Chapter 9 #2
He didn’t dare come closer. Instead, he plucked a few candles off the wall, bringing them to the lantern and lighting them himself.
She watched each step he took. He lit the room until even the cobwebs in the corners glittered when the candlelight hit them just so.
All the while she breathed, grounding herself with the feeling of the wall against her palms. Practicing every subtle breathing technique Melisina had ever taught her.
“The hearth has been tended,” Roman said as he inspected the firebox. He gestured to the pile of fresh wood that had likely been replaced sometime within the week. “The attendants are keeping it usable.”
“Light it,” Vaasa said, gaining control of her voice again.
He pursed his lips. “Are you sure?”
“There’s a fire in every room.”
Roman bit his cheek, but then nodded. In minutes, warmth and light spilled through the space, coating it with more life than it had likely seen in years.
Vaasa stood up straight and squared her shoulders, careful of her composure. “How are you alive when the rest of your squadron is dead?” she asked him.
His hands rested on his knees as he knelt next to the hearth. “Still so direct,” he muttered. It held a tenor it hadn’t before, of either age or pain, even as he used a metal poker to shift the logs in the hearth. Fluidly, he pulled himself to standing and gestured for her to sit upon the couch.
Vaasa shook her head.
Roman sat upon the arm anyway, crossing one ankle over the other, but he accepted her refusal. His eyes met hers across the minimal space. “I never got along with my commander. He insisted we take one of the boats into the fighting, but I refused.”
“You abandoned post?”
“I was warned not to enter the rivers, so I didn’t. They were all killed, and I was assumed to be on the boat.”
Pride bloomed in Vaasa—of course the Icrurians bested them on the water. But it was also a testament to Roman’s cunning and perception. He had known better than to put himself at the disadvantage. “When did you resurface?” she asked, turning her body more to face him.
Roman waited to speak, perhaps gathering his thoughts, but when he did, his voice came shaky. “I was a prisoner. Rounded up like cattle and forced to work in the outskirts of Wrultho.”
Vaasa sucked in a breath and fisted her hands into her dress. Her heart ached for him, truly, as she thought about the life he must have faced. All because he had loved her.
It seemed to be a pattern.
She looked down at the floor, trying to come to terms with the renewed guilt of it all.
“The prison there is built under the ground. It’s within a set of twisting catacombs that spreads beneath the city like roots. Prisoners run into those catacombs, and no one stops them. If you escape, you live freely. Very few have ever escaped,” Roman continued.
Vaasa couldn’t quite breathe. “But you did?” She picked at a thread on her dress, desperately trying to focus on the little knot.
“Vaasa. Would you please look at me?”
Shit. Vaasa held her breath as she lifted her eyes. His gaze was tentative, searching, and if she wanted to, the look might have made her trust him.
She breathed out heavily.
Grief carved tightly into his jaw. “You’re looking at me like I’m a stranger.”
She contemplated the right words. “In many ways, you are.”
“And in many ways, I’m not.”
Biting her lower lip, Vaasa returned to the semblance of honesty they’d always shared before, thinking that in the ounce of familiarity, she might win his truth. “Who do you report to? Ozik or me?”
“You,” he clarified. “And then whoever is emperor next.”
Vaasa looked squarely at him, leveling her tone. “Lie to me some more, Roman.”
Lips pursed, his shoulders drooped. “All right. I escaped Wrultho a year ago and made my way down the Sanguine. News of your marriage spread, and I just… had to leave Icruria. I worked for a merchant who traveled all the way to Mekes. When I heard Dominik was dead, I returned, and Ozik showed me mercy. He’s asked that I make sure you’re safe and comfortable. That I keep you entertained.”
If she’d been in a mood for humor, Vaasa would have tilted her head back and laughed.
Ozik had sent Roman as a carrot to dangle in front of her?
Something to take a bite out of that might give her reason enough to cooperate?
“He’s going to force me into another marriage, so he’s given me a lover to soften the blow? ”
Roman rubbed the back of his neck, redness crawling up his skin. “I believe he’s given you an old friend. And a lead sentinel whom you can trust.”
Vaasa stepped away from the wall, slowly regaining her sense of self. Was he loyal to Ozik, or simply naive? “You believe I trust you?”
“No.” He watched as she walked closer and dropped his hand into his lap. “Not yet. I know it will take time. But I hope you come to realize that I did come here to keep you safe. That I serve at your word beyond all others’.”
Time was one of the many things she didn’t have.
If there was an opportunity to search the fortress and surrounding city for her mother’s necklace, it was here with Roman.
He was in control of everything. She walked past him and to the opposite side of the couch, sinking into the cushions.
“What do you make of this? The visiting lords and my impending marriage?”
Though Vaasa was careful with her body, he wasn’t careful with his.
He didn’t seem to mind the space he took up or the way it created a palpable proximity between them.
He leaned against the arm of the couch, lifting a leg until he was seated casually and could rest his elbow against his knee.
“I can’t seem to see another way forward.
If you don’t marry someone, the lords will plunge Asterya into a civil war as they fight for the throne. It’ll destabilize the entire empire.”
Precisely. But that was the first time the gravity of the situation plummeted down her spine.
There was only so much time before she ended up walking down another aisle, before she was back in the same position she’d been in after her mother’s death, except far worse.
Yet without a doubt, there was room to pit the Old Asteryans against the New.
The brimming tug-of-war between Vlacik and Karev was enough to do most of the work for her.
Could Vaasa survive a world in which she was forced to stand opposite Reid on a battlefield?
She had originally hoped she could free Amalie and somehow make it out of this city before Asterya could work through this transition of power.
But if she was strategic, she might be able to win this war from the inside.
She could say none of this to Roman, though. Vaasa sighed. “Then I suppose I’m left with no choice.”
Roman took a deep breath as if he was gathering courage. “There is a reason I have tried to keep my distance.”
Vaasa lifted a brow.
“I have heard things about you… about magic. That Reid of Mireh cursed you.”
Her ear couldn’t help but bend to that name—Reid of Mireh.
What would it sound like to hear it fall from a nation’s lips and not just her own?
To hear his new title on full display? Reid of Icruria.
Yearning flooded her body, but she pressed it down and tried to focus on the details of what he’d said. “He did no such thing.”
“So it wasn’t him, the Wolf?”
Vaasa scoffed, folding her arms over her chest and trying not to twitch at that nickname. The Wolf. Her wolf. The man who reflected the very creature her magic had become. “He does not possess magic.”
“Do you?”
Tilting her head, she asked, “Would it scare you if I did?”
“Yes,” Roman admitted.
Holding his gaze, Vaasa pieced together his level of knowledge as she did with every opponent.
Yet she wasn’t certain he was an opponent—not yet.
“It was my mother,” she said, spinning a half-truth to gauge his reaction.
“Her curse passed down to me when I found her dead. Ozik has ways of keeping it hidden.”
Roman moved ever so slightly away. It was fear, she knew. “It’s under control now?”
She couldn’t explain why hurt threaded up her spine and around her chest, but it felt like a ribbon had been tied in knots throughout her. “For now. Lord Vlacik wants to weaponize it. That’s why he and Ozik tortured me.”
Roman sat up straight. “They what?”
If he was questioning Ozik, he didn’t do so out loud. Vaasa wasn’t certain what to say next. What could she? “Yes,” she finally managed.
“Vaasa, I—”
“You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know. I swear it.” Roman leaned forward again and took her hand, looking at her now with new understanding. That touch sent awareness down every nerve she possessed. But she didn’t let go—not yet.
He scanned every inch of her with his brown eyes, probably looking for signs of injury.
Those had all healed or were hidden beneath her heavy wool dress.
Even the marks on her face had disappeared.
He seemed satisfied with what he found, and then she realized that perhaps he was looking for traces of the curse.
If what he said about Wrultho was true, he’d likely witnessed magic in some form.
What had they done to him to make him so afraid?
“I knew you’d been kept in one of the cells,” Roman said, “but Ozik assured me it was to keep you and everyone else safe as you fought the curse. You have to believe me. If I’d known what they were doing to you—”
“What would you have done?” she asked candidly.
Roman paused. Then, “I would have figured something out.”
A lackluster response, she thought, but scolded herself. What could Roman have done, truly? He’d have risked his own life and maybe the lives of others in order to do… what? Send her back to Icruria?
“Tell me you believe me,” he pressed, tightening his grip on her hand. “Please.”
Vaasa didn’t know if it was truth or fiction that fell from her lips when she said, “I believe you.” It was simply what he wanted to hear.