“It’s not that I don’t like it.” Vhalla struggled with how to encapsulate her feelings.
The armor was indeed lovely, very identical in craftsmanship and style to her prior suit with some additional embellishments. Smaller shoulder pauldrons matched his, gold detailing lining their edges. The scales were more angled, giving it a sharper and stronger look. The outer steel had been layered with an alloy that shone white, setting off the gold detailing—like the pair of wings that sat with a sun in their center at the armor’s collar.
“It’s white.”
He laughed, but it sounded forced. “White is the Imperial color.” The man was nervous by her reaction.
Vhalla knew he understood her statement, but she played along. “You’ve never worn white, on anything.”
“That’s not true,” he objected.
“I’m not counting in private,” she hastily clarified. “Why not black?”
“Because—” He paused, abandoning the quick remark he’d been readying. Aldrik turned back to the two suits of armor and took a deep and slow breath. “Because that time is over.
“I need to lead my people—our people. I must be someone they look to, and I must look like that person.” Aldrik waged an internal battle with the armor. “I have no more family, so I am no longer a black sheep. I no longer have my life overshadowed by my father’s missions and visions for his Empire. I cannot afford to let a personal tantrum, or bitterness, distance me from the subjects whose trust I so need. I need their loyalty, and I would rather earn that through admiration than fear.”
He peeled his eyes away from the simple thing that had caused him so much introspection. He looked to her, and the man still managed to look uncertain at the exact moment that Vhalla thought he had attained clarity. He was no longer a wildfire burning with rage. He was now the fires of the forges he’d stoked. He burned for a purpose and remained focused on that singular goal.
Vhalla rested her hand on his, initiating touch for the first time since the night she had traded with Vi. Aldrik’s eyes darted over her face. It had been so long since she was nervous around him that the butterflies in her stomach were awkward, though not unwelcome. She reached up to touch the face of the man she adored, to pull it toward her. To hook his chin and guide his lips to where they belonged—against hers.
Delicate exploration paid quick dividends as a breathless chorus filled the room when they pulled apart. Neither of them were ready yet, Vhalla realized, to be as intimate as they had once been. But the fact that something was still there, given all that had happened, the fact that he was still capable of wanting her and that her body had not forgotten how to want, it returned to them a level of closeness that had been woefully missing.
For the first time in nearly two weeks, the Emperor and Empress slept peacefully through the night—completely folded in the other’s arms.
CHAPTER 17
Despite knowing the armor’s color and the reasoning behind it, nothing could have prepared Vhalla for the next morning when Aldrik strapped himself into it for the first time. His hair was combed back and his helm had been attached to a saddlebag so that the people could see him on their ride out. Vhalla did the same, following his lead in their departure from the Crossroads.
He was radiant, every bit of the leader Vhalla had always known he could be. He was a seedling that had been transplanted from the dirt in his father’s shade and placed in the sun for the first time. He greeted the assembled masses and waved to merchants and lords alike as the Emperor’s company wound its way out the main road. Vhalla witnessed their people finally seeing what she had known all along: he was born for this.
On their way out of the Crossroads, Fritz had his first opportunity to comment on her armor. “Your symbol changed.” Fritz fingered a corner of the cloth that went down to her waist, somewhere between a cape and a cloak with a slit in the front for mobility. It was fixed by the sun and wings at her collarbone. Vhalla touched the new symbol, the same one that was emblazoned in gold on her back.
“I suppose it did.” Vhalla glanced over to Aldrik. He wore a similar garment, though his only had the sun of the Empire on its back.
“Why?” Fritz mused aloud to no one in particular.
“A second wing, because the Windwalker has been born again,” Aldrik answered. “The whole Imperial sun because she will wear this armor after she has formally become my Empress.”
“No longer cutting it in half and pretending it’s not obvious?” Jax grinned.
Aldrik rolled his eyes.
“He has a point,” Elecia teased her cousin. “It’s unlike you, Aldrik, to have given her something so overtly Imperial.”
Vhalla remained silent through the teasing. It hurt. Her friends didn’t mean for it to. But they didn’t know that her watch, the one Aldrik had given her, was gone forever. Judging from the long look Aldrik gave her, he was thinking much the same.