“But Victor—”
“As a Waterrunner, Grahm saw through the illusion,” Aldrik preempted her question. “Fritz got Elecia, who went to me.” His dark eyes glanced toward the corner, his voice dropping again. “They were unexpected and insistent additions.”
“But Sehra knows about the crystals,” Vhalla filled in logically.
Aldrik nodded, continuing. “When Victor left the caverns, he collapsed the entry, leaving us for dead. Luckily, Elecia was waiting with Jax and Fritz. Fritz could hide them with his own illusion, and Elecia managed to reopen the caverns.”
“But, how did I . . .” Vhalla could logic together the events that led Aldrik to the Crystal Caverns and how he managed to escape alive. But he hadn’t had a wound from shoulder to chest.
“You were weak, dying.”
“I was dead,” she corrected morbidly.
Aldrik didn’t argue that point. “Elecia couldn’t heal you; there wasn’t enough life left in you for her magic to mend. So I returned to you the life you gave me.”
“The Bond,” Vhalla breathed, realizing while his magic had been taken from her when the barrier fell, her magic had still lived on within him.
“It was enough, thank the Mother, for your body to accept her healing.” Aldrik’s hands were back to touching her, as though he needed to reaffirm each second that she was real.
“Aldrik, giving me back the magic I used to form the Bond with you could’ve killed you.” Vhalla gripped him with her good hand. “What were you thinking?”
“That I wouldn’t be able to face the world without you by my side.” The prince’s proclamation held no hesitation or thought beyond instinct. “Vhalla, I—” His words stuck. “I need you to know that how you are now has no bearing on what I feel for you.”
“How I am?” Vhalla repeated, the moment too serious to merit a parrot comment.
“Victor took all your magic. It blocked your Channel like an Eradication . . . The magic of the Bond was enough to give you a spark of life and get Elecia’s healing to take. But it was only a spark . . .”
“I’m a Commons now, aren’t I?” Aldrik’s pained expression told her everything.
There was a time when that was all she wanted, and now the knowledge threatened to crush her. She remembered the pull of Achel, of Victor using his magic as a Waterrunner combined with the crystals to steal her magic. It was all gone.
Panic welled up in her and threatened to burn her eyes. She wanted to scream and shout and rave like a lunatic. Her magic was gone and it now sat in the hands of the most wicked creature she’d ever met. The thing that had been the catalyst for so much in her life over the past two years had vanished as though it had never been there. It was so unfair.
Vhalla pressed her lips together and let the moment wash over her. She let the panic fizzle and die without being given life by escaping between her lips. Her heart shattered into pieces that would be put back together in a new shape. She had lost her magic. But she lived to fight another day.
“Victor—” Aldrik spat the word with an instant malice. “Victor took everything. That bastard stole your magic from you. Curse him, damn him, fu—”
“Aldrik.” Vhalla cut off his justified tirade. Nothing could be solved with his rage or her panic; all it would result in was waking everyone else. He conceded, the anger vanishing just with a look. “I understand. And you have yet to tell me, are you all right?”
“What?” Aldrik blinked.
“Are you all right?” She moved her own fingers to touch his beautifully high cheekbones. Her hands were now in further contrast to the flawless alabaster of his skin. She had raised and ugly scars covering her fingers, the skin stretched thin to the point of shining. Burn scars from his fire. “The Bond, the magic, when you gave it back, did it hurt you?”
“Vhalla.” His brow softened, and his eyes widened. “How, why, why do you worry for me when you have lost so much?”
She smiled softly into the morning chill. He didn’t understand the precious thing that still clutched her.
“Will my magic return?”
“Not without enough of your own magic to call to your Channel and activate it once more. Usually, it would take a Vessel. But, we never made one for you. The only ones you ever created were unintentional and sent to me, and that magic has been exhausted. I’m certain Victor had a hand in seeing that overlooked, I should have—”
She spoke again, stopping him before he fell back into anger and self-hating, “Then that’s that. And the Bond can never be reformed.”