His hands were on her again. They ran down her cheeks onto her neck. They were over her shoulders, intertwining his fingers with hers and back again. As though he was assuring himself that she wasn’t some phantom, that it wasn’t one of his dreams.
“I saw you bleeding. You had a gash from your shoulder to your chest.” His forehead fell against hers. “I can’t lose you. I-I lost my brother, I won’t lose you. Baldair is gone, by the Mother, Baldair is gone. If I lost you, Vhalla, I would have no one, nothing.”
Aldrik pulled her back to him, and she realized how his grief was beginning to manifest. It fed off his paranoia, his mistrust of the world. If he wasn’t prepared to do anything to protect her before, he was now.
“You won’t lose me,” she assured him.
“I never thought I’d lose Baldair.” He was crying again, she realized. “Oh, Gods, Baldair. I am cursed: my mother could not escape, Baldair could not escape, and I will damn you, too.”
“Enough of that.” Vhalla struggled to pry herself far enough away from his chest to catch his eyes. “You didn’t damn anyone.”
“My mother did not die in childbirth.”
“What?” Every book she had ever read, everything she had ever heard, had said such to be true.
“She died shortly after. The explanation of death in the birthing bed was easier than the truth.” Aldrik rubbed his eyes tiredly, withdrawing physically. “Isn’t that how it always is, a beautiful simple lie over the ugly truth?”
“I’ve come to prefer the latter.” Vhalla rested a palm on his knee. “Tell me later; this is too much for one day.”
“No.” He was focused on the dancing flames. “I need to tell you. I did not tell Baldair, now I never will. I need to tell you, Vhalla. I need to do things right for once in my miserable life.”
“Aldrik, please,” she begged.
“Listen, Vhalla, let me tell you what I should’ve before you let the Empire’s accursed monster into your bed.”
“THE WEST FELL, and most did not want it to go down gracefully,” Aldrik began.
“The Knights of Jadar?” Vhalla asked tentatively, wondering if she’d finally fill in the curious blanks of the histories she’d been trying to sift through for months.
“Just so.” There was the ghost of appreciation for her haunting his eyes. “They loathed my mother’s family for kneeling before Solaris. Most of all, they loathed my mother for marrying my father.
“My uncle tells me that, in her way, she loved my father for his conquest. When he speaks of her, he tells me she was as beautiful as a rose with thorns twice as sharp. My mother had never been bested in combat before, which made my father enthralling, despite the unusual circumstances under which they met.” Aldrik shook his head. “It wasn’t until I was engaged to the Northern girl I thought about how impossible my parents’ love was.
“After the Knights disowned my family, they used their knowledge of the caverns to prepare a plot to drive out Solaris, to purge the Western court of all those who were no longer loyal to ‘King Jadar’s Ideals.’” Aldrik scowled. “They stole the Sword of Jadar. My mother’s father had told her where he had hidden it, and she discovered it missing within hours of my birth.”
Vhalla remembered her conversation with Ophain; the lord had mentioned the sword had gone missing, but he so carefully left out the truth of the matter.
Aldrik shifted uncomfortably and continued, “My mother left. She never even told my father where she was going. She disappeared into the night on the fastest War-strider and raced without rest to the caves, despite still recovering from the pains and blood loss of labor.”
Vhalla grimaced at the thought.
“She confronted the Knights before they could penetrate into the heart of the caverns.” Aldrik paused, blinking away shining tears. “She was alone, but she used the Knight’s knowledge against them. She was a Western princess and had access to Mhashan’s crimson history. She Bound her will with the crystals; she gave everything to block the Knights with a barrier of her magic. Even when they killed her, the barrier held.”
“How do you know all this?”
“She left a letter,” he answered. “When she went missing, my family went searching through the palace, keeping things hush before a search party was sent. I suppose there were places that she and her sisters would share, secrets with notes. My mother hid a letter in one such place. By the time they knew, it was too late.”
“Why didn’t she let someone else go?” Vhalla frowned. “Why did she run off?” Vhalla omitted what she really wanted to know. Why had Aldrik’s mother left her newborn son?