Aldrik grunted, and Victor’s laugh followed, drawing her attention from her own struggle. Her head whipped around, hair sticking to her sweaty cheeks as she saw him, armor caught on a glowing crystal point. Aldrik grit his teeth, clearly not wanting to grant Victor the satisfaction, but it was a battle he was losing.
With a scream of her husband’s name, Vhalla cast aside instinct for self-preservation and swung at Victor from a distance. One of the crystals upon his chest exploded with a satisfying pop and spray of dark blood. The man gave a welcome cry of agony.
Aldrik heard her unsaid words and pushed out his magic. A blaze encompassed Victor, drawing another satisfying scream. He backed off Aldrik, letting the Emperor free himself from the crystal point that had been trying to penetrate his plate.
Free of the flame, Victor moved. A short sword appeared in his palm, a sword made of ice so white it almost shone like metal. Vhalla tried to catch her breath, crossing over to the two men fighting, but Aldrik was closer to their enemy.
Fire burned brightly around Aldrik’s body, keeping the edge off Victor’s icy blade, but that was about all he could do. With crystal magic sustaining the sword against Aldrik’s flames, the two men danced in fire and ice. Every move Aldrik made was toward Victor’s face, and Victor moved to jab a spear of ice between Aldrik’s plate. They had fought before. Each knew the other’s tricks and favorite methods, resulting in a stalemate.
Vhalla shattered the even-footing with a kick to Victor’s face. She’d been trying to throw the crown off his brow, but it was embedded into his body as much as the other crystals. Victor reeled, but Aldrik was forgotten as the false king spun and grabbed her, throwing her into the wall.
She gasped in both pain and surprise as a crystal jabbed the side of her head; a little lower and it would’ve taken off her ear. The crystal’s magic overwhelmed her. It felt like it was trying to eat her whole.
Victor used the moment to turn back to Aldrik, gathering his strength. Dark veins pulsed outward from the crystals embedded into his skin. Pure magic zapped from his fingers straight into Aldrik’s chest, sending the Emperor flying.
Vhalla screamed. She had to keep moving, she had to fight. Her fingers closed tightly around a crystal point at her side. It seared beneath her fingers, as though it had its own consciousness and was rejecting her. Vhalla forced every ounce of her mental strength to command it to bend to her will. It resisted, but bend it did.
Hearing her footsteps nearing, Victor turned his attention from Aldrik. His sword of ice held up against her sword of crystal. Vhalla panted, and he bared his teeth at her.
Daniel. Her friend, he’d been brought into her life for a reason, and that reason had not been to be her lover. Vhalla’s feet moved as he taught. They were light, as though she was still back in that tiny clearing between the houses he had made into his little patch of East. Vhalla parried, reposed, spun the weapon, and twirled with the wind.
Victor had never had the luxury of learning the sword from one of the greatest swordsmen alive—if the Golden Guard status meant anything—and it lived on in her training. Vhalla saw an opening and took it. The crystal sword embedded into his jaw, taking out a chunk.
Aldrik joined his magic with her assault. Startled, Victor couldn’t shield himself as he had last time, and his flesh bubbled with horrible burns along one side. He lunged for her, giving Aldrik no choice but to call off his flames or incinerate them both.
Vhalla kicked him off her, tumbling overtop the sharp points of crystals. Grabbing one again, she repeated the process as before. But this time, she could only manage a dagger—her magic was weakening. She didn’t need much more. They were close, and this fight would soon be over.
Straddling his chest, Vhalla held up the wicked sharp point. With both hands, she brought it down onto the man’s face—and hit an invisible wall. Her muscles locked, and time felt like it froze. Vhalla tried to push the blade down further into Victor’s mangled visage. But, try as she might, she couldn’t strike the death blow.
He rasped through his shattered jaw and mangled lips. Victor was laughing at her. Because she realized it at the same time as he did—a simple rule about Bonds: one cannot kill the person they are Bonded to.
The truth that had drawn her to Aldrik, that had assured her all those months ago that there was more to the prince than met the eye, that he wasn’t lying about his every intention with her, was now keeping her from her kill. She wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Victor was hers, hers to kill. He had taken everything from her, and now he was going to take this, too.
“Do it,” Aldrik encouraged. “End this.”
“You do it, Aldrik.” Vhalla eased away. It physically hurt to do so when she wanted so badly just to drive the dagger through Victor’s eye again and again.
“He won’t do it.” Victor’s eyes darted between them. The crystals in his skin were beginning to glow again, drawing strength from the magic in the room. “Not when he fought so hard to get you.”
“What?” Aldrik hissed, instantly defensive by the subconscious notion of what Victor was implying.
“She didn’t tell you? Well, let me say—”
His nose crunched as Vhalla screamed, cutting off Victor’s sentence. She had leapt on him, flipping the dagger in her palm to smash the hilt against his nose, shattering it. Before the man had a chance to catch his breath, Vhalla brought the crystal onto his purpling flesh again. She hit him again and again, twenty-three times in total.
The skin of Victor’s face changed from flesh-colored to a sickening grey, to a deep crimson. Hot spots speckled her face as his blood dotted her skin from every vicious bludgeon. She heaped her pain, her frustration, upon her target. And, just as she was to cross the threshold into what would be his death, her hands stopped again.
And Vhalla let out a raw scream of anguish. “Kill him, Aldrik!”
Aldrik didn’t move. He hesitated, and she wanted to loathe him for that.
“I can’t.” Vhalla glared down at Victor. The man was somehow laughing through his chipped teeth and mangled torso. “I can’t, so you have to do it!”
“If I die, she dies.” Victor threw the verbal gauntlet.
“No more talking!” Vhalla shoved half the dagger, blunted side, down the man’s throat.
“Is it true?” Aldrik demanded, the last of his hopeful ignorance cracking. Looking at the pain painted in blood on her face should’ve been evidence enough.
“He’s the false king, you can’t trust anything he says.” Her voice broke from frustration and exhaustion. She wanted it ended. Victor was determined. Aldrik was hesitating. And she couldn’t do it.
“If I kill him, will you die?” Aldrik rephrased the question.
“He must die!”
“Will you die, Vhalla?” Aldrik raised his voice to compete with hers.
“Kill him.”
“Will. You. Die?” He’d crossed over to where she was still kneeling on Victor’s chest.
Vhalla stared up at him, unmoving. She didn’t blink; she didn’t even breathe. There wasn’t anything to say, and, in her speechlessness, he saw the truth.
“No,” Aldrik breathed, shaking his head. “No, Vhalla.” He looked back down to Victor. “We will chain him in Windwalker’s chains. He’ll keep the crown so he can live out the remainder of his miserable life. We can move him West, or into the darkest dungeons here. We can find a cell where he’ll never see the light of day again.”
Vhalla drew herself to her feet as he rambled. She unstrapped her plate, there was only one option left now.
“You didn’t believe it,” Vhalla reminded him. She didn’t want Aldrik to force her hand in this way. “When we were Bonded, you didn’t believe that if one of us died, both of us would.”
“But there isn’t enough research to say one way or the other.”
“Exactly. So we never let it get in our way before.” She remembered the sandstorm. Was she able to run head-first into certain danger because she
’d believed she’d be magically stopped if it was going to kill him? Or because she never believed in mutual death? “It’s time to conduct some research.”
Aldrik opened his mouth to speak, but Victor had had enough time to recover, and he sent a wave of magic at both of them. Vhalla and Aldrik tumbled in different directions. The points of the crystals were far more agonizing with only her chainmail.
The Emperor engaged the false king. But Vhalla had a different battle to fight, one with herself. She pulled the fine chain Aldrik had made for her over her head, casting it aside. The clang of it falling to the floor distracted both men and neither seemed to be able to conceive what she was doing.
One more spear of crystal. Not a sword, not a dagger, just something with a wicked point. Aldrik’s eyes widened in horror. Victor snarled with the same realization.
Vhalla’s breath quickened. Did she have the strength to do this? Was she brave enough to really put an entire Empire before herself? It was time to find out.
They both moved, trying to stop her for different reasons. Vhalla clutched the crystal, white knuckled, and drove it through her abdomen. She grit her teeth, pain instant and agonizing.
“You bitch!” Victor roared.
“If you kill him, Aldrik, maybe I will die,” she panted. “Maybe I won’t. And you can help. But if you do not kill him, I will kill myself to try to take him with me, and you have no more Bonds to bring me back.”
A surge of magic hit Vhalla square in the chest. She flew backwards, the bloodied crystal falling from her fingers. Her unprotected back was torn open by the stones. Vhalla wheezed with laughter, letting herself be reduced to a puddle of blood.
“The Bond says I can’t kill you, Victor, but apparently it says nothing about letting myself die!” Vhalla laughed grimly. Unlike when Victor had been freezing her to death, Vhalla’s senses felt heightened. Blood flowed freely from the gaping hole in her abdomen, coating her fingers that instinctually pressed against it. But she saw Victor clearly. She saw her husband. She would witness the end.
“I will encase you in crystal, you impossible cur, and you shall be mine forever!” Victor let out an animalistic sound of anguish, what was left of his face twisting into rage. He raised a hand and crystals encroached upon her. Vhalla struggled to keep them at bay, her magic finally faltering.
An explosion of fire distracted Victor from trapping Vhalla in place. She dismissed the remaining crystals with small explosions of black glass, which shredded her skin in the process. Vhalla saw Aldrik engaging Victor with all the fight he had left in him. Victor was pinned against the wall, Aldrik’s hand clasped over his mouth.
“You do not speak that way to your Empress,” Aldrik growled.
Fire licked around Aldrik’s palm, and he unleashed his magical wrath upon the man who had killed his family and stolen his throne. What crystals remained on Victor’s body began to shine, but his magic was weak and fading, just as Vhalla’s was. She put her last remaining strength into rendering his magic useless, into exploding every crystal that marred his body.
Aldrik’s flames burned hotter and hotter. Vhalla willed her magic into him. She willed the crystal’s magic. She willed fate and love and everything that she held dear in the world into her Emperor’s fire. It burned from Victor’s nose, licked from his ears, boiled his eyes in their sockets before bursting through his skin with flames as brilliant as the crystal’s magic.
She felt the moment it was over. Vhalla wheezed, struggling for air.
Victor’s body went limp, pinned against the wall by Aldrik’s hand. Aldrik slowly released, letting the charred remnants fall to the floor. When he turned, he looked at her with eyes brimming with tears, with fear.
It wasn’t Victor’s death that hit her, it was the fracturing of the crystal magic. All the crystals in the room darkened and splintered. Like a rug pulled out from underneath her, Vhalla felt her magical essence struggling to find something to grab to now that Victor’s magic and the crystals were gone. Her body was the splintering fractures across their surfaces.
Vhalla gasped into the air, focusing on breathing, focusing on seeing the dawn she had fought so hard for.
HER BODY WAS wracked with shudders and shakes. Vhalla clenched her teeth together out of fear that a violent convulsion would result in her accidently biting off her tongue. She rolled onto her side, trying to find her feet, trying to stand.
Whatever the nature of the Bond between her and the— now dead—Victor, there was more to it than she gave credit for. Moonlight streamed through the glass above her, shining through the refractions of dying crystals. Perhaps that was it, more than the Bond. Perhaps it was that she too had come to share in the heart of the crystals, and, as they died, she would, too. Or perhaps it was just the gaping wound in her stomach.
“Vhalla, Vhalla,” he repeated her name, over and over again, as though all other words had vanished from his lexicon. Aldrik’s arms enveloped her, hoisting her up, holding her to him.
“I’m sorry, Al-Al—”
“Hang on,” a soft whine of agony weakened his words. “This isn’t the end.”
Vhalla reached up a hand and clutched the bloody and soot-covered plate that kept his chest from her. She lamented the metal’s existence. She would give anything to rest her head one more time on him and hear his heartbeat and breaths. Her fingers clawed at the armor, as though she could scrape away the barrier.
“I had to.” She finally found a grip on his armor and her mental capacity. “Please, don’t resent me, my love, I had to.”
“I know, I know.” Aldrik was sprinting down the hall. The sounds of glass shattering filled her ears. “We must get you to Elecia.”
She sighed softly with a shake of her head. A cool numbness was tickling the edges of her fingers. It was lulling her into a gentle stasis. “I’m sorry that you will endure this—”
“I am enduring nothing!” he shouted, less at her than the world. Aldrik swallowed hard, and Vhalla watched the lump in his throat bob like the invisible knot he was trying to dislodge. “Don’t you dare leave me, Vhalla Yarl Solaris. Not now.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. Vhalla Yarl Solaris, she thought to herself. That was her name. So much had happened, but Vi was wrong. Vhalla hadn’t traded her fate. This was simply another turn of the vortex. The first Empress Solaris had died a fate connected to the Crystal Caverns; the second would do the same.
Aldrik sprinted downward. The crystals no longer responded to their presence. They stayed dull and darkened as the two Imperials sprinted through the palace. Aldrik’s fingers dug welts into her flesh.
His efforts were beautiful. He was beautiful. Even wounded, a chunk of his ear missing, that bump in his nose that had been set wrong—he was stunning to her. A shudder almost cast her from his arms, forcing the Emperor to slow.
“Aldrik—”
“Hush,” he commanded tensely. “Don’t talk, please, not one word. Save your strength.”
He was on the move again, propelling them forward. His eyes remained glued to a distant horizon. Hope flickered through them, an ever elusive beacon in their world. Her vision blurred, and Vhalla finally began to panic.
She didn’t want to lose him. Her magic was there, barely felt. But everything was disjointed. Nothing connected, forcing her into a limbo between life and death. Vhalla’s eyes fluttered closed. Victor had taken everything from her. He could not win the world, so he would settle for taking her part of it in death.
“Vhalla, open your eyes.” Aldrik intentionally jostled her in his arms. Her head lolled against his shoulder. “Open your eyes, damn it!”
She obliged, a small sliver of light returning to her. She tried to think of how much ground he could’ve covered with her, where they would be going. His chest heaved in contrast to the small swells of hers.
Imperial soldiers were ahead, a whole patrol of them. Aldrik’s feet quickened with the dangerous fuel that Vhalla knew to be hope. Her chest ached, and not just because of the be
ginning stages of cardiac failure.
“Where is Elecia?” Aldrik barked, his voice thick and hoarse.
“M-my lord?” The soldier was aghast at the visage of their Emperor carrying their dying Empress.
“Lady Elecia Ci’Dan! Where did she set up her triage?” Aldrik’s grip tightened even further.
Vhalla didn’t have the strength to tell him he was hurting her. She would be gone soon; no matter how much she struggled, death was a siren, and she’d fully heard its call. She missed any reply, her eyes fluttering closed once more.
“We’re almost there,” Aldrik reassured frantically. “Elecia will fix you. I know she will.”
The balmy summer hit her skin, and it was a breath of fresh air. Vhalla tried to place where she was in the palace. There were over a hundred gardens and a thousand possibilities. But chance didn’t work randomly in her world. The moment her nose picked up the faint scent of roses, Vhalla knew the Gods didn’t play games.
“Elecia’s in the hall, just here,” Aldrik said frantically. Vhalla realized he was talking to her. “She’s coming. She’ll be—”
The door to the greenhouse opened suddenly. “Let me see her,” Elecia announced.
The woman’s fingers were on Vhalla’s face and neck. They ran down her body and back. They ghosted over her wound, unafraid of the gore, and paused at her breast over the fluttering beats of her heart.
Elecia pulled her hands away, and no one said anything for a small eternity. Vhalla cracked her eyes open, turning to the Western woman. She tried to smile. She tried to be strong. Nothing was about her anymore. It was about them, those who would inherit the world they’d fought so hard for.
“I don’t know what to do,” the healer confessed.
“I know,” Vhalla whispered.
“You’re going to die.” Elecia fought for her clinical detachment, but a whimper of emotion betrayed the facade. “Aldrik, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I don’t know—”