Air Awakens Book One

  “I have hurt you with my words—and actions. I know that. And, it likely means nothing to you to say that I did not intend to.” He sighed, looking away.

  “They say you are the silver-tongued prince.” Her voice was fainter than she would’ve liked. “You already spoke me onto a ledge. How can I believe you now?”

  “Because there are things you do not know about us,” Prince Aldrik responded cryptically.

  Vhalla shook her head, there was no “us” between them. “You could’ve thrown me to my death and— what’s worse—you didn’t even care.” Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath. Vhalla clenched her jaw; she had been the one who suffered. He had no right to look so pained.

  “You are wrong. I did care. I knew you were a Windwalker, so I never realized the possibility of you dying.” The prince took a small step toward her. Vhalla glared at the toes of his boots as though they had offended her.

  “Fine,” she started, trying to turn his logic back on him. “Even if you knew my Affinity—which not even the minister himself seemed to know—how did you know the fall wouldn’t kill me, that’d I’d be strong enough?”

  “Because air cannot hurt Windwalkers, like fire cannot hurt Firebearers,” he pointed out.

  “It seems we know almost nothing about Windwalkers. You didn’t know that fall wouldn’t kill me.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I knew you would not die, because you saved my life.” The prince’s voice was slow and deliberate, as if he struggled to speak. Her arms dropped to her side. “When I first arrived home, I was going to die. The... weapon that pierced my flesh was laced with a strong poison. Were it not for an immunity I have built up over many years, it would have killed me halfway home. The clerics did not know what to do, so they called on the library and the Tower for any clues as to an antidote or course of treatment.

  “I knew it was the end. The clerics could not make sense of the poison and how it had been altered magically to affect me.” Aldrik clenched a fist and Vhalla listened to his tale intently. “Yet I began to stabilize as they pulled certain notes from the books. Some were comprehensive, others devolved into gibberish, but somehow they all made sense to me, and I was able to guide my treatment. They were all yours.”

  “That’s impossible,” Vhalla protested. “How did you know they were mine?”

  “I had the minister ask the guards who wrote them. A guard led Victor to you,” the prince explained. “I knew you were exerting a fair deal of magical energy to keep me alive, and I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

  “What?” she said weakly. The minister had kidnapped her because the prince had been worried for her wellbeing? It was backwards and hardly made sense. But if it was true, Vhalla began to paint a different image of that night and the events that followed.

  “I was not completely enthused about Victor’s methods,” Aldrik mumbled. “But he found you, and I knew who to look for.”

  Vhalla was finally stunned into silence.

  “For lack of a better explanation, you wrote magic. I do not know why you did it—or how. But you cared so much about saving me that it forced your powers to Manifest. You made vessels and sent them to me. As utterly impossible as that should be for someone who was not even Awoken, you did it. And if it had not been for that, I would not be standing now.” The prince’s voice had found strength.

  “How do you know?” She found her words once more, still trying to find a flaw in his story. It all seemed so impossible.

  “Because when a sorcerer saves another person, a part of them—of their magic—takes root. It is called a Bond. You are likely too recently Awoken to understand it or feel it, but I could.” He folded his hands behind his back.

  “A Bond?” Vhalla repeated the word in its foreign context.

  “Yes, my parrot.” The corner of his mouth curled faintly at her scowl. “Part of a Bond is that you cannot bring mortal harm to the person to whom you are Bonded. It is because I carry a piece of you with me. The body refuses to harm itself. If pushing you from the roof would have taken your life, I physically could not have done it.”

  Vhalla frowned, her still-healing joints aching at the memory of that night.

  “But,” Prince Aldrik continued, as if reading her mind, “I did not realize the Bond would let me harm you so. I truly believed you would land safely, that we could even speak of it after you did. That was my mistake.”

  “Aren’t you lucky to be a prince and not have your mistakes have consequences?” Vhalla remarked sharply. “They do,” he responded quickly and firmly. “The consequence was the loss of your trust.”

  Her eyes met his with trepidation. She couldn’t help but wonder if his words were carefully crafted to what she would want to hear. As though he could sense her skepticism, Prince Aldrik’s gaze rested on her almost sadly.

  “How many other people do you puppet?” Vhalla sighed.

  “Please explain your question,” he requested.

  “Larel. The introduction book. Those weren’t chance, were they?” She watched his lips purse together. “She told me you knew each other.”

  “Larel is a friend.”

  With four words from the prince, Vhalla’s jaw dropped. “You have friends?” she couldn’t stop herself from blurting out, and her hands went to her mouth as if to hide her outburst. Anyone else she would have expected to laugh.

  The prince only shrugged and looked away, painfully awkward. Vhalla reminded herself that she shouldn’t feel guilty. But she remembered Larel’s words. He had faced the brunt of the stigma against sorcery, despite being a prince. His own subjects seemed to favor Fire Lord over his natural titles. “What about me?”

  “I already explained what you are to me,” the prince responded.

  It was just enough to push her back toward the edge of anger. “I don’t think you have.” Vhalla shook her head. “Am I another one of your playthings to command? To serve you? To let you train me until you can deliver me to your father?”

  The conversation she had overheard came back to Vhalla, the prince and the minister deciding her fate without even asking her. Judging by the furrow to his brow, the prince remembered also.

  “You heard?” he asked darkly.

  Vhalla swallowed and nodded, suddenly wondering if confessing to such was really a good idea. Prince Aldrik clenched his fist, and Vhalla saw the tiniest sparks of flame flash around his knuckles. He released his fingers with a heavy sigh, and she felt the temperature of the room lower.

  “I cannot explain everything now. But I do not plan on telling my father about you. The last place I would want to see you taken to is that sweltering warfront of the North.” He shook his head. “If I may use your words, Victor was the puppet. Not you.”

  “Why are you protecting me?” Vhalla asked before she could even think. It did not coincide with his previous actions, if he could be believed at all.

  “Because you are the sorcerer to whom I am Bonded. A Bond can never be broken, and it can never be replaced.” The prince looked back at her. Vhalla’s heart seemed to beat so hard it hurt against her still bruised ribs. “For someone who is so important, I did not treat you as I should have; for that, Vhalla, I am sorry. But whatever you feel toward me, and however justified it is, does not change anything for me. I will still use all the powers I possess to see you safe.”

  For all his orders and sneers, his commanding presence, and his intimidating always all-black ensemble, Vhalla saw something different. She simply saw someone who was lonely, someone who could likely count their friends on one hand, and perhaps wanted to one day use two hands. He was nothing like the man she first met, the man who wore a mask to meet palace expectations.

  She hadn’t forgiven him, not quite yet. But perhaps Larel was right, and Vhalla felt a little sorry for him too.

  The prince looked away from her, distracting himself with the flowers. But now he held her gaze. The silence fell between them. He stared at her, and she at him.

&nb
sp; In time she realized he was waiting for her to pass judgment. He stood, uncomfortably folding and unfolding his hands, and simply waited.

  Vhalla took a deep breath, trying to find the courage to speak. It was easy to be mad, resentful, and argumentative. It was harder to take one step toward him, and then another. She clutched her bag and crossed the space between them, standing before him, and trying with all her might not to fidget.

  “I came here to read. If that’s all right?” she asked quietly.

  “It is.” His voice was soft and low, no longer making her grit her teeth at the sound.

  She moved around him and sat on one side of the bench. He looked at her like a lost child.

  “You were here first. You’re welcome to stay,” she offered, pulling out her book from her satchel.

  He sat down next to her, situating his ledger back on his lap. Vhalla had forgotten the warmth the prince exuded, and she shrugged off her robes, letting them fall over the bench. He glanced at the leggings and tunic that she wore beneath, but spared her any Southern mention of it being inappropriate dress for a woman. Leaning against the wall behind them, she settled with the book in her lap, thumbing to the first page.

  “My prince,” she murmured. He looked at her. “I’m sorry, also, for the nasty things I said to you.” She looked up from the book.

  He smiled, and for the first time she felt like it was sincere, that there was no motive, no pretense, and no other hidden emotions behind it. It was little more than the corners of his mouth curling up, but it lit his eyes in a way that Vhalla had yet to see. It made her wonder if she had ever really seen him before. It made her wonder if anyone had ever really seen him before. It quieted the voice in her mind whispering that all of this was the start of some elaborate grander scheme.

  “Call me Aldrik,” he said very matter-of-factly before turning back to his ledgers. “At least in private.” Vhalla felt her jaw drop as his pen began to scratch against the page once more, a familiar slanted script left in its wake. “And you are not a little worm, Vhalla.”

  VHALLA CONTINUED TO struggle with her situation. She sat, pretending to read, mulling over the confounding and infuriating man next to her. A thousand questions ran through her head, but she found none worth breaking the silence.

  She attempted to read between his words, to find any hidden meanings or motives. But the more she thought of the Bond, the less convinced she felt that he was toying with her. Why else would he have kept her in the palace? If he did not share a connection with her that he deemed important, wouldn’t she be gone? Especially after her outburst?

  Vhalla glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She noticed a small bump on the bridge of his nose, as though it had been broken and reset poorly. His pronounced cheekbones shaded the sides of his face in the sunlight.

  He lifted his eyes from his work to catch hers. Vhalla looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught staring. Just act normal, she scolded herself. But what was normal for an apprentice and a prince?

  Shifting slightly, she began to read with intent, pushing the oddity of their situation from her mind. There was something relaxing about this place, the smell and the muffled sounds of the outside world. Her reading was not very dense, and it was actually interesting to learn more about what her magic could do. Vhalla took her time with the pages, committing the points that interested her to memory.

  The book was about the applications of air-based magic in a practical setting. Flipping the page, she wondered if she would be able to actually perform any of the seemingly impossible feats contained within. Perhaps, with the right teacher, she may be able to...

  Vhalla flipped the page, putting the difficult decisions in the back of her mind.

  They continued on like this for a while. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually she became aware of the weight of his stare on her.

  “What?” She peered at the prince’s strange expression.

  The prince—Aldrik, she mentally corrected herself—opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again, thinking over his words another moment. “What are you reading?” He put his quill down in the open ledger, leaning slightly toward her to inspect the book.

  “It’s something Fritz gave me, or rather, lent me. It’s called the Art of Air.” She turned back to the first page, showing him the written title.

  “Fritz?” His eyes met hers briefly.

  “Yes, from the Tower. The Southern boy in the library.” Vhalla wondered how much he knew of the Tower.

  “Ah,” the prince leaned back. “That incompetent nitwit.” Now he was back to sounding more like himself.

  “Be nice,” she chided gently, and he glanced over at her through the corners of his eyes.

  “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 some
thing 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.