Chapter 17
CHAPTER
This way,” Roman said, gesturing to the end of the hall.
Vaasa had changed from the dress Karev bought her into the warm clothes of a fortress guard, prepared for the shocking cold of the Iron Bay at night, for the way wind whipped around the prison.
Clear skies served as an omen or an irony—it all depended on whether they could get out of the fortress unseen.
They slinked through the corridors on quiet feet, dipping into the servants’ halls in order to avoid the other guards.
Roman knew their placements and schedules by heart.
The costume Vaasa wore would only work from afar; if any guards came too close, they would immediately know she wasn’t one of them.
She couldn’t shake the fear that one of those guards would alert Vlacik—it was possible any one of them worked for him, after all.
Roman was truly her only ally in this city.
They took a narrow passageway into the bowels of the fortress.
The gray stone walls mirrored the ones built in the old wing on the far side that she and Roman had gone to the first night she found him.
They were built at the same time, before Vaasa’s father had expanded the fortress to even greater heights and architectural miracles.
He’d built around the original structure, so it often ebbed and flowed, old to new, much like Asterya itself.
This part of the castle was warmer, further in the depths where heat was trapped.
They took a wide staircase decorated on one side by a statue of the monotheistic Asteryan god, arms raised in triumph.
Vaasa stared at it for only a moment before sliding around the corner. She collided with something—someone.
Ozik.
He looked at her, lips drawn. At the bottom of his neck where his cloak clipped together with an iron buckle, black crept up his veins.
Vaasa didn’t dare gasp or make any indication of what she’d noticed.
There was something deeply different about Ozik in this moment—he was far closer to the advisor she had faced upon the platform at the Icrurian election.
Dressed in his usual blue regalia with his bright-white cloak, he looked ready for an important dinner, not for the stroke of midnight.
Roman rounded the corner next. His footsteps halted, and the air in the stairwell shifted.
“My, my, my,” Ozik crooned in Icrurian, voice dripping like the oil of his magic.
Slick. Dark. Fury lit in his gaze, dragging between her and Roman.
Threads of crimson bled into the brilliant gold of his irises.
This was doubtlessly different than how he’d been that morning at training.
The tight control with which he’d held himself was missing.
“If it isn’t a perfect rendition of the past. Just history repeating itself. ”
“Sire—” Roman tried, but Ozik lifted a hand to silence him.
“You’re using your position a little too liberally, aren’t you?” Ozik snarled.
Roman paled.
But Ozik turned his fury only on Vaasa. “If I were a lord?” Ozik asked, stepping into her space. “If I were Lord Karev?”
Vaasa narrowed her eyes. Roman said nothing—an act that felt like a betrayal. Vaasa sneered, “You aren’t a lord.”
The red of Ozik’s eyes grew, no longer whispers of color, but a full claiming of his irises that bled into the whites.
Hand snaking out, he gripped Vaasa’s throat, cutting off her airway before she could draw another breath.
“You think you are so clever,” he growled, his voice taking on a tenor it never had before.
This was not the man who had helped raise her.
Panic tore at her body from within, and she had no chance to stifle the choked plea at her lips. She couldn’t breathe. Ozik tipped back his head and laughed, the veins in his neck growing darker beneath his pale skin.
“Sire—” Roman tried.
“Silence,” he boomed, voice echoing around them.
Ozik lowered Vaasa to her knees, power swirling in his angry expression as his fingers loosened on her throat.
Breath filled her lungs painfully, and she took in whatever air she could.
“You are just as meddlesome as your mother,” he whispered.
His eyes were on fire, a bloodred glow emanating all throughout them.
And just behind him, the Miro’dag took form. “You will die like her, too.”
Vaasa froze. Panic overtook every instinct she’d honed, stealing away her usual ability to keep her composure. She thrashed, but he only gripped her neck tighter, his other hand snaking out to take hold of her shoulder.
The creature screamed. Fury twisted Ozik’s mouth into an angry frown.
Faintly, she heard the sound of Roman’s sword unsheathing, a command falling from his lips for Ozik to let her go. Fear clawed its way through Roman’s shaking tone.
Yet Vaasa couldn’t take her eyes off Ozik.
There was something in his gaze—some rebellion, some spark of logic or recognition or consciousness that hadn’t been there a moment prior.
It was like she was looking at two different people.
His eyes flickered once more, gold fighting for dominance in the red.
“What are you?” Vaasa gasped with what little air she could manage.
Ozik’s hand upon her throat shook with strain.
One finger lifted, then snapped back down.
He seemed at war with himself. His fingers tried once, twice, and finally they released her with a spasm.
He drew back, releasing her entirely. Vaasa buckled over and put her own hands around her neck, desperate to protect it.
Her knees dug into the hard staircase beneath her.
The Miro’dag approached, the smell of rotting flesh and burning hair stuffing itself up her nose. She looked into its crimson eyes, the same color that had seeped into Ozik’s, and the churning of power within them was a living thing. Magic, raw and unfiltered, shone back at her.
“Vaasalisa,” Ozik said, suddenly back to the professorial tone that he’d held with her just that morning. Every morning so far. He took two careful steps back, left foot finally reaching the bottom of the staircase. Desperation stained his gaze as the crimson winked in and out of his irises.
He was silently asking her for something, she just didn’t know what.
Roman’s footsteps sounded as he ran to her side.
He bent to where she knelt on the staircase, trying to pull at her arms to help her stand.
Silver glinted at the corner of Vaasa’s eye, and her hand snapped out like a snake biting prey.
Grabbing the dagger sheathed at Roman’s belt, she pulled, and using all her strength, she struck upward, the sound of her boots sliding on the stairs.
She stabbed the hooked blade into Ozik’s throat, cutting through skin and sinew, and tugged it back out with a ruthless grunt.
Blood oozed from the gaping wound on the advisor’s neck, the color of it tainted by streaks of black. It ran down the column of Ozik’s throat and soaked the neck of his white cloak. As he choked, Ozik’s eyes flashed with rage and pain, and then they bled entirely to gold, all the red gone.
Pain lanced through her core, her magic activating once more. Wide-eyed, Vaasa stumbled back and tripped, falling to her rear on a step. A twinge shot up her spine.
But Ozik didn’t fall. His knees didn’t buckle, and the floor didn’t welcome him in a slump of lifeless bones.
The wound at his neck began to sew, skin stitching back together in a seamless line.
A smile graced his lips as color returned to his mouth and cheeks.
Even though black blood still stained his skin and cloak, there was no trace of the wound anywhere.
“Your effort is noted,” Ozik said, perfectly level and controlled. And then he turned his attention to Roman. “If you disobey me again, I will put your head on a pike.”
Roman went pale as a ghost.
The burning within her ceased. “Please,” she begged, “let me see her.”
Ozik simply shook his head. “Earn it,” he said. He gave Roman a withering stare. “And do be more discreet.”
Ozik turned on his heel and walked away like the entire interaction had never occurred.
Breath pushed in and out of Vaasa’s lungs: hot, heavy, desperate. She was certain the floor would give way beneath her, that the fortress would swallow her whole. The gravity of her situation settled in her stomach, her suspicions from the moment he’d healed her hand fully confirmed.
Ozik couldn’t die. Not like a mortal could.
As she stood, she tried to take a step, but Roman grabbed her wrist, pulling her back and catching her off guard.
She rammed into his chest, and he hauled her up the stairs.
Her feet caught purchase, and she ran with him.
The moment they were out of the stairwell, he turned and caught her shoulders, inspecting her fully. “Are you all right?”
It all played in a loop in her mind—Roman had simply watched, so terrified of Ozik that he couldn’t move. For whatever reason, his lack of interference stung. She hadn’t ever needed someone to protect her, but she wished there was someone to help her keep this fear at bay. She wanted Reid.
Roman’s jaw clenched. “We need to get to the old wing. I need the truth. Now.”
Adrenaline still fogged her mind. They couldn’t be alone; she was going to lose her grip on herself, let something slip without a plan—
“Vaasa,” he said, trying to calm her down. “I’m here for you. To protect you. But I need your honesty—”
“You call that protecting me?” she whispered.
His features contorted in insult. “I am your only partner in this,” he reminded her in a curt whisper.
She twisted her shoulders and broke his grasp, careening down the hallway as he hissed for her to stop.
She burst into the servants’ hall, and Roman ceased trying to speak to her the moment another guard came into view.
It was too much of a risk. Vaasa kept her quickened pace, mind turning in an unstoppable loop, until she slipped back into the emperor’s wing using one of the hidden passageways.
And then Roman pounced.
His hand caught her wrist, and he tugged her against his body.
She struggled against him, but he didn’t release his vise grip.
Instead, he dragged her toward the wall, attempting to pin her against it.
Instinct told her to twist the wrist he held and break his grip, yet exhaustion crested over her in a dizzying wave.
She stumbled and fell, back slamming against the wall.
Weeks of pain caught up to her in a flash—weak.
She was so fucking tired and weak. Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit down on her cheek to hold back any noise.
“What. Happened,” he said, each word its own sentence. “What the hell did Ozik just do to you? Why didn’t he die?”
Anger caught fire within her, swiftly replacing her desperation with something more familiar: rage. “You know why.” She wrenched her wrist free and slammed her hands into Roman’s chest, pushing him off her, her strength finally enough to demand space.
Roman stumbled back, eyes going wide. “Vaasa—”
“Why would I trust you? You’ve all but come back from the dead, and you are lying to me.”
“I haven’t lied—”
Vaasa spun on him. “You know he has magic! That’s he’s a witch.”
Roman paused. Words seemed to dance on his lips. Finally, he asked, “Will it be truth between us, or should I question everything you say?”
“You have no right to ask me that.”
Her chest bone seemed to splinter. It was as if the light from his lantern revealed a side of him that Vaasa had never met, a terrible spinning of everything she’d once believed about him.
There was a time in her life that Roman had been one of the only people who hadn’t lied to her.
Hadn’t used her. She remembered the sound of his voice as he whispered those promises in her ear: I am here. I want you. I will never betray you.
Those words provided her the opportunity to see him as she had once seen him, this younger version of her reaching across the hallway, hoping those promises still held true. “My friend,” she said, stepping forward. “Take me to her. Now. Please.”
As Roman gauged the distance between them, he shook his head. “I can’t. You heard him, Vaasa. He’ll kill me.”
Magic. He was scared of magic, and he was going to let it stop him from helping her. Just like he had when Ozik had wrapped his hand around her throat on the stairwell.
Roman had done nothing.
Vaasa closed her eyes. Disappointment slithered through her, and she realized she might actually have told him everything if he’d given her a reason to.
She lifted her chin so she could meet his gaze with all the malice she could conjure. “I was under the impression I was the future ruler, not him.”
Roman stepped forward, but Vaasa shook her head, pulling swiftly away from him down the hall that led to the emperor’s private rooms. “Go back to your post,” she spat.
“You are my post,” he argued.
“Just go,” she said without looking back.
“Vaasa—”
She stopped and turned, dropping her voice to a clinical neutral, as if he were any guard in the palace.
As if his lips had never touched hers, his body had never twisted in her sheets under the cover of night.
“I can’t risk this throne on the rumor that I’m having an affair with my lead sentinel, and as the current holder of that position, you shouldn’t either. ”
Something broke on his face. Something awful and deep.
He set off down the hall without another word, and Vaasa stood there alone.