Come to me.
I have use of you. I had to kill you before—but now, now you are more. I can use you.
Each time she tried to fight against him, it only resulted in another mental assault. So Vhalla learned to keep quiet. She only had to endure a few days more. A few days that would feel like years.
Deep Sleep was a finite resource, and they finally ran out. Elecia didn’t have the means to make more, and they were so close to the capital that it seemed unnecessary to spend precious time trying scrape together the ingredients. Without it, Vhalla was terrified to close her eyes. So she lay awake, fighting sleep, fighting thoughts of anything.
Vhalla, Victor whispered across her mind. Aldrik had long since fallen asleep, his back to her. Do you want it to end?
“It will end,” she breathed. “With your death.”
Still so confident? Victor’s amusement reverberated across the edge of her mind. Fine, then come to me.
“I cannot kill you.”
I lied.
“You did not; I know how Bonds work.” Vhalla was not playing his game.
I will destroy the Bond.
Vhalla brought her hand to her mouth to clamp with a sob. Those words were sweeter than any she’d ever heard. It was a lie; she knew it was. But she wanted so desperately for it to be true.
“Why?” Her voice was barely audible to her own ears.
So I can kill you, he snarled.
That much she did believe.
Come to me, Vhalla. Set aside your army, and I will set aside mine.
She sat up, looking at Aldrik. His brow was furrowed, and his sleep did not look particularly restful. They had been married for little more than two months, and only one day of it had been happy. She wondered if he regretted taking her hand.
Come to me, Vhalla, the voice called.
“Just you and me?” She began to clip on her armor, painfully slow as to not wake her sleeping husband and Emperor.
Just us. Let us finish what was interrupted in the caves. Victor’s voice held a promising tone.
Vhalla looked back to Aldrik. She ached in the spot where her heart used to be. But that woman was gone. She had been worn down and drugged away.
“One thing,” Vhalla breathed. “If I come to you, you will kill me.” She was hopeless before the monster she saw sitting on the throne in his memories. Vhalla knew it to be true.
That has been my plan from the beginning, Victor said simply, his words twisting a number of ways.
“If I come to you now, like this, spare Aldrik,” Vhalla pleaded weakly.
Why would I spare the man who threatens my throne? Victor sounded amused.
“Because he will be of no threat once you break him with the horrible way in which you will kill me.” Vhalla thought back to the Commons’ screams. She would just be another voice pleading for an end.
Fine. Once his army is dead, his friends and family tortured before his eyes, and his home taken, I will put him on a little boat and let him row to the Crescent Continent and live there, Victor offered.
“So long as he lives.” Vhalla reached out a hand, her fingertips hovering just over Aldrik’s cheek. She didn’t dare touch him.
Vhalla crawled out of the tent and started alone down the Great Southern Road. She took nothing but herself, Lightning, and her armor. All she had left behind was a few wet spots on the Emperor’s pillow where the last of the woman he married had broken at the hands of a psychopath.
RAIN. OF COURSE it would rain—it was the mountains in the summer. The fine mist that coated her cheeks stuck her hair to her forehead barely thirty minutes into her ride. Vhalla shivered in the saddle, gripping the wet leather of the horse’s reins.
