Air Awakens: Water's Wrath - Air Awakens: Water's Wrath Part 26
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Air Awakens: Water's Wrath Part 26

Flames sparked to life in the fireplace, and Aldrik looked to them for answers. "Where do I start with this?"

"We don't have to do this now." Whatever it was, it seemed to be the source of great pain for him, which was the last thing he needed.

"We do," he insisted. "Baldair, brother of my flesh, died and never knew the truth. I won't let the same happen to you."

"I'm not going to die, at least not for a long time." She attempted a reassuring smile.

"I have seen it."

"Seen what?"

"Your death." Aldrik looked at her as though she was already swathed in burning cloth for the Rite of Sunset.

"What?" The word was little more than a breath.

"I have seen it, but I will do all I can to prevent it." His hands were on her face, as if reminding himself that she was real. "I will fight the Mother herself to keep you safe."

"You're not making any sense . . ." That fact didn't make her any less frightened.

"I saw it in a dream."

"It's small wonder your dreams are consumed with death, with Baldair as he was." Vhalla had her fair share of nights consumed with death.

"They're not just dreams." The shadow of fear darkened his expression. "Vhalla, I can see your future."

"What? That makes no sense."

"Firebearers can see the future in flames."

"I know, but you're not looking in flames." She shook her head, his hands falling onto her thighs. She didn't want to think of future tellers. "You never told me you could see the future."

"I couldn't." Aldrik emphasized the past tense. "I don't look through the flames. I look through our Bond."

"They're just dreams," she insisted weakly.

"Oh? Like your dreams are always 'just' dreams?" Aldrik's voice found a touch of annoyance. "Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me to tell you? Why would I lie or paint a falsehood? I'm telling you because I'm scared. The crown prince of the realm is terrified. As much as it burns me to say it, I will because I need you to believe me. I'm not going to lose you."

Vhalla opened and closed her mouth like a fish above water, fighting for words.

Aldrik turned back to the table, pushing together the papers. He spent a moment shuffling them in his hands before beginning to display them on the floor. He paired one piece of parchment with one another, and Vhalla instinctually began to skim their contents.

"I don't know exactly when it started . . ." he sighed. Despite being stressful, the action seemed to help him continue to move in the wake of his brother's death. "But logically, it would've been after the Joining, since that's when your dreams began."

"How are you not sure?" Vhalla whispered, giving him her attention rather than trying to read the papers.

"I've dreamt about you for so long." His hands ran over her, memorizing her shape again and again. "It wasn't easy for me to tell what were my own wants or paranoia, and what were premonitions."

"If you dream so much, there would certainly be a chance for some of it to come true, right?" Vhalla thought aloud.

"For months, that's what I thought. It wasn't until our last meeting in the garden that I put together that they may be more. When you actually came without my explaining, when you looked as I dreamt, when you said verbatim what I had seen."

"Are you real . . ." Vhalla repeated his former words, her eyes growing wide.

Aldrik nodded solemnly. "After that, I set to writing it down. Every dream I could remember with you in it, in as much detail as I could manage. The premonitions are normally hazy, and I can see little beyond you. That helped me narrow it down some . . ." He motioned to the piles. "But I wrote them all, just in case."

Her eyes skimmed the papers, mirroring his own gaze as he struggled with words for a moment. Riding in the desert, she read the lines at the start of each page, blood on her face, reading together in the library, a crown upon her beautiful hair, writhing on the floor, dancing at a gala, holding hands on the Sunlit Stage, first child . . .

Vhalla reached out and took the paper from where he'd sorted it, and Aldrik didn't object.

She is radiant, even when she has every right to be exhausted. Hair clings to the sweat that's on her brow, and she is tired-I can see she is. But her smile is so brilliant, she is goodness incarnate. She's reclining in a bed, though I cannot discern where it is or who else may be there. It is bright though, and warm. She's reaching out to me, her mouth is moving, and I know what she is asking for. I look down, and perhaps it is the most perfect sight I have ever seen. The tuff of hair upon the babe's head is black, though he has her eyes: bright, inquisitive, and almost yellow. He has more her than me in him, I can feel it, and I am so thankful for it. I pass him to her, and she seems almost afraid. I move to kiss her. There is nothing to be scared of. I will protect them both.

The words became more difficult to read as the paper quivered in her trembling fingers. Vhalla blinked her eyes. Her emotions were too wild to handle this. She curled into a ball, clutching the paper to her chest. Aldrik's arms were around her shoulders, and she wept into her knees, not caring for the folds or wrinkles it put in the parchment.

This was what he'd been silently enduring for months. Each night he went to sleep, he risked a dream. He risked seeing joy, he risked seeing pain. Vhalla realized it was far worse than seeing his memories. Those were cemented in history. But, for Aldrik, the brightest hope could be torture because it may be a guiding light or a false beacon.

"You say you are a curse, but I'm the one who's cursed you. To torture you with such visions." Even before he'd realized his dreams held the future, she knew they would've caused him the rainbow of agony to ecstasy, depending on their subject.

"Hush," he demanded. "Do you know how often I sleep wishing to see something like the paper you hold? It's been the only thing that's allowed me to sleep some nights. It's the only thing that gave me the courage to ask you to be mine." His long fingers wrapped around the watch at her neck.

"You're sure?"

"I am." He coaxed the paper from her hands and began to show her the sets he'd created of his dreams against records of events that had come to pass. His moments of confidence suddenly made more sense. She knew why he had so much faith in getting her to the front as Serien, why he'd easily refused her advances for something more at the last campsite before the North, how he'd known he could accomplish making her a lady. Even if the details were blurry, and the means of it all happening was slightly off, it matched dream to reality.

"Did you know, about-" Vhalla swallowed hard and risked the name, "-Baldair?"

"I didn't." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Maybe, maybe I saw something. But I only ever see you. Perhaps it's because I don't possess general future sight?"

"My death?" The word was like a curse upon her lips.

"I don't know," Aldrik groaned. "I haven't even written it down, I couldn't manage with-" his voice quivered, and he drew a shaky breath, "-with Baldair."

His hands were on her again. They ran down her cheeks onto her neck. They were over her shoulders, intertwining his fingers with hers and back again. As though he was assuring himself that she wasn't some phantom, that it wasn't one of his dreams.

"I saw you bleeding. You had a gash from your shoulder to your chest." His forehead fell against hers. "I can't lose you. I-I lost my brother, I won't lose you. Baldair is gone, by the Mother, Baldair is gone. If I lost you, Vhalla, I would have no one, nothing."

Aldrik pulled her back to him, and she realized how his grief was beginning to manifest. It fed off his paranoia, his mistrust of the world. If he wasn't prepared to do anything to protect her before, he was now.

"You won't lose me," she assured him.

"I never thought I'd lose Baldair." He was crying again, she realized. "Oh, Gods, Baldair. I am cursed: my mother could not escape, Baldair could not escape, and I will damn you, too."

"Enough of that." Vhalla struggled to pry herself far enough away from his chest to catch his eyes. "You didn't damn anyone."

"My mother did not die in childbirth."

"What?" Every book she had ever read, everything she had ever heard, had said such to be true.

"She died shortly after. The explanation of death in the birthing bed was easier than the truth." Aldrik rubbed his eyes tiredly, withdrawing physically. "Isn't that how it always is, a beautiful simple lie over the ugly truth?"

"I've come to prefer the latter." Vhalla rested a palm on his knee. "Tell me later; this is too much for one day."

"No." He was focused on the dancing flames. "I need to tell you. I did not tell Baldair, now I never will. I need to tell you, Vhalla. I need to do things right for once in my miserable life."

"Aldrik, please," she begged.

"Listen, Vhalla, let me tell you what I should've before you let the Empire's accursed monster into your bed."

"THE WEST FELL, and most did not want it to go down gracefully," Aldrik began.

"The Knights of Jadar?" Vhalla asked tentatively, wondering if she'd finally fill in the curious blanks of the histories she'd been trying to sift through for months.

"Just so." There was the ghost of appreciation for her haunting his eyes. "They loathed my mother's family for kneeling before Solaris. Most of all, they loathed my mother for marrying my father.

"My uncle tells me that, in her way, she loved my father for his conquest. When he speaks of her, he tells me she was as beautiful as a rose with thorns twice as sharp. My mother had never been bested in combat before, which made my father enthralling, despite the unusual circumstances under which they met." Aldrik shook his head. "It wasn't until I was engaged to the Northern girl I thought about how impossible my parents' love was.

"After the Knights disowned my family, they used their knowledge of the caverns to prepare a plot to drive out Solaris, to purge the Western court of all those who were no longer loyal to 'King Jadar's Ideals.'" Aldrik scowled. "They stole the Sword of Jadar. My mother's father had told her where he had hidden it, and she discovered it missing within hours of my birth."

Vhalla remembered her conversation with Ophain; the lord had mentioned the sword had gone missing, but he so carefully left out the truth of the matter.

Aldrik shifted uncomfortably and continued, "My mother left. She never even told my father where she was going. She disappeared into the night on the fastest War-strider and raced without rest to the caves, despite still recovering from the pains and blood loss of labor."

Vhalla grimaced at the thought.

"She confronted the Knights before they could penetrate into the heart of the caverns." Aldrik paused, blinking away shining tears. "She was alone, but she used the Knight's knowledge against them. She was a Western princess and had access to Mhashan's crimson history. She Bound her will with the crystals; she gave everything to block the Knights with a barrier of her magic. Even when they killed her, the barrier held."

"How do you know all this?"

"She left a letter," he answered. "When she went missing, my family went searching through the palace, keeping things hush before a search party was sent. I suppose there were places that she and her sisters would share, secrets with notes. My mother hid a letter in one such place. By the time they knew, it was too late."

"Why didn't she let someone else go?" Vhalla frowned. "Why did she run off?" Vhalla omitted what she really wanted to know. Why had Aldrik's mother left her newborn son?

But he heard it. "Who knows, really? I suppose she was magically the strongest. She knew she would be stopped by anyone she told. Perhaps she knew the route the best. Perhaps she had researched it best. If it had been me, and I had something I desperately wanted to protect, I wouldn't trust anyone else to do what must be done. The Knights were at all levels of Western society. She could have been assassinated by telling the wrong person while trying to mobilize a force, and then it would be far too late."

Aldrik paused and looked at her with sudden clarity. Vhalla realized that, for the first time, he understood what his mother had felt. She glanced at the paper she had clutched longingly, a mother, a father, and their child. Aldrik's eyes betrayed his resolve; he was prepared to do the same for her and a child who may never even come into existence.

"If your mother gave her life to form the barrier," Vhalla thought aloud, "how do you know about it? She couldn't have left word about what actually transpired in the caverns."

His expression darkened, and Aldrik looked away, cursing under his breath. "Vhalla, I am sorry."

"Sorry? For what?"

"For taking your father from you all those years." He winced.

"What?" She blinked.

"For taking all those mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers from their homes. I didn't know, I wouldn't have . . ." He sounded like a boy pleading to a parent for forgiveness. "I didn't know how much it hurt to lose someone you truly loved. It was my fault."

"What was?" she asked gently, deciding arguing would be more stressful for him.

"The war." Aldrik swallowed. "The War of the Crystal Caverns was my fault."

"What?" Vhalla breathed, dazed and confused. "How? No, Aldrik, I'm sure . . . You're just guilt ridden right now. Everything isn't your fault. Even your mother. She didn't die because of you, she died because of insane xenophobes."

"It is!" The fire in the hearth flared, emphasizing Aldrik's wild emotions. "He told me that I was powerful, like my mother-that I would be great. I didn't know the whole truth, and I believed him. He told me that I could serve my country, help my family. That I would be loved, more than my brother ever was, more than any prince, king, or emperor ever would be."

Vhalla opened her mouth, struggling for a word in his almost angry tirade.

"I was a fool, a boy. I was innocent, wide-eyed. And, like the idiot I was, I believed him." Aldrik cursed at himself. "I believed him because I wanted to. Because I did not yet know the world was full of liars and deceivers. But I should have known, I was too smart not to know."

"Who is 'him'?" Something sunk heavy in her stomach.

"Egmun."

"What did the bastard do to you?" Vhalla struggled to control her rage, her anger.

"Nothing I didn't ask for myself." Aldrik hung his head.

"I don't understand," she confessed, wishing she did so he would not have to endure another moment of the conversation.

"He didn't even choose me, not at first. I'm sure I would have been high on his list, but being the prince, I was a liability to his goals. Too many eyes on me, too much risk someone would find out." Aldrik fell back onto the pillows limply.

"Find out what?" Vhalla asked.

"He was fascinated by the caverns, and he wanted to learn their secrets."

"For power?" she interjected.

"I don't think so . . ." Aldrik mused softly. "Egmun was never really like that. He was addicted to knowledge. It was beyond liking books or memorizing facts. He wanted to push the boundaries. He did not just want to know, he wanted to be the first to know. He wanted to discover, and each discovery was a drug stronger than any other. Even if he held all the power in the world, it would have bored him after the initial rush, I think."

Vhalla reclined on the pillows as well, too exhausted by the conversation to sit another moment.

"Egmun chose Victor."

"Victor?"

"Indeed. But because he was my mentor, I was eventually brought in on it, too." Aldrik sighed. "I thought-I saw the crystals as the pinnacle of what it meant to be a sorcerer: to handle them, to wield them, to control them.

"Egmun taught us both." The prince stared at his hands. "He put crystals in our palms, he took notes, and he taught us what he knew. Victor had been at it longer than I had, but I took to it like a fish to water. I knew power, and I did not want to relinquish it. Egmun was an amazing teacher, really. He was charismatic, enthusiastic, encouraging. He wanted to watch us excel and to learn from us. I had a taste, and I was hungry and wanted more; however much he gave me wasn't enough. It was never enough."

"But, crystal corruption?" Vhalla asked.

"He was careful, or tried to be," Aldrik addressed her concern. "He would only let us handle them every few days. Victor was the first to show signs of sickness though. Then we turned into test subjects without realizing it. Victor was constantly pushed to the limit to determine how much he could endure. Looking back, it was wild, it was reckless, and it was amazing Victor did not end up corrupted with taint."

Vhalla remembered Victor's notebook. It was all true.

"Egmun knew. Of course, he knew. The man knew everything, even beyond what was written in books. If there was a secret whispered on someone's lips, it would find its way to him. Maybe that's why he's the perfect-in all the worst ways-Head of Senate now. He knew of my mother, of her sacrifice. He knew it was her magic that sealed the caverns.

"He went to the caverns and tried to unlock it himself. He was a gifted sorcerer, but he wasn't strong enough. The magic of the barrier rejected him."