“Oh, brother, I think the lady promised me a game of carcivi.” Baldair glanced at Aldrik, a slightly odd inflection padding his words. “Will you go get the nice marble one you use?”
“You have plenty of boards here.” Aldrik pushed off Vhalla’s shoulders lightly, starting for the door.
“But I like yours.” Baldair called between coughs as Aldrik shook his head, closing the door behind him.
Vhalla smiled faintly at the prince’s departure, turning back to Baldair. “How do you feel?”
“Oh, I’m managing.” Baldair gave her a weak smile. “It’s nice to have visitors other than Aldrik. Not that his company isn’t a bundle of sunshine.”
“He’s not so bad, and you know it.”
“Small doses,” Baldair wheezed.
“He said you had Erion and Jax here today?”
“I did. Seems as though they are doing a good job of managing the guard.” Baldair settled into his pillows. “They said you were joining them as well.”
“I’ve tried to lend a hand,” Vhalla affirmed.
“I appreciate it, really I do.” The prince paused for a long moment. “Do you want to join the guard, Vhalla?”
She considered it. “I don’t think I’d say no. Erion, Jax, Daniel, Craig, even Raylynn, they all feel like family already.”
“But?” He picked up on her pause.
“But . . .” Vhalla didn’t know where her hesitation stemmed from. A sense of direction was pulling at her, telling her that the Golden Guard was not what she was meant to be.
“What do you want, Vhalla?”
“Freedom, peace,” she breathed longingly. Her mind drifted over the Knights of Jadar, the Emperor, the War in the North. War, bloodshed, turmoil—it seemed her world had been punctuated by them since she was a girl. Before she really saw it all for what it was. “I think real peace begets freedom. So, more than anything, I want peace.”
“What doyouwant,” Baldair emphasized. “Not for the Empire, for you.”
Vhalla thought about it a long moment. “Peace, still?”
“Will you ever find it when my brother marries his Northern bride?” She stiffened instantly at the younger prince’s soft words. “What will you do then? Will you always wonder what could have been?”
“Why are you asking this?” Vhalla looked to the door, praying Aldrik would walk in and save her.
“I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you something in that very room,” Baldair replied with a nod at the door with a tired smile, evoking memories of the day he taught her to dance. “I told you that you deserved some sort of real thanks for your service to the Empire, and it fell to me to give it to you. If anyone deserves peace, Vhalla, it’s you.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She grabbed the watch around her neck tightly, her heart aching.
Baldair’s eyes focused on the token she held, but his inquiry remained. “Indulge me one question, and I’ll ask nothing more. Would you be with him still, after everything? Does love spring eternal between you both?”
“I—” She relented and didn’t push the ailing prince further. “It does. I would stand at his side until my dying day.” Vhalla shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not, we can’t be anything because my peace, as you call it, isn’t worth the Empire’s.”
“They don’t have to be exclusive.” Baldair leaned forward, squeezing her hand. He opened his mouth to speak again but devolved into an aggressive coughing fit. Vhalla was up, rubbing the back of the younger prince when Aldrik returned almost immediately after.
Aldrik placed the carcivi board on the table. Vhalla assumed her previous seat, beginning to pull out alabaster tokens from a garnet colored bag. Unlike the carcivi boards she’d used before, these had small sculptures of the warriors, archers, and sorcerers on them.
“It’s weird.” Vhalla paused, staring at two sorcerer tokens. “I never thought about it before; all sorcerers have the same range. . . . But a Groundbreaker would need to attack much closer than a Firebearer.”
Baldair burst out with laughter that dissolved once more into coughing.It sounded wetter. “Brother, didn’t you have the same argument with me once?”
