Chapter 12 #2
“The covens used to rule Icruria,” he said.
“But during the Witches’ War, most of the old texts were burned.
And when the common tongue replaced the old dialects, it was the death of oral tradition.
Therefore, the relative death of the gods and goddesses that the independent city-states worshipped. ”
It had always surprised her that the Icrurians did not have deeper religious traditions; most of their deities were now fables or fuel for celebrations.
The gods and goddesses that the sodalities were named after were the only real landmarks left.
The deities had become cultural; the witches were the last remaining remnant of the gods’ and goddesses’ power.
The information curled in her ears and settled there, giving her that same inextinguishable hunger she’d had from a young age.
She gathered history and languages like weapons because that was what understanding them could turn someone into.
That was the weapon her father and Ozik had created.
So she couldn’t help herself—she leaned in to listen, and by the subtle curl of Ozik’s lips, he knew he had her.
“What the Icrurians refuse to speak about is that the deities were wicked, evil creatures,” he continued.
“They need witches in order to keep their foothold in this realm. Without their covens, they can be sealed into tombs scattered across this continent. But even then, their bloodlines still pop up in unexpected places, and so if even one witch emerges, the deity has a foothold again.”
Vaasa leaned farther forward, memorizing every word he said, even if she didn’t entirely believe him. There was no telling whether this version of history was true.
“What is sentimental magic, then?” she asked.
“Begin wielding your magic again, and I will tell you.”
Vaasa pursed her lips. She shouldn’t obey. She knew the right choice. Yet the allure of knowledge pushed her forward, magic spilling from her fingertips. It coated the floor around her once more, spreading like fog on the water.
Ozik began again. “There are two types of magic, two types of covens, just like there are two classifications of deities. Ones that rule the outer world, the physical; and ones that rule the inner world, the emotional. Corporeal versus sentimental. Veragi is a sentimental deity—the most powerful one, as her witches have a skill unlike any other.”
Vaasa swallowed. Her magic slithered at her feet, then spread out into the greenhouse. She tried to bring it back inside herself, but Ozik shook his head. As the black tendrils coated the stones marking the pathway she stood upon, Vaasa tried not to rear back from her own power.
“Push it forward. Use everything around you instead of everything within you,” he said.
Vaasa’s eyebrows slammed together, his words not making sense.
She stared down at the magic, hesitating, and then it reared forward out of her control.
Knots in her body tightened and tugged, an outside force now guiding her power.
She gasped and stumbled as it burst out in sharp tendrils, one of which snapped against an iron bench to her left.
It knocked the bench sideways with a crash, and petals flew into the air, drifting softly to coat the ground.
“Stop,” she said.
Her magic slithered back up her dress, the wolf nowhere to be found.
Vaasa’s heart beat faster, fear growing within her as the magic curled around her body.
Her waist. Her chest. It consumed her arm, then her shoulders, brushing the nape of her neck.
She knew better than to let the power reach her face.
As it brushed her throat, terror slammed against her ribcage. “Stop!”
“It is a void because you don’t know what else to make it, but that doesn’t have to be its final form,” Ozik said, voice unbelievably calm as he watched her panic. “Your mother saw a spider, so afraid of being crushed beneath everyone else’s feet. What is it you’re so terrified of becoming?”
This information about her mother sank its teeth into her. Her mother, a woman afraid of being powerless, of being too small to fight back. Vaasa heard it again, the hiss of the snake. Felt the ridges of scales as it wound around her throat.
Ozik tilted his head, enamored by the creature. The gold in his eyes was swallowed by the black snake that slithered along her skin. The manifestation rose to rub against her cheek. It was cool to the touch, its sharp sibilations a warning in her ears.
“A serpent,” Ozik said. “The very thing they called your father.”
“Stop,” Vaasa whispered, this time tasting the power as the snake slid across her lips.
Ozik inspected Vaasa, saw how her hands shook. His eyes narrowed upon the magic circling her throat, and all of Vaasa’s emotions played upon his face. However their bargain linked them, they shared the intensity of this moment. They shared her fear.
“I am not controlling this any longer. You are.”
Vaasa forced herself to suck down air, and the hiss of the snake rattled in her ear. She met Ozik’s eyes, and he stared at her, his hands clasped behind his back.
“All magic needs fuel,” he said. “Think. When did you see the wolf? When did it finally make itself known to you?”
The look on his face seemed to say he already knew the answer.
There was ancient wisdom behind his eyes, and she wasn’t certain how she’d never seen it before, how she’d never recognized the churning of power within him or the unnatural years that stared back at her.
It was as if his own magic had grown unruly in the time she was away, in the time her mother had been dead.
No longer able to be masked, to be hidden.
Perhaps it was all a trick, some mind game.
Yet she thought back to the height of her own magic, to the times it had felt utterly out of control.
At the beginning, in the Library of Una when she’d searched desperately for a clue as to what this magic was.
With Kosana, when she’d found herself outmatched by the warrior as they trained next to the Settara.
Again when Reid had told her that Dominik was coming to Mireh.
Most notably, when she’d looked at her brother and decided she’d lost enough, when she’d accepted her death and let go of that…
Fear.
Every time the magic had reared to the surface in an uncontrollable wave, it had been a reaction to fear.
Fear she would never find answers. Fear Kosana would prove her worthless.
Fear Dominik would harm all the people she had just begun to love.
Fear that she would die, that Amalie would die, and the greatest tragedy of her life would be not having enough time.
Her magic churned in her gut, a ruthless force once again as she stared at Ozik across the pathway. Fear of him. Fear of everything, always. The very thing that had given the snake its shape, that had made a monster out of her.
Fear of herself.
But she didn’t need to be afraid any longer. She was not what they had tried to make her.
Something tangible and powerful poured out of her body, mist and magic and everything she had ever felt up until that moment.
To her left, the wolf took form as naturally to her as breathing.
Its smoky edges curled into the air, white eyes shining from a shadowy face.
One paw swiped at the stones beneath it.
The corner of Ozik’s lips curled into a knowing smile as he gazed upon her manifestation.
“Your magic was never out of control, Vaasalisa. It was feeding, because that is what sentimental magic does. It’s what makes Veragi magic so spectacular, so threatening.
You are starving, and so you are feasting on yourself, the closest and easiest source.
But what would happen if you feasted on everything around you instead? ”
Vaasa looked to the wolf, felt every edge and subtle sway of it. Felt the desire to send it forward and strike. The manifestation took a step, lowering its nose to the ground and letting out an audible growl.
Ozik watched it closely. “Think. Observe. You have always perceived the emotions of those around you. Perhaps now is the time you start weaponizing them instead of internalizing them.”
Vaasa stared at him, and despite what she wanted to believe, she swore she could feel his subtle fear. She could taste it. It slid across her tongue in satiating breaths. The relief it brought was palpable, instantaneous.
The wolf grew sharper. More defined. No longer were the edges glimmering tendrils of smoke; she could see and feel the texture of hair, of claws, of teeth.
Her eyes snapped to Ozik.
She was feeding off him.
This was unnatural. Perverse and wrong.
Vaasa dismissed the magic, obliterating it into mist that dissipated in the air. Ozik frowned as he stepped forward, hissing, “What are you doing?”
A memory threaded her mind of the day her coven crawled beneath a table with her.
Melisina’s soft voice echoed. Just cry. Let it out.
And Vaasa realized: Ozik’s tutelage wasn’t one she was willing to accept.
Not anymore. Her coven had shown her the power of gentle love, and she would no longer squeeze a stem of thorns for the sake of the flower.
“I won’t twist magic this way. I never asked you to train me. ”
The look on his face was stifling—fury and grief carved into the pale lines of it. “A bargain goes both ways, Vaasalisa.”
Vaasa’s fists tightened. “So, if I don’t let you train my magic, you’ll murder me like you did my mother?”
Ozik’s grimaced. “I did not kill your mother. She broke a bargain. I don’t control the rules of magic. And how do you intend to survive if you refuse to learn them?”
“Then why not release my mother from the bargain?” Vaasa demanded. “Why not release me? Are you so powerless that you cannot free your own thralls?”
Ozik’s voice rose. “You cannot handle the answers to your questions until you learn to use your magic. I will tell you what you need to know when you are ready, but you are not ready.”
“How could I be?” she barked back. “I am not my mother. I am not so desperate for love or power that I’ll eat it off a dagger. I am not afraid of being crushed—I’m afraid of being you.”
It was as if a sharp blade cut directly through her muscles.
Her magic severed from her body once again, this time immediately and without rebellion.
Ozik walked forward. Gasping, Vaasa lifted her hands to her throat as if to defend her own life, an innate reaction.
Her knees buckled and scraped against the stones beneath her.
“You are an ignorant child with no understanding of who your mother was or what she gave to keep you alive. So long as you are in my presence, do not speak of her as if you knew her. You didn’t.”
Vaasa wanted to spit at him, to remind him that it was his fault that she’d never known her mother. That all she’d gotten was the cold, aloof version of a woman fighting to stay alive in a place that hadn’t kept her safe.
And if Ozik had loved her, he would have saved her.
But he hadn’t.
He released the hold he had on Vaasa, and she fell forward, hands catching her just before her face hit the iridescent stones.
Nausea tightened her throat, but she didn’t give in.
She was at least tolerating their connection, tolerating the use of her magic.
No darkness lined the edges of her vision this time.
“I said I was trying things a different way,” Ozik said. He picked up his cloak from the bench he’d draped it over. “Every morning, you will come here, and I will train your magic. Each time you make enough progress, I will have the witch brought to you.”
Vaasa looked down at the stones cutting into her knees. He had all the leverage in the world, and she had nothing. Any grasp on the life she had found in Mireh was smothered now.
No.
Even in darkness, even on the verge of death, Vaasa had never been helpless. She had an arsenal in her mind, and it was time she started using it.
You cannot handle the answers to your questions until you learn to use your magic.
Ozik wanted her to grow stronger. Each time he’d allowed Lord Vlacik to cut at her skin or for her magic to overtake her, it had been in pursuit of her endurance. He was training her. Teaching her, just as he had done when she was a child.
The question was why. What was it that Ozik wanted her to become? To accomplish?
“I will see you tomorrow morning,” Ozik said.
He disappeared into a different room of the greenhouse, and Vaasa was left staring up at the olive tree, the words of her mother’s letter playing out in the back of her mind.
Whatever you do, stay in Mireh and do not unite the other pieces. The price is far too great.
The following day, Vaasa found Ozik waiting beneath the olive tree.
He stood at her arrival, striding forward with ease.
Like it had yesterday, her magic unfurled in her gut, melding to the snake she had thought about all night.
She swallowed down her fear, prepared to do things his way if that was what it took.
She didn’t like the idea of the magic he claimed she could access—to feed on other people’s emotions instead of her own—but what choice did she have?
For now, her breath came easier. She let the power flow through her veins and leak onto her fingertips. Dark smoke licked the air, then curled around her hands and wrists.
“Are you ready to begin?” Ozik asked.
Vaasa met his eyes. Everything about him was calmer in here.
Brighter. As if, with the flora and the late morning sunshine filtering through the glass walls, he was a different person.
The warmth brought relief, and with it, the space for curiosity.
For her to focus everything she had on finding out precisely what this man needed.
So she could take it all away.
“I’m ready,” Vaasa said.
Ozik grinned.