Chapter 33 #2
Vaasa’s chest rose and fell with her measured breaths.
She had so little information, any assumption would be its own risk.
Instead of spiraling, she schooled her features.
The necklace in her pocket grew heavier.
The tangled mess of magic in her body started to expand.
She would need to play every second correctly if she intended to survive.
If she had any chance of getting this necklace back to Amalie.
With a salacious grin, Lord Karev stepped toward her. Vaasa twitched.
Roman took note of it. And like every time before, he said nothing.
He did nothing. Not even as Lord Karev gripped just above her elbow, fingers digging into her muscle sharply.
What was meant to be a guiding touch quickly transformed into a drag, and Vaasa stumbled over her feet.
He pushed open the doors, and cold wind slammed into Vaasa’s face.
The moment they were in sight of the other sentinels, Lord Karev’s touch softened, and he caressed up her bicep before strolling away to where his own carriage waited.
Vaasa filled her lungs with biting air, fuller with each step he took away from her. He climbed the stairs of his carriage. On the left, her own carriage waited, manned by two fortress sentinels. The same ones who had taken her and Roman back the other night.
Men who were loyal to Roman.
“Heiress,” Lord Karev called, leaning out of his door with a tight grip on an iron handle.
Everyone around them turned to hear Lord Karev speak, and she understood the title to be a summoning. A demand. Vaasa halted, fist clenching. She lifted her eyes to meet his.
“I’m delivering our execution order tonight,” he said. “The Wolf of Mireh loses his head tomorrow.”
Our. Despite the rage that curled in her body, the sheer temptation to untether her magic and show this man what real power looked like, Vaasa nodded.
She could kill every man in their vicinity.
Could smother the breath from all their lungs.
If she didn’t find a way to escape, this was how she would spend the rest of her life.
Roman approached but kept a healthy distance, likely aware that any proximity in front of Karev was the quickest way to be dismissed.
Somehow, in the span of a few days, the lord had situated himself as the holder of the crown.
It didn’t seem to matter that he wasn’t legally emperor or that they weren’t married—the moment this city was presented a nobleman with a semblance of a claim, they bowed.
Vaasa swallowed her fury. Longing burst through a dam within her; to be who she was before she’d come back here, to climb into Reid’s bed, to feel the trickles of magic upon her skin.
She wasn’t certain if anything would be different, if their ending would have changed, but if she had just let herself love him, she would have had Reid for longer.
She knew it now just as much as she’d known it on that platform staring up at Ozik.
But memories did not make the pain of loss worse. They made it worthwhile.
She should have loved him with every tremor of fear, with every quake of her cowardly bones. She should never have left him this morning.
“Tomorrow,” Vaasa managed through the tightness of her throat.
Lord Karev smiled with fabricated approval. “I believe we’re going to have a wonderful marriage.”
Vaasa bit the inside of her cheek so sharply, the metallic tang of blood trickled onto her tongue.
Lord Karev shut the door to his carriage, and even standing in the snow, Vaasa could not feel the cold. She kept her teeth gritted; it prevented her magic from making an uninvited appearance. She wasn’t certain that she’d be able to keep it down—not like this.
Not anymore.
Roman ushered her into the waiting carriage, and despite the eyes upon them, he loaded inside with her.
Panic reared in her stomach, and her magic stuffed up her throat.
Vaasa shook her head, desperate for him to leave.
Roman ignored her unspoken protest and slammed the door shut, locking both of them inside.
She was going to lose control over her power.
Vaasa shoved her hand into the pocket of her dress and gripped the necklace. Her magic choked to nothing and a dull hum throbbed in her fingertips. The tension in her body eased, even if only a fraction, and she forced herself to take deep breaths.
“Did he hurt you?” Roman demanded.
Vaasa pulled her knees up to her chest, rocking backward on the seat and curling into the corner.
She couldn’t do this right now. She couldn’t have this conversation, couldn’t think of anything beyond Lord Karev’s words.
She wanted Reid. She wanted warm air and salt and the Icrurian sun.
But they had him. They were going to kill him.
“Answer me, damn it!”
Vaasa’s eyes flew open and she hissed, “Yes. He choked me and pinned me to the floor.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and one slid down her cheek, no longer a ruse.
She batted it away with her free hand. Part of her felt sick at saying out loud what had happened in that room.
It was too vulnerable, too raw. Roman didn’t deserve to see her pain.
But he needed to believe her pain was due to Karev, not because of Reid.
It took a moment, but Roman eventually muttered, “I should have been there. I didn’t think he would come for you so quickly.”
Vaasa closed her eyes. All sense of energy drained from her. She couldn’t mask the blaring pain in her ribs or the tenderness of her throat. Her free hand rose to it, brushing along the reddened skin where a bruise would inevitably bloom.
“Was he telling the truth?” Roman asked. “Did you really turn in the Wolf of Mireh?”
Vaasa considered her options, pain extending up the hand that touched the necklace. She opened her eyes. Roman gazed at her from across the carriage with this glimmer of something, like he knew a piece of information that she didn’t. Like he knew the answer to his question already.
“No,” she said on instinct, trying to remind herself what was at stake if she estranged him. “I had no idea that Reid of Mireh was here.”
A small breath from Roman caused Vaasa to tense. There was no telling whether he would believe her, if those words would exonerate her or not. “You need to know something.”
Vaasa sat up a little. “What?”
“I went to see that pirate you’ve been meeting with. Sachia,” he said.
Vaasa closed her eyes. There was no use continuing to argue, to lie, given Roman’s connection to Sutherland.
“Sutherland has been searching for her for months now,” he confessed. “He wants her dead.”
Vaasa clung to the necklace in her pocket, to the only lifeline she had that would prevent her magic from destroying everything around her. She opened her eyes and stared at him across the carriage. “Did you kill her?” Vaasa asked bluntly.
“No. And I won’t, not so long as you have a use for her. I know about the black powder. I assume you’re setting a trap for Karev.”
Vaasa uncurled just slightly, keeping her hand in her pocket. “That was Karev’s trade proposal, not mine.”
Roman scooted forward on his seat, extending a hand and placing it upon her knee.
It didn’t seem to matter that she was curled in the corner of the carriage or that she had already drawn back from his touch.
His voice dropped to an almost indistinguishable whisper.
“Tell me you found the weapon we can use against Ozik. That you have a way of eliminating them both.”
Vaasa pulled her gaze from where he touched her. “I found it.”
Relief softened his features, loosened his grip upon her knee. “What is your plan, Vaasa? Let me in. Please. Karev, Ozik, all of it.”
Vaasa pursed her lips. Carefully, she unfurled, though she was careful not to force Roman to remove his hand from her knee. Instead, she turned so her body was at his mercy, so she appeared as the vulnerable woman he wanted her to be. “You won’t tell Sutherland?”
Roman slid from his bench and came to his knees before her. “He is in the prison, has been for months. I am loyal to you,” he said, keeping his hand on her knee, the other raising to graze her neck where Karev had hurt her.
“I don’t want you to be complicit,” she whispered.
But he shook his head. “Stop trying to save me, you’re only making it more dangerous.”
Vaasa hated herself, but she leaned into his touch.
If Reid was arrested, she would use every weapon in her arsenal to get him back.
She didn’t care what it cost her. “I’m planning an assassination,” she confessed.
“In exchange for her brother, Sachia’s crew will do the dirty work.
Ozik and Lord Karev will die. You and I will narrowly escape.
It’s meant to happen on the night of my formal engagement party. ”
Roman’s lips parted. Closed. “Did you know that she was housing Reid of Mireh?”
“No, I swear it,” Vaasa whispered, hoping he might be delusional enough to believe her. “I met a salt lord, but that’s it. Karev met him, too. But Reid of Mireh was nowhere to be found.”
Her words seemed to confirm something to Roman, some detail she didn’t know clicking into place. “That’s why you insisted on going to the prison. To help Sachia find her brother.”
“Yes.”
“You should have asked me,” Roman said.
“I didn’t know if I could trust you yet.”
Roman curled his hand around the nape of her neck, still on his knees but rising enough to meet her almost eye to eye. His touch was gentle now, not a trace of a threat within it. “And now?”
“And now I know you’ll do anything it takes to help us win the throne,” she whispered back.
“Anything,” he confirmed. Roman stared at her, his eyes wild with fury and desire. Revulsion twisted in her abdomen, her hand still clutching that necklace with everything she had as he leaned closer. As his mouth approached hers.
No, no no, she thought.