Chapter 29
CHAPTER
Vaasa reached the end of the dark passageway that connected the fortress and her family’s apartment.
She pressed upon the back of the false bookshelf wall.
Her grandfather had kept a reading room here, and if Vaasa had the time, she might have explored every book he had chosen to keep private.
Instead, she launched into the hallway and came face-to-face with Reid, who must have heard the sound of her opening the concealed door.
“It was Veragi,” Vaasa blurted, just as Reid gathered her up and into his arms. Cool magic poured from her hands, the dark mist expelling from her body the moment he held her close. The moment she felt safe enough to allow it do so.
“You’re okay?” he asked into her hair and then pulled her to arm’s length to inspect. “What happened?”
“Did you see her?” a voice tumbled down the hallway. Koen’s.
Vaasa looked past Reid to see him standing at the end of the hallway, eyes more alight with hope than she had seen them yet.
He adjusted his spectacles, and Vaasa thought he might be trying to soften the intense tightness of his shoulders, but it didn’t have the effect of making him seem relaxed, only anxious.
“Yes,” she said, stepping around Reid and walking to Koen. “But… Veragi possessed her somehow. She showed me images of my mother and Ozik.”
Melisina gasped. “The goddess communicated with you?” She sat behind Koen on the couch in the main family room.
Her hand covered her mouth. Vaasa crossed the room and took the spot next to her, avoiding Sachia, who was fast asleep beneath a blanket on the opposite couch.
Reid’s eyes traveled to where Vaasa sat, but he didn’t beckon her over to him.
He sat on the ground instead, just in front of the fireplace that raged with a much-needed warmth, and pulled his knees to his shoulders.
Vaasa nodded. “Amalie’s eyes glowed white, like your horse and my wolf. She never directly spoke to me, only showed me images. But I had to touch Amalie to see any of it.”
Melisina breathed heavily, gaze drifting around the room like she was caught in her own thoughts.
“Have you ever heard of something like this?” Reid asked Melisina.
“All I have been able to read are the tomes still left in the Sodality of Setar and the Sodality of Una. Every other coven is a mystery. But yes, there are a few records that survived the burnings during unification, some of which discuss a witch’s ability to communicate, and even harbor, their deity,” Melisina said.
“Is it only those of us with sentimental magic?” Vaasa asked.
Just then, Sachia stirred awake, sitting up and glancing around the room. Her eyes went wide at seeing Vaasa, and she sat up entirely.
Koen, who stood just behind the couch, arched a brow. “Sentimental?”
“Magic pertaining to the spirit or the inner world, instead of magic that deals with the physical,” Melisina said. “These are old terms.”
“It’s what Ozik calls it,” Vaasa chimed in.
Koen furrowed his brows and came around the settee, sitting opposite Reid on the floor.
“So, your magic is sentimental?” Sachia asked. “What would he call mine?”
“Corporeal,” Vaasa said. “Magic that requires an element or physical object present in order to manifest. You can’t manipulate metal that isn’t there.”
“But your magic is fueled by your emotions?” Sachia asked.
“Precisely,” Melisina said. “I never heard Freya classify magic this way, but the witches of Una do. Veragi witches lack even more resources than other covens. We were hunted for centuries, and our histories were burned long before unification.”
Freya was Vaasa’s great-grandmother and the founder of the Veragi coven in Mireh.
Before her, Veragi witches had been scattered and on the verge of extinction, considered to be wielders of dark magic and often ostracized because of it.
Vaasa couldn’t imagine what the world would look like if the magic-less Icrurians hadn’t burned all their texts and records.
If Icrurian unification hadn’t cut the covens off at the knees.
She supposed, though, that it would have led to a world in which the witches ruled, not the magic-less. Icrurian unification had ended the Witches’ War and allowed for the covens’ fragile existence, even if some cities were still hell-bent on purging their witches.
“I’ve never heard the witches of Una refer to it as that,” Koen said, bringing Vaasa back to the here and now.
“You wouldn’t have,” Reid reminded him. “Even less likely, given your foremanship and relation to the headman. The only people the covens distrust more than each other is the state.”
Koen shook his head. “Foolish.”
“Necessary,” Melisina argued. “The last time witches were weaponized, they almost went extinct.”
“They pitted their own covens against each other,” Koen rebutted.
“Enough,” Reid said, interrupting them both.
This dark side of Icrurian history was somewhat foreign to Vaasa, as she had spent her time in Dihrah falling behind in her classes.
What early education she’d gleaned here in Asterya hadn’t been about magic at all—it had been about the Icrurian exchange of power, which was so different from Asterya’s.
She let out a small breath, running her fingers through her hair at the same time that Koen pulled his knees to his chest.
Sachia let out a frustrated breath. “So, you believe it’s possible? That Amalie could be carrying Veragi as we speak?”
Melisina pursed her lips, her tiredness apparent in the way her lids started to droop.
“Anything is possible. I’ve told Reid from the very start that I suspect this is larger than any of us; this is about something that occurred long before unification.
There is history woven into the fabric of everything, and I don’t believe these circumstances are an exception. ”
Vaasa had the strange sense of being overwhelmed, much like she used to feel at the beginning of learning about magic. She’d had less than a year of actual studying and training with Melisina. There was so much she didn’t know.
“Tell us what you saw,” Koen said to Vaasa.
Vaasa told them everything about her interaction with Amalie—the white eyes, the relief on Amalie’s face when Vaasa accurately identified her as Veragi.
The vision of her mother and Ozik’s affair, the bargain they made that gave him access to Vena’s magic.
Then, she told them of the mausoleum and her brother hiding the necklace inside her mother’s sarcophagus.
Sachia tucked her blanket up to her chin. “So, before we can leave, you need to visit the mausoleum? To take the necklace?”
“What do you believe this necklace will even do?” Koen asked.
Vaasa bit her lip. She didn’t know. “There must be a reason my mother left it for me. She said it would keep me safe, and now that Veragi has sent me on the path to find it, I believe it’s a weapon of sorts.”
“Whatever its role, it must be found,” Melisina agreed.
“It’s the last thing I need to do before we escape,” Vaasa confirmed. “And Ozik is away from the fortress right now. I need to act quickly.”
“I just need to pinpoint where in the prison my brother is,” Sachia said, voice churning.
“My lead sentinel will find him,” Vaasa said. “I promise.”
That was all the information she gave, confusion and shame burrowing into her body at the pieces of Roman’s identity that she kept hidden. She just needed to speak the truth to Reid first.
Sachia’s eyes glistened at the edges. “We won’t need Karev, then?”
“No, we won’t.”
The pirate gave a slight smile. “Thank you.”
Vaasa wondered how many years Sachia had been beholden to the whims of these Asteryan lords. What deals she had made to survive, and what they had cost her. In that way, Vaasa and Sachia were shockingly similar. “You’re welcome. Do you still have access to the black powder you smuggled in?”
Sachia frowned, but it was Koen who spoke next. A small thrill laced his tone. “You have a plan to use it?”
Vaasa gave a sharp nod. “The night of the engagement party.”
Koen leaned forward, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye that brought a smile to Vaasa’s lips. “Tell me everything.”
Vaasa woke with a start, her mind not entirely registering where she was.
Yet the moment she smelled salt and amber, she knew.
Reid’s chest was pressed to her back like it had been for so many nights in Mireh and Dihrah, before she’d ever given in to her desire of him, and for just a moment, she allowed herself to revel in it.
They slept on the couch in her family’s apartment, a blanket warming their bodies.
The others had gone back to the fabric shop, but Reid had stayed.
Her magic leaked onto her hands as her throat tightened.
How many nights had she wished for this?
How many times had she shivered on the floor of the Mekes prison picturing herself just as she was now? Safe. Warm. Loved.
She took in the lightless rugs, how no rays of early morning sun broke through the curtains, and let out a small breath of relief.
The stillness of the night drenched every corner of the apartment, and the fire continued, a churning red and orange glow visible in the coals.
Burned, but not out. Vaasa gingerly turned in Reid’s arms, prepared to bury her face into the crook of his neck and just lie there, when she felt him stir. His eyes opened softly and met hers.
“You should sleep more,” Reid whispered, his hand stroking her side. Touching her with reckless abandon, perhaps simply because he could. “It’s only been a few hours.”
“I don’t sleep well at night,” she confessed.
It was a jagged truth. The hours between midnight and dawn made her restless. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept soundly through them. There was such tender worry in the crease between his brows.