Baldair shook his head at them and continued, “You had, you have still, a beautiful heart, Vhalla. I’m glad I somehow found a place in it. You healed things, things I didn’t think could be healed. I don’t think I have spoken as much to my brother in years as I have in these past months. I am thankful for it.”
He spoke of her healing things, but she couldn’t heal what mattered. She couldn’t escape the curse of her existence that threatened to consume everyone and everything she loved. Vhalla clung onto him and his words.
“Tell him—they don’t let him in here now—tell him I am sorry, I don’t think I’ll live up to our agreement.” Baldair coughed again.
“It’s fine,” she whispered. It didn’t matter whatever the brothers had agreed. “Aldrik just wants you well.” Vhalla had completely forgotten herself as she used the name of the crown prince loosely, without title.
“I know he does,” Baldair confessed. “I love that idiot brother of mine. Will you tell him that for me?”
“You will tell him yourself,” she insisted. Vhalla threw a bold look to the Emperor and Empress. There should be a fourth. There was another soul who needed to be present more than she did.
“Don’t change,” Baldair continued on. “Don’t let the world change you.”
“Stop saying goodbye!” Her voice was louder than she intended it to be. “Don’t you do this! I did not come here for this!”
“Vhalla, please.” He coughed again, and she was right back to tending to him. “Listen. They do not see you for what you are. Or perhaps, they see you only for what you are upon the surface. Don’t let them define you.”
Vhalla shifted her clean palm to his forehead as Baldair’s eyes fluttered closed. Beads of sweat dotted his skin.
“He needs more fever reducer,” Vhalla observed aloud.
The cleric shook her head. “We can’t give him anymore.”
“Then cool him with water.” Her mind drifted back to the icy feeling Victor had put in her veins earlier. “Are any of you sorcerers? Waterrunners?” They all shook their heads. Aldrik was right, they were all incompetent. “Then get someone from the Tower!”
“Who are you to order our clerics?” The Empress’s voice was shrill and thin.
“I am the woman who is going to try anything I’ve ever seen or read to save your son’s life,” Vhalla proclaimed with ferocity. “Because clearly no one else will step up to the task and try whatever needs to be tried.”
“It is a method common folk use in situations without medicine.” Bushy eyebrows stroked his chin. “Go, tell the crown prince.” A cleric raced out of the room.
“Vhalla,” Baldair chuckled weakly. “You’re scary when you let your ferocity show—a little twister.”
“Don’t talk too much,” she whispered softly and ran her hand through his hair. “Save your strength. Elecia is coming, did you know that? She’s so strong, Baldair. She will fix you, I know it.”
Coughing was his only response, and Vhalla clutched his hand all the tighter.
Vhalla shouldn’t have been surprised when Victor was the one to appear not long after. A mask around his mouth and nose, he walked into the room with purpose. A short briefing from the clerics, a once-over of Baldair, and he set to work. For an hour, the minister lightly cooled the prince’s skin, each time colder than the last to not send his body into shock all at once. Vhalla retracted all negative thoughts she had on Victor, mentally sending a sincere apology—if he could save Baldair. She’d do whatever the man wanted if he healed Baldair. Eventually, nothing more could be done, and the sorcerer departed.
Baldair shivered. “It’s too cold.”
“You need it to be,” Vhalla soothed gently. “It won’t work if it’s not.”
“Vhalla, let me rest?” he asked.
“No, not now . . .” It was the third time he’d asked. “Stay awake, stay with us.”
His fever was down, thanks to her idea, and it had allowed enough time to lapse that the clerics could give him another round of potions. Baldair struggled to swallow. The first batch he coughed up, and Vhalla was the one to clean up the mix of blood and potion off his chest. She was going to fight. She was going to lead him by her example.
“Do you remember when I got in trouble on the march?” Vhalla said softly as she cleaned his collarbone and neck. “Grun, he really hated me, didn’t he? I guess a lot of them did. They were afraid.”
“They didn’t know you yet.” Baldair looked at her from under drooping eyelids.
“I suppose not,” she agreed.
“They didn’t know how . . . strong . . . the little girl from the library was.” Baldair struggled to keep in a cough.
“No, let the blood come up,” she insisted. “Or you’ll choke.”
He obliged her, and Vhalla set to cleaning again, covered in his blood.