Air Awakens: Water's Wrath - Air Awakens: Water's Wrath Part 10
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Air Awakens: Water's Wrath Part 10

She was over halfway to the desk by the time Roan's head turned up. Vhalla froze in place, her heartbeat frantic, her breathing stuck. Roan's expression betrayed nothing.

The master stood slowly, following Roan's attention to the dark-clad woman haunting their library.

Clenching her fists briefly to invite her magic to give her strength, Vhalla closed the remaining distance to the desk. She stood, alternating between looking at the master and at her childhood friend, her mouth trying to form words.

"Welcome home, Vhalla," the master spoke up and spared Vhalla the toil of breaking the silence.

"Thank you, master." She let the man's warm nature soothe her nerves.

Roan still hadn't said anything.

"Roan-"

"Vhalla-"

They spoke over each other, silencing instantly.

"Roan, my eyes are bleary already. Why don't you give me a small rest and stretch your legs," the master encouraged.

Roan pursed her lips together briefly, looking between Mohned and Vhalla.

"I'd like to speak with you." Vhalla didn't want to lose the opportunity the master placed before her. "Please?"

"All right," Roan sighed. "I'm stiff anyway."

The blonde looped around the desk, crossing her arms over her chest. Closer, Vhalla noticed the slightly darkened patches of skin that marred her flesh. Scars. The sight brought the memory of Jax back to her, bleeding on Major Schnurr's floor. How many more of her friends would have to suffer or die because of her?

Vhalla turned quickly, starting down one of the rows of books. Roan thankfully followed, and they disappeared into the shelves.

"How's the library been?" Vhalla forced.

"Fine."

"Has the master been well?"

"He's fine." Roan clearly had little interest in actually conversing.

Vhalla stopped, leaning against one of the bookshelves for support. "Roan, I'm sorry."

Despite the flush of pain those words spread across Vhalla's chest, she managed to look the other woman in the eye and say them. Roan squinted marginally. Whatever pain Vhalla felt from guilt or shame could hardly be a fraction of what Roan had experienced.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you what was happening, about my magic." Vhalla didn't know where to start. "I was going to tell you, really, but then-"

"You lied to me."

"I didn't!" Vhalla wished she could catch the hasty defense and swallow it back.

"You hid the truth, which is basically a lie." Roan frowned. "You hid it from me, and from Sareem. Unless you told Sareem?"

Vhalla shook her head, finally breaking eye contact.

"You hid it from both of us and got him killed."

"I never meant for that to happen," Vhalla pleaded for Roan to understand. "I didn't know how to tell you both. Sareem was just like everyone else; he hated magic. How could I tell him? And you were so over the sun for him that you were blinded to anything else. I thought that I'd join the Tower, tell you both, and then sort it out."

"Isn't it nice to be Vhalla Yarl?" Roan's words cut deep.

"It's not."

The other woman snorted and rolled her eyes. "The world revolves around you and what you want, doesn't it? The great Windwalker decides for the rest of us what we can know and when we can know it."

"It wasn't that, Roan. You know it wasn't."

"I thought you were my friend." There it was-the deepest wound that still seeped blood. "I thought you were my friend, and you didn't trust me."

Roan couldn't have known the depth of pain that her words caused. For all Vhalla had angrily faulted Aldrik for keeping her in the dark, she had done the same to Roan and Sareem. She knew that feeling of being shut out by someone she loved, and there was no heavier guilt than that feeling.

"I'm sorry. I'm really, truly sorry. If I could do it again and fix it I would," Vhalla said honestly.

"You don't get that luxury." Roan frowned. "And you don't get my forgiveness either."

"Roan, please-" Vhalla tried to stop the other woman as she began to head back to the desk.

"No, Vhalla Yarl, I don't want anything to do with you. You made your choice. Go back to your Tower." Roan looked over Vhalla's robes. She shook her head and continued away.

Vhalla buried her face in her palms. But she didn't cry. She allowed the air she breathed to echo through the hollow that ballooned in her chest.

This was her true punishment for the Night of Fire and Wind.

On the march, Vhalla had gained Larel and Fritz and Daniel and the rest of the guard. She'd learned the love of a prince. At war, she'd become betrothed. She'd paid the cost with her humanity, and that seemed enough to satiate the Senate.

But this-this was the final ember of the Night of Fire and Wind finally flickering out. It was extinguishing the last light of her life from before she had become the Vhalla Yarl. There was no beacon back to the past, no warmth to keep her lingering. There was only forward now.

Roan ignored her again at the desk.

"Master." Vhalla wasn't about to let her trip be a total failure.

"Yes?"

"Before I left, you had me bind some books from the East. I was wondering if I might read them?"

"You didn't before?" The master was honestly surprised.

"No . . ." Vhalla had been far too distracted with other things at that point.

"I expected you had." Mohned stroked his scraggly beard in thought. "No trouble. Come."

He took the library's keyring from its hook behind the desk and began the slow shuffle toward the archives. Vhalla followed silently, adjusting the sleeves on her robes in thought.

"Roan took it very hard," the master stated the obvious. "Sareem's death, your magic, you leaving." Mohned sighed. "I was worried for her recovery."

"I'm sorry." Vhalla felt like her apologies would soon mean nothing if she kept offering them left and right.

"Sorry will neither change nor help now." Mohned's weathered voice was as soft as flipping pages. "Be patient, instead. Be kind in spite of her outward hostility. She still has a place for you in her heart."

Vhalla shook her head. "I don't think so."

"She asked about you. To every person who even breathed a word with a messenger from the North. She hung on Court gossip. She began to read books on magic."

She couldn't believe the same person the master was describing was the icy woman whom Vhalla had just faced.

"But presented with you, in the flesh . . . I think some wounds are still too fresh."

"I know how that is," Vhalla sighed.

"So give her time."

"How long?"

"It could be weeks, months, even years. You'll know when it begins to feel right again. When her pain has been softened by love once more." The master paused at the door to the archives. He gave Vhalla another long look. "I am glad, truly, to see you well."

"'Well' may be a matter of perspective," Vhalla muttered. She felt thin and empty, filled with ghosts and specters.

"From my perspective, a girl I watched grow up is finally coming into her own." Mohned smiled tiredly. "And your hair is shorter."

"Oh." Vhalla's hand went up to the ends of her hair, caught off-guard by the sudden change in conversation. The master hadn't seen her since she'd cut it. "It used to be a lot shorter." It now was back almost to her shoulder blades.

"I prefer it long, if you'll permit this old man's opinion," Mohned offered with a chuckle.

"As do I." Vhalla smiled as Mohned unlocked the door to the archives.

She followed him down the center iron staircase to where she remembered the books to be, helping him draw back curtains for light.

"I had given you this task so that you would read," Mohned explained as Vhalla pulled the books carefully from the shelf. "You mean to tell me the one time I intended for you to give into the distraction of reading, you were actually working?"

"It seems so." Vhalla's hands paused on the large tome. She remembered what Aldrik had said on the last day of her trial. "Aldrik went to you, when he knew I was a sorcerer."

Mohned paused, and Vhalla inwardly cringed, realizing she forgot the prince's title. The master let it slide. "He did." Mohned nodded. "I've known the crown prince since he was a boy. His obsession with books is not unlike your own. He quickly devoured the contents of the Tower's library from an early age, discovering the manuscript I penned on the Windwalkers."

"He suspected I was a Windwalker before he'd met me." She'd dreamt countless times of meeting the prince in the library, only to learn later that she was Projecting in her sleep.

"He did, and I confirmed."

"What?" Vhalla's hand slipped from the table in shock.

"Vhalla," Mohned sighed and adjusted his spectacles. "You remember when you fell off the rolling ladder getting me a cartography book?"

"No . . ." She shook her head. "I fell so many times that-"

"Exactly," the master interrupted gently.

Vhalla's eyes went wide.

"And you were never hurt." Mohned rested his hand on the book. "I had begun to suspect the possibility long ago. You manifested gracefully, so subtle and small that no one would know unless they knew what to look for. But I did. Knowing you came from two Eastern parents, it was all too much to just be chance."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Vhalla sunk into a chair. She'd had the same thoughts about that possibility when she rode with the Knights. But to hear it from the man who'd been like her father. "Master, why didn't you put me in the Tower?"

"Because I wanted to protect you. Vhalla, I was a boy when I first learned of the atrocities committed against Windwalkers. I knew if you were found, you would be hunted." The master sighed heavily. "I am loathe to say that I was proven right. I thought you would be safer here, hidden in the library, kept in the palace."

Vhalla stared at nothing, trying to piece it together. The childhood she'd thought she known was a shadow play.

"Does my father know?" Vhalla whispered.

"If he does, it is not because I told him." Mohned rested a hand on her shoulder. "Vhalla, forgive me?"

"For what?"

"For keeping this from you."

Vhalla raised a hand, gripping the Master's for a brief moment. "You were only doing what you thought was best."

She was wounded. But unlike Roan, she was used to secrets. Vhalla had grown accustomed to the forces lurking behind corners that pulled at the threads of fate, tying together the world and moving her without her knowing.

"Come to me, if you need." The master withdrew, starting up the stairs.

"I will," Vhalla called after him, "and thank you."

Silence was her reply.

Vhalla stared at the motes of dust floating through the beams of sunlight that pierced the windows. She ran her fingers over the manuscript before her, remembering vividly the last time she'd touched it. She'd been disappointed then, when Sareem's boots had appeared on the stairs instead of Aldrik's. Now she'd give anything to see those soles stepping down the stairs again.

With a sigh, Vhalla flipped open to the first page.

The work was an old collection of stories from Cyven. From short rhymes that Vhalla knew well, to long tales that she'd never heard. It was easy to read, and Vhalla found the pages slipping by one after the next. She allowed them to lull her into a quiet comfort by reminding her of the smell of wheat or of rain on her family's fields.

It was such a subtle trance that she'd fallen into that Vhalla didn't notice the one thing that began appearing in every other story-more frequently in older ones. The word suddenly lit up on every page. Vhalla stood slowly, flipping the pages quickly. The next random page the word was on. Again on the one after.

It was there in the story of harvesting the first grain. It was there in the story of a farmer defending his land from raiders. It was there in the tale where a man used it to scare away the clouds themselves.

Vhalla closed the book and returned it to the shelf as quickly and carefully as possible. She sprinted out of the archives and thanked the master with a panting breath before she was out of the library.

VHALLA!" GRAHM CALLED out.

She skidded to a stop. The man must be part psychic and part hawk to pick her out when she was nothing more than a blur up the Tower.

"Vhalla, do you have a moment?" He emerged from the Tower library where he had been sitting with Fritz before stepping into the main hall.

"I was actually on my way to see the minister . . ." Vhalla glanced upward. What she needed to talk about would keep. She knew it would, so she didn't need to avoid taking time for Grahm. But the Eastern book had lit a fire under her, and now Vhalla had a lot of questions that she just wanted answered.