Chapter 3 #2
Vaasa sealed her lips in an attempt to fight off the bile rising in her throat.
She worried her legs might give out beneath her.
In silence, they passed in front of the city, no doubt gathering the attention of anyone at the port, especially as their boat sailed into one of the largest public docks.
Ozik stood from the table with grace, his white cloak falling over his shoulders. “The archbishop is waiting.”
Vaasa tightened her jaw. “What do you mean?”
Ozik crossed the cabin to stand in front of her.
“With your marriage to Reid and the subsequent trade of salt, the floodgate between nations was opened. Along that trade route, the secrets of western Icruria spread through both nations. You did far too good of a job convincing the Icrurians of your power, Vaasalisa. Now, everyone in this city believes you’re a witch.
It is your job to convince them you aren’t.
To convince them it was Reid who cursed you. ”
Vaasa gaped at him. “I won’t—”
Wretched pain tore through her abdomen, and Vaasa gasped.
Through the blur of her vision and the tearing deep in her body, she stumbled forward, but Ozik used his free hand to hold her steady.
That singular, tangled cord in her body pulled her up as if she were a puppet on strings. Vaasa choked down a sob of pain.
“With our bargain, I do not need any other access point to magic. I own your power. With you as a source, my abilities can be called upon whenever I want.”
Vaasa grit her teeth until hurt threaded her jaw. That meant escape was impossible—she couldn’t outfight a witch who wielded her own power.
“Fuck. You.”
The burning ceased. Disdain coiled across his mouth. “If we’re to have a chance, you must be willing to work with me. In time, you will understand that everything I am doing has a purpose.”
Vaasa took a breath. Ozik needed more than just her magic. He wanted to rule Asterya without the title, and she had to admit there was a layer of brilliance to his strategy. He would make all the decisions, take little accountability, and become as rich as an emperor, possibly more so.
Now that he stood so near to her, she studied his middle-aged features. He still looked youthful and alive, thanks to her powers. His skin held far more color than it had that day in Icruria, as if he had been healed from something wicked.
She rolled her shoulders back, tilted her chin up, and met his eyes, narrowing her gaze.
Ozik didn’t seem intimidated. “It’s good to know your spirit wasn’t dimmed by a prison cell. Now, come.” He turned and walked toward the cabin’s exit, taking each step with grace, his white cloak billowing out behind him as he gestured to the doors.
Vaasa stared at him for a moment, the thread of magic between them still running strong.
She followed, cloak wrapped tightly around her, thankful for the winter sun poking through the clouds.
A sentinel took her hand and guided her off the ship, a look of awe on his features that Vaasa didn’t understand.
“Heiress.” He tipped his head in reverence. When the panels of her cloak parted and he saw the tattered clothes beneath, he sucked in a breath.
Vaasa covered herself again, though from the corner of her eye, Ozik smirked.
The dock led them right into one of the city squares, which sat upon the edge of the water.
The winter sun beat down on the open area, the granite of the surrounding buildings shimmering in the rays of light.
The Sanctum spanned one side, a large structure that held the chancery and treasury, along with other offices for influential members of the Asteryan court.
The entire back half was under construction, iron scaffolding along the outer walls.
On the opposite side of the square stood the cathedral, with a single spire so tall it seemed to tear right through the sky, coupled with a slightly smaller one that held a behemoth clock.
The granite exterior of the cathedral was studded with statues of disciples—fishermen who acted as prophets for their Asteryan god, each one maintaining their own portion of the building.
In between those two grand structures, the ocean churning as a backdrop, was a stark iron pole.
Beneath it, a drain.
It was here, witnessed by the church and the state, that criminals were tied to a post and slaughtered.
Some were kept there for days or weeks, freezing to death.
The energy of the place hummed around them, the feeling of death palpable in the air.
Vaasa had never considered herself superstitious, but it was as if she could feel them: each and every life that had been taken in this spot.
She’d felt it since she was a little girl.
As if the plaza itself held memory in the divots between its cobblestones where blood had run.
“Keep your eyes down,” Ozik instructed as they walked her into the crowded city square.
The city guard surrounded her, lines on both sides fending off the hordes of people who yelled and tried to push past them.
Their screams and accusations poured over her.
The words settled on her skin but never sank their teeth in: whore, wasted, impure, cursed.
It was only the last one that gave her pause.
To all of them, she was inhuman. A public being, open entirely to their criticism. They didn’t care how loudly they spoke or whether they conversed about her and her family like she wasn’t there.
Vaasa stumbled with Ozik as guards pushed through the swarms of people to create a path. The bellowing screams died down as word of her gaunt appearance spread through the crowd. The insults transitioned to new words: dirty, injured, hurt.
These people had no idea she had been kept in their own prison.
Ozik wanted them to think the Icrurians had done this to her. That Reid had done this to her.
Her eyes caught on the iron pole again—and the members of the clergy who stood beside it.
Vaasa stumbled backward in an attempt to break from Ozik, but the guards flanking them crowded in closer, containing her.
Standing among the clergy was the archbishop, who watched with his beady eyes as Ozik led Vaasa up onto the platform with the pole.
He looked over her in assessment with cloudy gray eyes.
A man in his early seventh decade, he had a wise air about him, further solidified by his silver hair and long, brushed beard.
He stepped forward, black robes flowing around him, a jewel-encrusted blade held in his right hand.
Before she could scurry back, two other members of the clergy stepped into Vaasa’s space.
They tore the cloak from her shoulders, revealing her tattered clothing and dirt-caked skin.
Vaasa shivered immediately, her body no longer listening to her mind.
The crowd began to roar, and the archbishop placed a hand over his mouth.
Ozik gripped her wrist and yanked her arm forward. “Prove to this city that she is no witch,” Ozik said. “Her curse has been cleansed.”
Vaasa fought the urge to bare her clattering teeth. This was a useless test, entirely misguided. Her eyes landed upon the clergyman who had scribbled notes at Lord Vlacik’s behest just the day prior. He knew this would prove nothing. Witches bled the same color as anyone.
But the archbishop dug the knife into her palm and slashed.
Vaasa grit her teeth to contain a pained cry. Red blood ran over her palm and through her fingers, dripping to the stone platform below. A cut that deep would take weeks to heal.
“There is no curse here!” the archbishop bellowed into the crowd. “After what she has endured, we should welcome our heiress home with open arms. It takes great strength to look the devil in the eyes and refuse him.”
Home?
This was not home.
Roaring applause and screams filled the square, but Vaasa didn’t hear them at all.
Bells rang out from the cathedral, the sound echoing in her weary mind.
In the haze of the onlookers and the flurry of the guard around her, Vaasa’s gaze wandered across the square until it reached the Sanctum, her eye catching the topmost room, which belonged to the emperor and his family.
She remembered being nineteen and watching from that room as they executed a notorious pirate.
As the executioner sharpened his blade, every pair of eyes clung to the promise of carnage.
That evening, when the nobles and her father celebrated their retribution, Vaasa had slipped into one of the servant’s halls with Roman Katayev, the sentinel she had loved for perhaps her entire youth.
I wonder if justice is ever that simple, Roman had whispered in Vaasa’s ear.
She’d wrung her hands, trying to forget the taste of her father’s violence and disappointment.
It wasn’t reserved for only criminals; she had been no stranger to his cruel discipline, nor to Dominik’s, but Roman’s question had fueled the part of her that had been exposed to enough stories and learned to begin questioning the cruelty of the men around her.
Now, as she stared upon that building, shivering in the cold, she retreated to that tiny sliver of light and warmth, escaped into the teenage memory of Roman out of habit.
After all, taking refuge in that boy had once been an unbreakable pattern.
She’d tried so many times to quit, but every time he had pulled her back in, until her father’s simple justice had ended in Roman’s death.
“Walk,” Ozik hissed in Vaasa’s ear, pulling her back into the present.
She stumbled down the platform, the city guard forming a wall around her as the crowd pushed and trampled to get closer.
Ozik’s narrative was an easy one to believe, and Vaasa heard it whispered in the crowd: He had rescued her from Icruria, from the man who had murdered Dominik Kozár.
What a brutal, terrible marriage he had saved her from.
Now she was nothing but a damaged, broken victim, harmless in their eyes. Not a witch. Ozik knew something profound about human nature—in order to be considered a threat, power was a prerequisite. To convince these people she wasn’t a danger, he had to strip her of it.
So here she was, their poor, beloved heiress, bruised and bleeding in the snow.
Her clothing torn, dirt smeared across every visible inch of her.
Never mind that the freshness of her bruises didn’t line up with the time it would take to journey from Icruria to Mekes.
That he could have bathed her at any point along such a journey, could have let her keep her cloak to cover it all up. No, these people didn’t care.
They wanted to be fed fiction.
Behind her, the archbishop and his clergy were led into an open-top carriage pulled by two chestnut horses.
Ozik remained at her side. He paraded her through the streets, forced her to walk from the public port all the way to the looming Iron Fortress.
Every painful step she took, the crowd screamed in performative sympathy.
Their voices closed in on her. Instead of listening to them, she went somewhere else in her mind: a new refuge, an escape from this city.
The witches’ tower in the Sodality of Setar, vines hanging from swaying pots and the smell of parchment permeating every inch of the room.
In her mind’s eye, she gazed at each shining face of her coven.
Suma’s salt-and-pepper hair, her graceful smile.
Romana and Mariana, the twins that never were, mischievous glances shared between them.
Amalie, alive and well, her softness a strength.
Melisina, her amber eyes and deep carved wisdom. The calmness of her voice as she guided Vaasa toward healing.
And then it was a white willow tree, the Icrurian breeze passing over the veranda outside Reid’s villa.
Her villa. The home her own great-grandmother, Freya, the very founder of the Veragi coven, had once lived in.
Vaasa sank into that vision, pretended she could feel the wind on her skin.
The rancid smell of ocean salt turned Icrurian sweet.
It threaded with amber.
In her mind, she wasn’t alone. Arms wrapped around her waist from behind and pressed her into the low stone wall that lined the veranda, surface warm from the sun. Her midriff was bare, loose breeches tied at her belly button. Her inky hair lifted in the breeze.
Reid placed his chin on her shoulder.
As they neared the fortress, she was still there in another time, another place, another world.
And in that vision, she turned her head and laid her cheek against Reid’s, neither of them having anything pressing to do but stay right where they were.