Chapter 33 #4
And then it all clicked. She should have realized it sooner. This was not Ozik she looked upon. This was the being she had faced on the stairs on the way to the prison, the thing that kept trying to break free of a body that contained it.
Ozik wasn’t a god. He was possessed by one.
“Zetyr,” Vaasa gasped. “You’re Zetyr.”
Vaasa filed through every moment she’d spent with Ozik, trying to categorize them, trying to reconcile the two different beings she’d been presented with.
In her youth, he had been constant, and she could cling to no memories of his mortality faltering.
But these past few months, each time he vacillated between crimson and gold, it was their fight for dominance in the same body.
Ozik pushing through, reclaiming control, only to be lost in the red again.
Ozik’s control had deteriorated, and quickly.
This is what she’d seen on the other end of their bond. That red pool, the cavern in Ozik’s mind, the ancient thing that seemed to be emerging from within him.
It was Zetyr.
The corners of Zetyr’s lips curled up. “In the pursuit of extinguishing my enemies, a man like your father is the perfect red herring. He did all of the searching for me. Uncovering witches one by one, making them ripe for the slaughter. The deities who betrayed me will pay for their crimes, despite Ozik’s valiant efforts.
You know, he used to serve me so willingly, before your mother came along. ”
Vaasa took a step away from him, her mind reeling.
Ozik had left breadcrumb after breadcrumb for her to find.
The torture in the prison, a way to strengthen their connection and show her what her father and brother had done.
The training each morning, allowing her to glimpse Zetyr without knowing it.
The nights when his pain raged across the cords that bound them.
His entire scheme of making her a figurehead, all to highlight what her father had been turned into. Every language she spoke, every political system she learned, every history lesson packaged in words with double meaning. He had taught her how to find the answers, how to observe.
Her father’s office.
The notebook.
The necklace.
Their bargain.
You were never trying to steal my magic, were you? Vaasa whispered into her mind. Our connection helps you hold him at bay.
Ozik’s voice murmured in her head, quiet, seemingly far off, yet distinguishable nonetheless. You are far cleverer than anyone has ever given you credit for, even me. But especially your father.
Tears welled in Vaasa’s eyes as she gazed upon Zetyr, at the hateful contortion of a face that did not belong to him. “What bargain did Ozik make? What happened to Julianna and Ellena?”
Zetyr tilted his head with such menace as he said, “Without fail, love or power. One cannot have both. And as you’ve been told a hundred times, love is a useless thing.”
He dropped his hand and started toward her.
Vaasa backed up and pulled her knife from her waistline. The weapon felt heavy in her hands, tangible, real. Despite it, she shook. She stumbled back again.
He was a god. What use was a blade?
Zetyr laughed at her display. Vaasa’s gut twisted with the inhuman sound. “Shall we use that knife to execute the Wolf of Mireh?” Zetyr taunted.
Vaasa’s heart lurched. This sounded nothing like Ozik—it wasn’t strategic, it lacked depth, was missing that inherent double meaning.
Before he could get closer, before he could get his hands on her, Vaasa dipped into her pocket and grasped the necklace.
Her magic winked out, but she pulled the anchor from her pocket and held it out between her and Zetyr, hoping, praying, that it would do something.
Zetyr froze.
He halted in his steps, his face contorting in rage, and the gold in his eyes grew brighter. Clearer. The webs of blood within them retracted, and Zetyr shook his head, resembling a wild animal. The black veins in his neck receded. Vaasa stepped forward, and his knees cracked against the gravel.
“Good,” he gasped, his voice leveling out, breath filling his lungs. His head hung. “Well done, Vaasalisa. Well done.”
He took a large breath and lifted his face up, not a trace of red in his eyes any longer.
Ozik.
Vaasa clutched the necklace in her shaking hand. The hum of the iron links worked up her fingers, reminding her of the magic that wanted so desperately to get out.
Kill him, her mind thought. Kill him now.
Rage flooded her veins and all her reasoning, all her careful planning, was lost. She dropped the necklace into her pocket and let her magic spring to life. Instead, she did exactly as he’d once told her to do.
She struck.
Vaasa launched a wave of magic across the greenhouse, the edges sharpening into a glittering wall that slammed into Ozik. He flew backward and hit the olive tree, sliding to the ground in a slumped-over version of himself.
Immediately, the cords within her tightened. Ozik’s head snapped up, his eyes so clear, his skin pale and unmarred.
But he pulled back on her magic, was taking it away again, he was—
No.
In her haze, she felt as if she grasped her hands around those cords and pulled back. Nails sinking into the power, with all her might she fought against the stealing of it. It felt as if the rope had slipped through her fingers, so she tightened harder, grit her teeth, tugged more. It was hers.
It was hers.
Ozik smiled.
Something on the other end of their connection gave.
Magic poured into her in a tidal wave, her anger and fear and desperation swirling in her veins like a heady wine.
It was red and black, mist and oil, a combination of both their power.
That shimmering bond between them overflowed like a well, and she let it fill her, let the strength of it fuel each ounce of magic that sprung to life in her body.
The wolf tore from her bones, more real than anything she’d ever conjured.
Every placement of its feet, every stone beneath them, she felt so distinctly.
She dug her own boots into the ground in tandem with the manifestation.
It growled, prowling forward.
Vaasa wanted to kill him. There was no space for sympathy, no thoughts to consider Julianna or Ellena or why Ozik had done any of this. She had never hated someone like she hated him—it was a depth of rage she hadn’t thought herself capable of.
Unleashed, the wolf sprung forward and tackled Ozik to the ground.
He grunted as he slammed into the stones, and Ozik spun, trying to thrash the wolf off him.
It dug its teeth into his face, and Ozik screamed.
She tasted his blood, felt the slickness of it on her own tongue, and the metallic tang lit up the part of her that was entirely capable of violence.
It felt as it had when she’d taken Dominik’s life. It was her kill. Her choice.
It was the part of her that was capable of great horrors to get exactly what she wanted.
Ozik roared in his rage and pain, and she thought, for just a moment, that she had done it. That she was finally going to kill him. And then his voice whispered in her mind. A shame to only have one third of a thing, isn’t it?
Vaasa stumbled backward.
Call off our magic, Vaasalisa.
Vaasa hauled the magic back inside herself. Not just her magic—his, too. Melisina was right. She was channeling Ozik.
She forced her body backward, stumbling, mind reeling. She had one piece of the anchor in her pocket, but it wasn’t enough. She needed all three pieces. That was how she killed Zetyr.
Her mother’s note unfurled in her mind: Whatever you do, stay in Mireh and do not unite the other pieces. The price is far too great.
What was the price? What was her mother trying to warn her about?
She thought of Ozik’s bloodshot eyes, of the veins showing beneath his skin.
Perhaps that was the cost: To wield the anchor was to give oneself over to it entirely, to slowly lose control of your mind and your heart and your humanity.
The anchor of the god of souls could do no right by the person who held it.
That was what Dominik had sought, the reason Lord Vlacik had tortured her.
It had taken Ozik, a man capable of such incredible love, and turned him into a vessel usable by Zetyr due to his father’s bargain.
Maybe that was what Vaasa’s mother had seen.
Maybe she had watched a man she’d loved for fifteen years become a beast.
The wolf disappeared. The tang of blood remained on her tongue.
Ozik lay on the ground for a moment, his chest rising and falling.
Vaasa hit her knees. The heel of her palm dug into the sharp cobblestones as she gripped them to keep herself from falling face-first. She stared down at the glimmering stones beneath her hands and tightened her grip upon them.
What did it matter if she’d finally figured it out?
If she knew precisely the way to kill him and escape her bargain?
The bargain itself meant nothing, not now.
He had taught her exactly how to use it to her own advantage.
He didn’t want their magic linked so he could wield her power—it was so that she could wield his.
“Did you do this to my mother?” She begged for an answer. “Did you link your magic to hers just so she could fight off that deity inside of you?”
“Yes,” he confessed from where he knelt on the ground. He leaned forward, his hands on the gravel, his back rising and falling with breath.
“I hate you,” she spat, not even sure she believed him.
“I know,” he whispered. “But I have given you everything you need to finish what she couldn’t.”
Ozik had turned Vaasa into what her mother had been, a tool to fight his battles. And Reid was going to die anyway. He would be executed on the iron pole in the middle of Mekes. Ozik had given her nothing—all he’d ever done was take. He’d taken her mother, her life in Icruria, and now…