Chapter 8
CHAPTER
When the lords arrived, Vaasa did not curtsy or shake hands like the men; she lifted her chin and waited for them to bend at the waist.
Only one did not: Lord Vlacik. He reigned over Pryviske, a region not far from Mekes that wore its arrogance like a badge of honor.
His family maintained access to the mines along the coastline that delivered much of Asterya’s construction resources, and they were gifted Barken Palace, the old capital of Asterya before her grandfather had built this fortress on the Iron Bay.
They’d held favor with the Kozár family for generations.
There had been a time she was worried about being married off to the Pryviske estate, but Ozik had assured her of the impossibility.
We do not want them to grow any bolder, he’d told her years prior.
Now, as she gazed upon Lord Vlacik, she fought a shiver.
His father was dead, and his younger sister had already borne an heir, making her and her husband a threat to Vlacik.
He needed to marry, and quickly. Given what Vaasa had learned from Dominik’s notes—that Vlacik’s late father had been studying magic with her own father, that Vlacik and Dominik had carried on the tradition—he was a prime candidate.
Of all outcomes, a marriage to him was possibly the worst.
He stepped away from the dais, chin raised, and took his familial seat.
It was one of the closest to the throne.
They were surrounded by the other families just like them.
Old Asteryans, they called themselves, a designation those families swung like hammers in a war room.
They were one of two major political factions, always opposite the New Asteryans—the younger families who governed the northern territories her father had conquered.
The New Asteryan families had been powerful merchants and sentinels, people who had not inherited their land, but instead had been given it in exchange for their assistance in her father’s endeavors.
The Asteryan throne felt as sturdy as sand beneath her.
Vaasa ran her hands over the wooden armrests, the tips of which were dipped in iron.
Now cold. Sharp. This had been what everything revolved around.
This seat had been the catalyst to the learning of six languages.
The purpose of her schemes and the tarnishing of her soul.
The very reason her brother set out to kill her.
The reason she had been sent into an enemy country and left there for dead.
It was only a chair.
She pictured her magic curling over the edges in tendrils of smoke, yet the power wouldn’t stir within her.
One after the other, local nobles and wealthier members of the middle class filed into the Sanctum while Vaasa sat and listened to them complain.
Once upon a time, she’d had a taste for this sort of afternoon: one where the wine flowed and she sat near her father, taking diligent mental notes to better understand every predicament.
Be useful, she would tell herself. You must always be useful.
She would review it all with her father afterward, some twisted consolation prize where he turned her into both the son of his dreams and the daughter of his nightmares.
What a waste that you are a woman. What a tragedy that you will never rule.
For a moment, she felt horribly stupid for ever believing she could change his mind.
Ozik stood just one step down from her, dressed in his royal blue coat and black breeches.
He analyzed the room just as closely as she did, weighing the tension between families that seemed to fill the room to bursting.
Vaasa looked to the rings upon his fingers, catching upon the black stone that seemed to beckon her gaze.
The similarity to her mother’s necklace was uncanny.
Filing that detail away in her mind, she plastered a smile on her face to greet the next family.
They approached, and the next, and the next.
It was a parade of young sons, one after the other, cattle brought to slaughter, none of them any wiser.
While they all maintained the same title, some lords had more land, more people and merchants and armies, than others.
Those lords sat closest to the throne and seemed to draw the attention of the entire room.
Old Asteryans and New Asteryans split the gallery like borders on a map.
But as one lord entered, the entire room leaned forward—Lord Karev, whose footsteps echoed all the way to the throne as he approached the dais.
Thick black hair curled around his ears and fell just to the base of his neck, an equally plentiful beard framing his jawline.
He was midway through his thirties but looked more like a man in his twenties, six years older than Vaasa.
There was no denying that Lord Karev was handsome.
His thunderstorm eyes coolly assessed everyone in the room with no particular care for their approval or thoughts, a sort of confidence that Vaasa believed was genetic: Some people were born with it, and others simply weren’t.
While the room watched his smooth gait and broad, drawn-back shoulders, Vaasa couldn’t help but think to herself, I’ve seen broader.
Felt broader. Dug my nails into broader.
His gray gaze locked onto her, then raked up and down the throne with approval. He dipped deeply at the waist. “Heiress,” he said by way of greeting, her title rolling off his tongue with such ease.
She wondered if he’d practiced this in the mirror.
“Lord Karev,” she responded, keeping her tone as demure as she could manage. It was precisely what these men expected.
He looked up through his eyelashes, still bent at the waist, and gave a knowing, haughty smile.
Vaasa held her weight comfortably in the chair.
Stepping forward, Ozik extended a hand to Lord Karev, who readily took it.
All feigned signs of respect as the gaggle of Old Asteryans looked on like vultures.
Yet behind them, the New Asteryans thrummed with approval.
It was then Vaasa realized that what this entire choice boiled down to was a battle between the old kingdom of Asterya and the more modern lifestyle of a young empire.
And that was something Vaasa could play off of.
“If I may be so bold,” Lord Karev said, “it is a gift to have you back in this city where you belong.”
Vaasa tilted her head. He’d come with intention, that much was clear in the strategic lift of his lips, but bold wasn’t quite enough of a word to categorize him. It was outright brazen to make his perspective so obvious on a dais in front of every single one of his enemies.
If Lord Karev kept this up, she wouldn’t have to sow discord herself. He would do it for her. Her eyes flicked to Lord Vlacik, who watched the interaction with a deep scowl.
“How charming,” Vaasa said, talking like the chameleon she’d been raised to be. Her eyes trailed back to Lord Karev. She gave a graceful lift of her lips that didn’t leave the impression she was thinking much at all.
He bowed deeply once again and sauntered off to his family’s seats. Peculiarly, she noticed, he sat alone. No wife, no heirs, no cousins. She knew he had extended family, but why hadn’t they come with him?
He struck her as capricious, which was perhaps more dangerous than his competition. At least Vlacik’s violence was predictable.
The formal welcome took all the patience she had, and by the time dinner arrived, Vaasa had little interest in conversation.
Still, she let her smoothest Asteryan out to play.
These lords only spoke her native language; the languages of the areas her father had conquered had since become a rarity.
With each smile and bat of her lashes, she felt the slick of her skin as if she had shed it; this grimy pandering made her feel exactly like her father.
She cared for half of what she said and meant none of it.
Her responses were shallow and predictable, just as these men expected her to be.
She couldn’t present herself as a threat; she needed to win some allies before she became an enemy.
A violin wept notes from the corner, music filling the room as the master of strings plucked and pulled.
Wives and daughters of wealthy merchants cascaded about, their hungry eyes taking in the possibilities.
Vaasa thought that maybe, for some of them, this was the opportunity they’d waited their entire lives for.
It wasn’t just her hand in marriage that would be dangled like a carrot.
Any of these women held the potential to find themselves a match—particularly from the crop of men who did not leave this city with a throne.
Vaasa waited in her seat for a few minutes past appropriate. She itched to be anywhere else. It felt a betrayal to sit here and drink and dance while Amalie was trapped in the prison, while a war waged just past the snowcapped mountains.
When she had no idea where Reid was.
Vaasa’s heart beat loudly in her chest. She swallowed another mouthful of water from the silver goblet in her hands.
No one knew it wasn’t wine—another small detail that would work to her advantage.
Sobriety was the only option in the center of a lion’s den.
She stood and stepped down from the raised platform, pausing at the front of the room while everyone seemed to watch the dancing couples in the center.