Chapter 13 #2
Roman raised his eyebrows and then looked her over like he was seeing her for the first time. His gaze dragged up and down her, to the line where her nightgown met the blankets. “You are not who you used to be.”
“No, I am not.”
“Neither am I.”
She bristled. “No, I am nothing like who I was, Roman. You can’t even begin to fathom.”
“Do you believe me afraid of you? With one death on your hands?” He chuckled with a desperate lilt. “I went to war, Vaasa. I was a prisoner. You have no idea what I have seen and sacrificed to be sitting here next to you.”
Vaasa glanced at Roman’s hands as if the blood would still be there, but they looked the same as they always had.
And though she could tell him everything, of the magic she had gained and the lives she had taken with it, she didn’t.
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” she said instead.
Vaasa didn’t tell him the other things she had pieced together here or the questions that plagued her.
She didn’t quite know how to breathe correctly in his presence, like there was still a part of her reaching backward, seizing at her chest.
Roman ran his tongue over his teeth. “The Wolf. He was… kind to you, then?”
Vaasa fiddled with her hands. Yes. Kinder than any other person had ever been to her. But what good did it do to reveal such a thing to Roman?
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Of course it matters.” He gritted his teeth and looked away from her, staring into the fire once more.
“When I found out you were marrying him, I was sick, Vaasa. Terrified. And when I heard he was parading you around his city and that your brother was opening trade with Icruria, it just destroyed me. I know what kind of man Reid of Mireh is.”
Vaasa paused. It was odd to hear of hers and Reid’s escapades, their games of love that had blossomed into the real thing, from someone who heard the whispers they had purposefully stoked.
Icruria had always been a secret, yet upon her marriage, the curtain had fallen.
Trade had assured it. Still, it was personal: the flicker of hatred that marked the way Roman tightened his fists.
“What do you mean, you know what kind of man he is?”
Roman finally lifted his chin, a muscle feathering in his jaw.
“He often passed through Wrultho. His father was the head of their squadron, but I noticed him the first time he arrived, young to be the leader of anything and brutal. People whispered about him, about the sheer amount of Asteryans he killed along the Sanguine. He…” Roman shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. Each time he returned, he was decorated with something new, earned from yet another mass slaughter on the river.
He was a cruel man. There’s a reason they call him the Wolf of Mireh. ”
Stoic as the stone around her, Vaasa didn’t dare breathe. Cruel was not a word she would ever use to describe Reid.
“I…” Vaasa looked down at her hands. The choice to lie to Roman fully, to spin some mistruth about her marriage—it was a choice she couldn’t undo.
“Did you consummate the union?” Roman asked outright, leaning forward as if he’d been anticipating this very line of conversation since the moment they found each other again.
What an outdated Asteryan concept, Reid had once said to her.
Vaasa parted her lips, then snapped them shut.
Each moment she’d spent with Reid had set her on fire, no matter how hard she’d fought it.
When she’d finally had him, had his mouth on hers and his bare skin against her own, she had never wanted anything more.
It wasn’t a consummation. It was a choice.
And if the world hadn’t done exactly what she’d predicted it would do, if Dominik and Ozik hadn’t ruined everything, she knew with certainty she would still be there with Reid, sleeping next to him now.
But what of that could Roman understand, especially after what he’d just told her? She sighed. “I did.”
Roman closed his eyes. Shook his head. “Of course you did. I… I don’t know why I thought otherwise.”
“But it upsets you,” she noted.
Roman shrugged, leaning back onto his hands. “It was foolish to believe you hadn’t been with someone after me. That I’m the only man to know you that way.”
Vaasa couldn’t explain the anxiety that welled in her at this line of conversation. The insurmountable guilt for having lived when she thought he hadn’t. “I mourned you for a very long time, Roman.”
He stared at her for a drawn-out moment. “I don’t believe I’ve stopped mourning you, Vaasa.”
Breath stilled in her chest. How many times had she wished for the chance to see him again? To hear his voice? Yet he was looking right at her, and she would trade just about anything to be staring at another man. What kind of person did that make her?
“Reid of Mireh sacked Innisjour,” Roman said, changing the topic before Vaasa had the opportunity to say more. “Slaughtered the young lord there and hundreds of civilians. He tore down the dam and demolished an entire city, claiming his marriage to you makes him emperor of Asterya.”
“Ozik told me he crossed the border,” Vaasa said.
Roman narrowed his eyes just slightly. “He’s been injured. He retreated from battle.”
The world seemed to stall on its axis. That word stole the air from the room. Injured.
Roman’s eyes searched her expression more closely than he ever had before.
She pushed it down—the wanting. The panic. The pain. Now was not the time. She had already given away too much.
Roman stood abruptly, taking a few steps away from her. “Vaasa, are you in love with him?”
“Roman, I—”
“He’s already killed hundreds under the pretense that he has a claim to your throne. To our empire.”
She saw Roman so clearly now, saw the betrayal written in the lines of his face at the thought of her having fallen in love with an Icrurian. With his enemy. But it was more than that.
There, in the depths of his eyes, was a glimmer of desire.
Our empire.
Suddenly, he morphed into someone entirely new before her. Gone was the remnant of the boy who had loved her, of the rebellion she’d found in him. He had been the safest thing. A man who couldn’t take anything real from her. It wasn’t like she would have ever been allowed to marry him.
And now there was a throne dangling above all their heads, and she wondered… was it enough to tempt Roman, too? Was that why he was here? To make himself a contender?
It hurt to think about Reid, even more so to pretend he wasn’t the love of her life.
That each inch of her didn’t ache for him now.
But survival demanded the worst of people, and she had always been capable of deception.
A voice in her head whispered that she must lie, that she must spin whatever tale she needed in order to keep this inextinguishable truth from coming out: She was in love with the man who should be her greatest enemy, and if given half the chance, she would tear her home apart in his name.
“I was married to Reid of Mireh,” Vaasa clarified, voice growing sharp. “He became my only political ally while Dominik was two steps away from taking my life. If you’re asking if he was cruel or if I hated him, the answer is no.”
It was purposeful, to twist his question and then to say the word no. He was waiting, hoping, craving, that exact word in response. It gave the appearance of disagreement—manipulated a palatable answer and put the onus on him to continue demanding further truth.
Roman pursed his lips, digesting her words slowly. Likely, he would interpret them to mean what he wanted to hear because that was far easier than stomaching reality. “And what did he want, then? Your throne?”
Vaasa shook her head, falling into the same wretched version of herself who could tell a part truth and call it whole.
“It is what I wanted, Roman. I wanted my freedom. I wanted my life back. I wanted Dominik to pay for each time he took something from me, and I was willing to trade anything to get it. To manipulate Reid, if that’s what it took. ”
Truth. That had been exactly the place she’d started in when Reid had brought her back from Dihrah.
“And what did that manipulation entail?” Roman demanded.
Bold—he was so very bold. She pulled the blankets further up her body and basked in the seed of rage simmering in her gut.
His words reminded her of Lord Vlacik and the claims he’d made about her, of the things she knew they called her behind closed doors.
An Icrurian’s whore. Her competence would always be reduced to this: The world could not imagine a woman clever enough to outsmart a man, so they simply labeled her a temptress.
“Are you asking if I fucked him to get what I wanted? If I let him play out his little fantasies so he would start a war for me?”
Roman’s jaw flickered with anger. “I suppose I am.”
“No,” she snapped. “I didn’t have to do a damn thing to convince Reid of Mireh to attack the border. Dominik and Ozik did all the work for me. But I suppose I should be flattered you think I’m a good enough fuck to incite a war.”
Roman’s eyes caught fire, but he seemed to notice the deep insult that had elicited her poison and reined in whatever response he’d conjured in his mind. “Vaasa, I never should have said that, I—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she seethed. “The Icrurians never would have crossed the border if Dominik and Ozik hadn’t stoked a rebellion and tried to murder the major leaders of every city-state. My brother caused this war, and it had nothing to do with whose bed I was sold off to.”
He was more tense than she had ever seen him. Yet his shoulders fell, breath coming back to him. “You’re right.”
“I know.”
He hung his head. “You were always smarter than Dominik. Always a better choice to lead.”
“Yet I still need a husband to do so.”
He shifted his weight, still standing near the fireplace a few paces away from her. “And that’s not what you want? To marry?”