Chapter 2 #2
Using the last reserves of her strength, Vaasa wrapped her fingers around a knife at Ozik’s belt and pulled.
She slashed it across his cheek. He loosed a pained hiss and stumbled away from her.
Before she could turn and strike again, the sentinels were on her, and she hit the dock with a guttural grunt.
She screamed in fury as they wrenched her arms behind her and pried her fingers from the knife.
A curse ripped through the air as Ozik’s boot landed just next to her face.
She struggled against the hold the sentinels had on her, but they held firm.
“Up,” he told them, and suddenly she was hauled to her feet once more.
She panted, her ribs screaming with each breath she took, yet she curled her lip back in a defiant snarl.
Ozik dipped to bring them eye to eye, anger rippling across his normally calm features.
Gone was the gentleness she was certain had only been an illusion for the sentinels who did not know the truth of Vaasa’s confinement.
Blood trickled down the deep scratch in his cheek.
“You’re going to cooperate,” he said, his face within inches of hers and his voice quietly menacing. “Do you want to know why?”
Vaasa only stared as her exhales came out as steam, refusing to answer him.
“Because I have someone you’d rather see unharmed,” he whispered.
Her vision faltered as his words sank in. Who could he possibly mean? But Vaasa knew better than to give herself away. Even a single word, a single expression, he could use against her.
He tsked in disappointment at her lack of emotion.
His hand whipped out, fingers grasping her chin, and yanked her head to the side.
Her eyes settled on the pathway that led to the prison, on a figure being hauled down it to meet them.
There were at least ten sentinels surrounding the prisoner.
Iron chains clanged together as they grew closer and closer.
Vaasa tried to suppress her adrenaline. Her fingers twitched at her side as if yearning to use magic she didn’t have.
She started to shake—with the cold, with the fear.
The sentinels emptied out onto the flat stone walkway and revealed Ozik’s second hostage, shackled more tightly than Vaasa had ever been.
“Amalie,” Vaasa breathed.
Every ounce of hope drained from Vaasa as she watched a sentinel kick at the back of Amalie’s knees, sending her careening forward onto the ground.
Vaasa instinctively tugged at the hands that held her. She broke away and threw herself off the dock onto the stone pathway, tripping and falling to her knees before her friend. The sharp stone of the walkway stung even through the fabric she wore.
Amalie looked up. “Vaasa,” she whispered. Her face was gaunt, shadowed. Her eye was bruised. Icrurian fell from her lips: “Don’t give them anything they want. Let me die, let me—”
Someone grabbed ahold of Vaasa’s waist and dragged her backward. She screamed and thrashed, causing the sentinel to stumble, but not enough to be set free.
The sentinel behind Amalie placed a knife at the witch’s throat, one of the very men who had tortured Vaasa, his striking green eyes alight with violence.
“Stop!” Vaasa screamed.
Amalie, her closest friend, was supposed to be safe. Vaasa had killed for it. Had slaughtered her own brother to ensure it. How were they right back in this place?
“Ozik, let her go! Please,” Vaasa begged, throwing all her weight against the sentinel to turn and face Ozik. The man’s grip was so tight, but he faltered just a step, and it was enough.
Ozik must have known everything Dominik had done in Icruria, right down to whom he had used for leverage against Vaasa.
Of course Ozik knew. Vengeance, thick and angry, flowed onto her tongue.
Her words came sharp, the Asteryan consonants catching on the roof of her mouth as she pierced him with her indigo gaze.
“You have just signed your death warrant, as Dominik did.”
Ozik looked down at her, a small smile at watching her struggle against a second sentinel who’d started to dig his toe into Vaasa’s calf.
“Behave, and in time, you will see her freed,” Ozik said.
Vaasa stopped struggling as the sentinels pulled her away. Her limbs went slack. She only stared at her closest friend—her first true friend—who was barely still within sight. Dirt was smeared over Amalie’s face, and her expression seemed lost. Broken.
Then it shifted.
All the warmth Vaasa knew disappeared.
Amalie raised her chin, locked eyes with Vaasa, and smiled.
Through her tears, Vaasa saw something that made her tremble.
Her friend wore a wicked, vengeful expression, completely unlike the woman Vaasa knew, and for a moment, Vaasa swore Amalie’s eyes flashed moonlight-white.
Just like the snake, just like the wolf that Vaasa had summoned to kill her own brother.
She recalled a faint memory of the moments just before Reid’s mother Melisina had found them both beneath that colosseum, before Vaasa had murdered her brother to save all their lives.
Hadn’t Amalie’s eyes flashed white then, too?
Ozik grabbed Vaasa’s face, fingers tight on her jaw, and forced her to turn and look at him again. His other hand wrapped sternly around her throat. Vaasa bucked like a wild animal, but Ozik remained unmoved. He tightened his grip until her air almost ceased.
Desperation struck Vaasa like lightning, but she did not move. She forced herself to calm, to not utter a word or strike Ozik again. She needed to survive this moment first.
“And now you know,” he warned in Icrurian, low and deadly, “that if you make one wrong move, Vaasalisa, I will forfeit that girl’s life quicker than I took your father’s. I will slaughter her the way you did your brother—without mercy. So you will cooperate. Have I made myself clear?”
He didn’t want anyone else to hear those words. The truth of who—and what—Ozik was would be his unraveling. Vaasa would kill him. And afterward, she would bury his body so deep in the ground that not even the dogs would find him.
She nodded.
“Good,” he said, releasing her throat as she fell to her knees, gasping for air. As he stood there like a malevolent god looking down on her, Vaasa’s rage melded with powerlessness. She might as well have been bowing to him. A simple grin played upon his lips.
Hands grabbed her arms again, dragging her away from Amalie, and though she fought hard, it was no use.
Cold, salt-ridden air filled her nostrils as Vaasa was hauled onto the waiting ship.