Chapter 28 #2
“He found me in the Loursevain. Put me on my first crew three years ago. I fought and murdered my way back to this city. But I was nothing when I stepped off a boat; just an escaped prisoner, a soldier who deserted and paid the price. I swore I was going to be somebody worth an empire. Worth you.” Roman shook his head, as if he could hardly stand to relive the memories.
“But then you were married off to another man, and there was nothing left here to save. So I helped Sutherland take the city guard, and then the prison. And when Sutherland told me Vlacik wanted to overthrow Dominik, it was a cause I could get behind. But then you came back, and Vlacik offered me access to you, Vaasa. You. The only woman I have ever loved. I was staring at a chance to have everything we ever wanted, and I took it.”
In front of her, he morphed. No longer the young sentinel, no longer that initial taste of rebellion that made her believe life was larger than the role her family wanted her to play.
She remembered the thrill of the first time he’d kissed her, the intensity of doing something deeply forbidden.
And yet when she looked at him now, all that enchanted romanticism was just… gone.
What remained of their young love was cold and silent. A dead thing that he was pounding upon the chest of. He was yet another power-starved man who wanted to sacrifice her at the altar of his ambitions. He did not love her; he loved the idea of winning the Asteryan heiress.
Cruelty clawed at her throat, begging to be let out, begging to steal the air from him the way he’d stolen it from her. And suddenly, she didn’t care if she broke his heart. She wanted him to break.
“You are a coward,” she snapped.
Anger twisted his features into that unrecognizable enemy. “I’m the coward, am I?” Roman stepped into her space.
Vaasa recoiled, her body remembering what had happened to her upon a table like this. What those chains were capable of doing to a witch. Roman didn’t drop her gaze. His hand settled upon her waist, ignoring the way her body tensed.
“Stop,” Vaasa managed.
Roman’s voice came low. “I spent years infatuated with you, and when I finally earned a place in your bed, I was willing to be anything you needed in order to keep just a taste of you. That’s when I was a coward.
Because I’m not who you chose, am I? That was a brutal, ruthless man who takes what he wants without an apology.
And you can’t even say that you didn’t love him. ”
Desire, harsh and cutting, painted his features, and Vaasa didn’t care to look at it.
She almost wanted to let her magic out to play and watch what her wolf could do to a man like this.
Here, in this moment, backed against a table, violence bloomed in the dead of winter. “Stop, Roman,” she whispered.
“Tell me that’s what you truly want,” Roman said. His hands tightened on her waist. “Because I don’t think it is.”
Vaasa held her chin high. She refused to tremble in the face of him, refused to show an ounce of her fear. Roman leaned in, his lips just inches from hers, and Vaasa’s heart pounded painfully in her chest. Panic soared in her veins. She swallowed, doing anything she could to keep it down.
“I can offer you anything Karev can, anything that wolf can,” he said so quietly, his words and breath coasting between what little space separated them. “I can be a weapon, you just aren’t wielding me.”
Her hand against the table behind her slid a fraction until her fingertips brushed the chains. Her magic winked out, and relief came cold and sweet. Rationality broke through the haze of her anger, a stark reminder of where she stood and what she had to lose.
She couldn’t alienate Roman. Not now. Not yet.
He could turn on her at any moment, and it was only through his mechanisms that she would travel freely within the city.
He could clear the way to the mausoleum, to her mother’s sarcophagus.
He had access to Amalie and Sachia’s brother.
He was a stress point for Lord Karev, one worth keeping.
Every step forward had to be intentional. This, above all else, was critical.
I can be a weapon, you just aren’t wielding me.
With a small breath, Vaasa released the chains, her magic flooding her stomach.
She stifled it. Instead, she lifted her hands to his chest, her fingers curling in the lapels of his jacket, hiding the tips in case any magic leaked out.
“I understand why you did it,” she whispered.
“If I had been given a way back to you, I would have taken it, too. No matter how sinister.”
He looked between where she touched him and up into her eyes.
“I didn’t know you were alive, Roman. If I had known…” She closed her eyes for a moment, honestly remembering what it felt like to believe he was dead. The guilt she had carried, the self-loathing that had festered because her love for him had been the final nail in his coffin.
“I should have told you sooner. For that, I’m sorry.”
Vaasa opened her eyes. Tilted her head. “No, you’re right.
I want someone who’s going to fight. Someone who’s going to claw their way to the throne and slaughter anyone who tries to take it.
Since I cannot earn it myself, I was willing to let Reid of Mireh be the person who claimed it for me.
Perhaps Karev, if that’s what it took. But…
” She shook her head. “I didn’t know you wanted it, Roman. You never told me that you did.”
“I want it,” he said with such satisfaction it made Vaasa sick. He lifted a hand to push back a tendril of her hair, fingers lingering on the side of her throat. “I want you.”
She curled her hands tighter against his chest. “I can’t touch you. Not yet.”
“And why is that?” he demanded.
“Because when I touch you,” she whispered, pushing his chest so he ceded space, forcing him backward until her arms were entirely extended.
She breathed easier. The part she had to play came freely now.
She looked him square in his eyes. “There will be no lord or advisor in my way. There will be you and me and a throne and nothing else.”
She lifted her hands from him then, an ugly darkness curling in her stomach. She hated herself. She hated the words she had just spoken. In many ways, she was no different from Ozik. But Vaasa could only see one future, and it wasn’t here in Asterya.
She would never forgive him.
At her small display of willingness, Roman closed his eyes and his body relaxed. A starving man who had just been offered a crumb, yet confused it with a feast.
“Tell me what you saw tonight,” he said. “Complete honesty, Vaasa. I’m tired of being left out of your plans.”
Vaasa spoke instinctually, careful with her phrasing. “My friend showed me a weapon. Something my brother put inside my mother’s sarcophagus. Something I think he hid in hopes I wouldn’t be able to protect myself against him or Ozik.”
Roman ate her words with the same ferocity he was swallowing her lies. “You’re going to need to retrieve it, then.”
“I am.”
“I can arrange for you to visit the mausoleum privately. You’re entitled to grieve your parents without a host of sentinels in the room; no one will think twice.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, time winding down around her as she considered how much had passed since they’d ducked into this room. Melisina was waiting for her. Reid was waiting. They would coordinate everything tonight. Once they had the necklace, they would need to flee as quickly as possible.
“Tomorrow,” Roman agreed quietly. “And then we will decide how to rid ourselves of Lord Karev.”
She nodded, hoping with everything she had that he would be sated long enough with an almost, a someday.
He stepped forward and ran his thumb along her cheekbone. She kept her hands behind her, one on the table, the other within inches of the chain. But then he dropped his, tentatively brushing her wrist until he lifted her hand to his chest. “You can touch me, Vaasa. We are alone.”
Vaasa swallowed a deep breath and then lied as naturally as breathing. “History has a terrible way of repeating itself.” She hoped the words would remind him of exactly what he had to lose, positioning her as the rational one between them.
His face softened. “It won’t, not this time.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t survive it a second time. Karev will kill you if he finds out who you are. Who you work for. What we plan to do together.”
Roman pursed his lips, but at her outright refusal, his hand slipped from hers.
He backed away, and Vaasa stifled her look of relief.
He pressed his ear to the door, listening for the sounds of people coming or going.
With a gesture of his hand, Vaasa carefully crossed the room.
Magic still bit at her insides, and she pushed it down, her adrenaline slowing to a manageable pulse.
The hall was empty. They were silent as they snuck back to their pinnace, pretending Vaasa was merely a sentinel who had failed to gather enough courage to jump from the Last Crossing.
And when she made it back to her quarters, she rested her head against the door for a moment. Relaxed.
She had gotten a taste of it all—had been reminded precisely what came alive inside her when Reid was near. Without him, the coldness within her came back swiftly and without mercy.
Until she was back in his arms for good, there was no line she would not cross. No lie she would not become.
A plan unfolded in the darkest recesses of her mind, and it was all the worst parts of her.
Yet those parts were the very reason she had survived this long.
They had been built upon the back of this place, had been necessary.
That darkness had served her and might continue to serve her if she played her cards right.
She had a choice, after all.
She could be one of two things: a prisoner in a fortress of her own making, or a wolf they had let into their house.