’m not a sorcerer.”
“Your problem—” the prince began as he started climbing up the pitch black passage. Vhalla was left no other option than to follow closely behind the magic flame that hovered over his shoulder as the only source of light. “—is that you rely entirely on books.”
“What’s wrong with books?” she was forced to ask.
He stopped, turning on his heel to stare down at her. “What is wrong is that you cannot learn how to really do things from books.” He ignored her open mouth, continuing, “They are starting points for principle, theory, and concept. Your mind understands, but your body does not know until you perform the act yourself. Without action and practice, your hands will not oblige. Experience is a far greater teacher.”
“Tell me, Vhalla, have you ever made love to a man?” He closed the distance between them as he spoke. With a single step, the crown prince was painfully close after asking such a question. “Tell me, have you ever pleasured yourself ?”
Vhalla swallowed hard. Her brain betrayed her and she thought of clumsy experimentations on lonely nights. The guard, Narcio, flashed upon her mind without her command. Fleeting pain and the memories of brief satisfactions brought a hot flush of embarrassment to her cheeks, as though she would tell anyone any of that.
“Whatever it was, I doubt it was very good,” he sneered down at her. She wanted to hit him. “I will tell you why it was not. Because, Vhalla, you think and you watch, but you never do. You can read all the books in this library, be wiser than the master himself someday, and then you will die having never really done anything. You will have only ever lived through everyone else’s experiences.”
Vhalla stared up at him, at those cold judgmental eyes that threatened to pick her apart and lick her bones clean. Looking away only provided minimal relief. He was still there assaulting her senses. Resisting the urge to fidget, she brought her hands together, squeezing them tightly.
“So then, how do I do?” she asked, still avoiding his eyes. It was a potentially dangerous question given their recent conversation.
“You follow me, and you stop ignoring what is right before your eyes.” They continued walking up a swirling staircase into the heart of the palace. Sometimes they would curve off as the path split before heading up again. There were no windows, no lights, no ornamentation, no signs. She was well and truly lost.
By the time they stopped, Vhalla felt dizzy from going up all the stairs. Above them stood a wooden door impeding their progress. The prince unbolted it and pushed open the hatch. Like ice water running through her hair and down her shoulders, cold wind poured down into the stairway. It forced her to blink tears from her eyes and shield her face.
“Come,” he ordered, and she obliged.
They emerged into the night air in an impossible place. The wind took the breath right out of her lungs. They stood on a small landing, barely large enough for the two of them.
It felt like the top of the world.
They had climbed straight up through the servants’ halls, the public areas, past the Imperial Housing, to the top of one of the golden spires that she had only ever looked upon from far below.
Vhalla could see the castle stretching outward beneath her, its many tiers cascading down the mountainside and into the capital. The distant, flickering lights of the city mirrored the stars in the sky. Vhalla could see the dual peaks of the mountain, and if she stretched her vision towards the horizon, she could see the Great Southern Forest, which hid a road that could take her home.
“What do you think?” He had moved behind her. Even at such close proximity she could barely decipher his words through the howling wind.
“It’s amazing,” she breathed.
“I have heard it said that the Windwalkers were the children of the sky.”
His words barely registered as she looked upwards at the heavens above. It was an engrossing scene, as though she was at the very place where the earth and sky met. Vhalla took a tiny step forward, sweeping her gaze back to the glittering city below.
Perhaps it was her enchantment with the wonder surrounding her. Or perhaps it had been the wind filling her ears. Whichever, it masked his last footsteps. The prince placed his hands lightly upon her shoulders.
“Trust me,” he demanded, his lips barely brushed over her ear.
Vhalla did not even have a moment to turn her head before he pushed her effortlessly into the empty air beyond.