Chapter 5 #2
Vaasa picked up the fork. She speared a potato and brought it to her mouth, fighting against the urge to gag, but the taste of food made her want to vomit on the pretty plates and streaks of gold woven into the tablecloth. She did not deserve to eat so richly while her friend rotted in a dungeon.
“Have you reviewed the correspondence your brother left?” Ozik asked.
Vaasa kept her eyes on her food. She hadn’t set foot in her father’s office, and she wasn’t sure she intended to.
She had no interest in this nation, no care for what became of it.
Her only hope was that Reid would manage to get an army through the Loursevain Gap and obliterate any chance Asterya had of holding its territories.
And that she and Amalie would still be alive when he did.
A disbelieving tsk rolled off Ozik’s tongue. “If you aren’t going to cooperate, perhaps I should give Lord Vlacik what he wants and marry you to him now.”
She narrowed her eyes, lifting her goblet to her mouth and taking a long drink as she considered her options.
The simple truth was that she would slaughter Lord Vlacik and mark herself a traitor before she spent a single moment in his wedding bed.
The act might condemn both Amalie and herself to death, but if their roles were reversed, Vaasa would willingly go to a burning stake before Amalie spent one night beholden to the lust of a man like that.
“If the lord is your choice, then so be it,” she muttered obstinately, standing from the table.
Without warning, her abdomen lit on fire, and magic was wrenched from wherever it hid within her.
She choked on her wine and tried to move her hands, but they were caught, weighed down on the table by some invisible force.
Slickness ran over her skin, the feel of Ozik’s raw magic slippery and wet.
Breath pushed from her lips in harsh bursts, memories of her time in the prison sliding back into place and stealing her calm.
Her hands began to shake, and the absence of her power hit her like losing air.
Something in her body clawed for it, nails sinking into the sides of her stomach and digging deeper and deeper to find that magic.
But as she delved into herself, what she found wasn’t the hissing of a snake or the waves of the Settara or the wolf with bright white eyes.
It was just that single, shimmering cord that tied her to Ozik.
Everywhere she searched in her own body, she found the remnant of him there—attached to her, woven into the threads of her muscles and wrapped around her bones.
One long string, tangled in so many places it had become a spiderweb.
The deeper she pushed, the more of them there were.
He had taken over the spaces where her magic used to reside and had replaced them with these…
things. She found that she could run her own fingers upon them, pluck the threads like an instrument and create the wails of high and low notes, music in her mind and body.
And as she did, she felt the ties between them tighten.
There was something there on the other side.
She reached for it. Something glowed crimson behind her eyes.
And then pain splintered down her spine. She was being ripped in two.
Vaasa choked, and her hands slammed against the table.
“Enough!” Ozik yelled.
Vaasa’s eyes flew open as she gasped in a breath. “What was that?” she demanded through the haze of her pain.
Ozik’s anger crawled across their connection, his emotions so clear to her, so easily perceptible. A large three-pronged serving fork that rested against the platter of meat in front of her slid off the plate. Horror sliced into her. The fork turned itself over in midair, prongs pointing downward.
And then it dropped with terrifying speed and stabbed straight through Vaasa’s hand, exiting through her palm as muscles severed and bones cracked.
Vaasa screamed, and Ozik’s chair hissed against the ground as he stood.
Vaasa breathed heavily through her nose, trying to will the pain away without moving further.
“I raised you to be an active participant in the schemes around you,” Ozik said.
“I know you are capable.” His measured footsteps echoed on the rug-covered floor until he was just in front of her.
Hands landing on the table, he leaned into her space.
His eyes inspected the stream of blood pouring down Vaasa’s fingers, catching his gaze upon the place where the utensil stuck out of her mangled hand.
Tears welled in Vaasa’s eyes, and one escaped in a droplet that ran down her cheek.
A carnal smile crossed Ozik’s lips. “You are not strong enough to burrow that deep into our connection. Remember the consequence of breaking a bargain with a Zetyr witch.”
Death.
Vaasa winced, looking down at the table again, eyes focusing on the rings upon Ozik’s fingers.
The jewels glared back brightly at her, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes open.
In her mind, she began to count the gems on each one.
Every number was a piece of her sanity, every breath a reminder she was alive.
Ozik’s fingers flexed. Her eyes caught upon one ring in particular: a black stone ring with raw edges that made the stone look like it had been broken off a larger piece.
There was a subtle churning in the vast darkness of it, and despite herself, Vaasa committed it to memory.
Ozik tsked again, and the fork slid further into her hand, causing Vaasa to cry out in pain as the metal prongs dug deeper into the table beneath her palm.
Her breath came out as a hiss between her teeth.
She didn’t say anything. She focused on her breathing instead, her eyes watering from the sharp tremors shooting up her hand.
She swallowed back more tears, but Lord Vlacik’s sharp blue eyes appeared in her mind.
The feel of iron scraping over her throat. Of blinding pain in her hands and feet.
“Brace yourself,” Ozik said.
He tore the fork from her hand, and Vaasa let out a strangled scream.
Magic reared up in her stomach, immediately responding to the pain, to the pounding of her heart. Vaasa gasped as power flooded her body—her stomach, her veins, her chest. It tingled on her hands. The spider’s web in her body turned to writhing serpents, hisses echoing in her ear and mind.
Black mist leaked from Vaasa’s fingers, coasting over the table around her dinner napkin. It morphed in front of her, soft sibilations growing louder with each second, until snakes slithered across the table.
Ozik had given her magic back.
She tried to hold it within her, to temper the rage of the power with the calmness she needed to master.
But she couldn’t. Her magic was a waterfall, returning angry and unstoppable.
The pain in her stomach almost matched the fork that had been in her hand.
Black snakes trailed along the table in scurrying waves. They rose and rose and rose—
“Strike me, and I will strike back,” Ozik warned.
Vaasa snapped her eyes to meet his. Her hands squeezed shut, blood running through her fingers.
The serpents on the table halted. They moved their heads back and forth in agitated esses, waiting, craving the violence brewing within Vaasa.
Ozik straightened. He reached for her hand, eyes catching on the blood that stained the white tablecloth. Vaasa recoiled.
“Sit still,” Ozik commanded. His fingers snapped around her hand. Power pulsed forth from him, and the cords between them pulled taught.
You are in control, she whispered in her own mind.
Her fingers dug into the tablecloth, and she took note of the feel of the fabric against her skin.
It was a poor excuse for grounding, but it was the best she could do.
The feeling of his magic crawling through her body was almost too much to bear, but Vaasa forced herself to breathe through it.
To remember everything Melisina had taught her.
Like he was a Zuheia witch all on his own, the wound on her hand sewed itself back together.
Vaasa gasped, heart thudding against her chest. She stared at the result of his unrestrained magic—a smooth, scarless hand absent of even the remnant of the cut the archbishop had dealt. It all made a mess of her mind.
“How?” Vaasa managed through the burning in her gut.
He only lifted his golden eyes, though there was a tinge of something there, a redness creeping into his irises. An exhaustion overtaking his frown. “You have two days before the lords arrive. Read your brother’s correspondence, and perhaps I will show you.”
He pulled at her magic like it was a noose around her neck. The black mist within her rushed down whatever bound her to Ozik, entering those cords and draining away as if on a whim. She was empty.
Ozik stepped away from the table, sauntering wordlessly to the door. She almost got up to follow him. Almost gave in to her younger self, who reached for whatever information he could offer. Answers were a refuge Vaasa desperately wanted.
She stood from the table and began toward her family’s chambers, determination steeling her spine.