Chapter 26
CHAPTER
How fucking dare you,” Vaasa seethed as she pushed past Roman in the entryway rooms of The Lady Fortune, not even bothering to change out of the dress she wore or return the mask.
Adrenaline pumped in her veins. Her knees still felt weak.
It was whiplash—to go from such hot desire to cold anger.
She felt the remnants of her tryst with Reid all over her, and fear burrowed into her bones.
She couldn’t let them find him. She had to get as far away from The Lady Fortune as possible.
It had been so fucking foolish.
Roman had shut down the brothel, had sent sentinels to swarm it in nothing but a brash show of power.
There was no indication he knew who Vaasa had been with, or that she’d been with anyone at all.
Only Regína had found her, and Vaasa had said she was hiding alone.
Her breath was still labored, but that could be attributed to her sprint down the stairs.
She hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to Reid. Again. In that moment, it felt like she was on that platform at the Icrurian election being dragged away from everything she loved.
Roman had taken her from him. Resentment lit in her core, filling the spaces where her desire had been.
She trudged out the doors and into the freezing air, immediately regretting her choice not to change. Snow soaked the hem of her dress. Still, she had spent weeks in the island prison. She knew cold. She could survive, despite the utter uselessness of her dress in the frigid Mekes temperatures.
“Wait—” Roman said, then cut himself off.
A crowd gathered around the brothel, members of the city guard and sentinels in abundance, and Vaasa suddenly thanked her mask and costume for the veil of privacy it afforded her.
If she didn’t give herself away, these people wouldn’t know who she was.
She needed to seem like anyone but the heiress of Asterya.
“If you want to be with her, then be with her!” Vaasa snarled loudly enough for the people around them to hear.
Roman must have caught on to her intentions, because he put his hands up as if he were just an idiot man who had been caught with another woman. “Just come with me and let me explain.”
“Why should I?”
The conversation they had now was real, though out of context.
Roman slung off his borrowed costume jacket, a heavyweight fur-lined item.
The fact that he had even bothered to change out of his sentinel’s clothing told her that he’d intended to sneak her out all along.
If he’d wanted to really expose her location, or if he believed she had actually been abducted, he never would’ve worn a costume.
This was all to hurt her, to remind her that he had the power to make her miserable if he wanted to.
“You’re freezing,” he said, approaching the way a hunter approached prey.
Vaasa backed away from him, charging down the street while a group of people snickered at their lovers’ quarrel.
Roman swore, chasing after her.
Vaasa turned down another street and kept the pace until she could duck into a very narrow walkway between two stone buildings. There was so little light and no people. Alone, her anger boiled over. “You had no right!” she practically yelled at Roman as he sprinted onto the street.
Roman grabbed her bare arm, his face still covered in a mask. “Put on the fucking coat before you freeze to death.”
“I’ve been colder,” she reminded him. “Or have you already forgotten that I spent weeks in that prison?”
He winced, his grip loosening on her arm. “Just put on the jacket, please. What will the guards think if they see you in this dress?”
“That I fucked my new fiancé in a brothel,” she spat at him.
Misery slashed his brown eyes like someone had taken a pick to the cliffs overlooking the sea, and she knew she’d been cruel.
Good. She wanted him to hate her. She deserved it.
Her rouge was likely smeared across her face, the remnant of a stolen tryst with a man Roman hated. A man he had no idea was in this city.
“You aren’t going to let him touch you,” Roman said, recovering just as quickly as he’d let the emotion show. “I know you won’t.”
“If you have it your way, I won’t have a choice, will I?”
“Stop. Let me take you home, and then we can talk about this.”
“There is nothing to talk about!” She pulled her arm out of his grasp. “You are on Ozik’s side, not mine.”
“I’ll take you to her!” Roman snapped, tugging off his mask.
Vaasa went silent, and though she hated herself for it, the darkest parts of her smiled. She’d known Karev would be the thing that pushed Roman over the edge. To use him this way—it was a reminder of the evil she was well and capable of.
“Just put on the fucking coat, and I will take you to see your friend tomorrow night.”
Vaasa gauged his facial expressions, searching for a thread of mistruth. When she found nothing but the desperate features of the man she had once loved, she let her shoulders fall. “If you’re lying to me, I swear I will release you from your post.”
It was within her power. Ozik would likely allow it, especially if she said it was Lord Karev’s demand.
“I understand,” Roman asserted.
Vaasa took the coat from his hands, slipping her arms into the fabric. Warmth coasted over her skin, and she sighed softly. She hated to admit how cold she was.
Roman reached for her. “Your feet are going to freeze. The hem of your dress is soaked,” he said, eyes looking over the places the gauzy dress draped on her. “Let me carry you.”
Vaasa touched her mask as if reminding herself that she was still hidden.
That he couldn’t see her face. Before she could argue, Roman scooped her into his arms and carried her through the snow like his own bride-to-be until they were closer to wherever he planned to claim he’d found her.
Her body remained tense, her mind screaming that she was everything this city had once called her.
Gingerly, he set her down on the shoveled porch of one of the quieter taverns. Roman raked a hand through his hair. There was something so strange about his expressions, about the shaky way he held himself. “Take off your mask. Wrap the coat tighter around yourself.”
When she did as he asked, he gestured for her to walk.
“Karev can’t know,” Vaasa reminded him quietly. “He can’t know that I left with you.”
“The men at the gate that night have been released,” Roman said. “There are only two waiting for us, and they are loyal to me. They won’t say a word to Karev.”
She pursed her lips, once again wondering what Roman had done to earn a position with this much authority. Even before he’d been sent to die at the border as a punishment for their affair, his trajectory wouldn’t have amounted to this.
“I have just as much interest in keeping this private as you do.”
Vaasa sighed in resignation. She took every step silently until he led her around the corner where a single carriage waited, manned by two guards who kept their eyes down.
Vaasa loaded into the carriage, and when Roman followed her in, she didn’t argue.
They needed the windows closed where he couldn’t be seen.
The carriage lurched forward. They sat in silence.
Vaasa stared at the closed curtains. After a few minutes, Roman’s voice came low.
“Things would be infinitely different if I had it my way, Vaasa. You know that.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Tell me you have thought of a way out of this marriage. That you’ve got something up your sleeve, and this is just a way to protect yourself. You have a plan, you always do.”
Vaasa pursed her lips as if contemplating. “If you mean what you say, that you’ll take me to see my friend, then yes. I have something up my sleeve.”
She was going to break his heart. When she fled this city with another man, it would leave him in shambles, and there was nothing she could do to change that.
She was a witch. The wife of the Icrurian headman, the very man she had just fucked in the middle of a hallway.
Catastrophic didn’t even begin to describe the consequences they would have faced had they been caught, so she supposed this outcome was still better than that.
And yet, she had gotten a dirty thrill at the thought of subverting all their expectations, at embracing the very thing they tried to insult her with.
Whore. An Icrurian’s plaything. Not fit to rule.
At least in that moment, she didn’t have to pretend any longer.
Because she wanted it. She wanted her life with Reid more than she had ever wanted anything, and this time, she wasn’t going to flee from those desires. No amount of fear was going to leave her lonely. She would fight and claw and kill if it meant she got to go back with him.
She looked across the carriage at Roman, and she accepted him as a casualty. She couldn’t convince him to stop coming back to the things that hurt him—Asterya, her. They were the same. This nation had sent him to be a prisoner of war, and yet he’d returned.
She was in love with another man, and still she thought he would chase her. That he would never release the image of her he’d made up in his mind.
“We’ll go to the prison tomorrow night,” Roman said.
“Thank you.”
Vaasa stared at the curtains of the carriage once more. She could only hope Roman followed through.
“Funny, you never seemed to get caught sneaking out when you were younger,” Ozik said as Vaasa walked into the greenhouse.
Her stomach rolled, the silphium Roman had obtained in the early hours of the morning causing her abdomen to cramp.
She’d taken it there in front of him, if only to seal his desperation.
Her muscles ached. Everything felt sluggish and sore.
The lack of sleep would eventually catch up to her, but what other choice did she have?
Daytime in Mekes was boring and useless.
It was only under the cover of night that the true city came out. “Mind your business,” she said to Ozik.