Chapter 35
CHAPTER
The city thrummed around her. Vaasa had known this citizenry to be difficult to excite, but today, the streets were filled to capacity.
Their open-top cart hit a pothole, and Vaasa tried not to jolt too obviously.
Lord Karev sat at her side, chin held high, and the city roared with each wave of his hand.
They had paraded through the streets for two hours, people clogging every direction and alleyway, but as the last hour of sun reigned in the sky, the execution was imminent.
At her side, Lord Karev was the picture of the future emperor, reminding her in many ways of how her father had looked on days such as this.
Poised. Immovable. The perfect combination of aristocracy and violence.
His dark hair and bedroom eyes complemented the deep royal blue of his jacket.
It was a trick of the gaze, a symmetry between him and the hundreds of city guards who lined the streets.
Lord Karev had never served a day of his life as a soldier or guard, had never worn those particular coats, but he wanted to exude the image of someone who had.
The cart rode through large crowds as people ran to feast their eyes upon them.
She wanted to cover herself, to hide from their judgmental stares and the circus calls, but Vaasa waved despite her desire to run.
Gloves covered her hands and arms in snow-white, the same pure shade swirling up the hem of her Asteryan blue gown.
Vaasa squared her shoulders and smiled, wondering if every person around them could see through this foolish facade.
The narrow streets were difficult to navigate with this many onlookers, forcing the carters to direct the horses down the wider ones. The snow falling from the sky picked up in intensity, and Vaasa wiped the cold droplets off her cheeks.
Despite her sweeping cloak, Vaasa shivered.
Their cart arrived just in front of the Sanctum.
Sentinels lined the pathway as Lord Karev guided Vaasa from the cart and down the steps that would lead to the first floor.
Sentinels opened the doors for them, and they were ushered into the main vestibule, both curving staircases that led to the second floor covered in nobles and their honored guests.
The gallery was stuffed to the brim. All around them, each important family mingled, treating the events of today like a celebration.
The offices in this building provided the perfect lookouts over the grisly scene.
She hated every person in this room.
Roman and a host of fortress sentinels followed them inside, partnering with the city guard to defend the nobles. Most of them had their own hired mercenaries. At their entrance, all voices went silent, and everybody in the room turned to them.
In tandem, the nobles bowed.
Lord Karev smiled the way any good emperor would, a mix of power and humility pouring from him.
His footsteps echoed on the black-and-white marble floors as he guided Vaasa farther into the room by her elbow.
Her magic begged to bite the hand that held her.
She pictured it then, teeth sinking into Lord Karev’s throat the same way his hands had wound around her neck.
She gazed out at the room one more time, her heart thudding with reassurance, not a wisp of hatred leaking onto her smiling lips.
He would regret every moment of this day. They all would.
Ozik approached Vaasa and Lord Karev, dipping his head and interrupting her violent daydreams. She tried not to tremble.
The connection between them hummed, and his golden eyes were clear of any red.
Her gaze darted to his hand. The raw, jagged black stone winked at her.
One-third of a thing, not powerful enough to contain a deity.
She wondered how long the two anchors, the ring and necklace in tandem, would have been enough.
If that was why Zetyr had never been able to break through during Vaasa’s youth.
But surely he had been there, simmering in Ozik’s mind, playing some role in the expansion of Asterya’s empire.
Perhaps when Ozik had given Vaasa’s mother the necklace, it had been the beginning of the end of his control.
“The future emperor and empress!” Ozik exclaimed.
The room erupted in cheers. It was only the Vlacik family who stayed silent, a furious disapproval written in how they glanced among themselves and scowled.
Lord Karev stepped forward with one hand raised, and the room quieted.
Vaasa forced herself to watch him with the expression of someone taken—someone just as enthralled as the rest of them.
His voice boomed through the vestibule. “Today, we put an end to this Icrurian conflict with the rightful execution of the Wolf of Mireh!”
The room erupted once again. She met Ozik’s eyes, which watched her so carefully.
Every twitch of her body had to be exact; she was hyperaware of her magic, of keeping it at bay.
Lord Karev walked through the crowd, greeting the heads of families, suddenly paying attention to both the Old and New Asteryans.
They all groveled at his feet, and then at Vaasa’s, fabricated compliments spewing from their faithless mouths.
The crowd parted, and they ascended the stairs on the right side of the building.
They would view the execution from the Emperor’s Suite, a room on the top level of the Sanctum that overlooked the square and the iron execution pole.
The suite had sat empty since her father’s death, but Vaasa had watched more than her fair share of executions from that room, sometimes stepping out onto the narrow balcony when the weather permitted.
Her father had sometimes addressed the crowds from the space, the width of it only large enough for one, maybe two, bodies.
She pictured him there, expressive hands waving as he drew every eye in the square.
When they reached the top floor, Roman used his keys to open the door for them. It was perpetually locked, a small security measure her father had taken.
Only one way in and one way out, and it always required a key.
The Emperor’s Suite was immodestly sized, the wall facing the city square built of glass.
She eyed the doors that opened to the small balcony, tracing the blue curtains and long silver ropes that dangled from them.
Today, the curtains were wide open, a substantial pile of rope on the floor of either side.
She trailed the rope to the mechanism that controlled it at the back of the room.
Built of iron, it was sturdy, able to hold far more than the weight of curtains.
Dominik had swung from those ropes as an early teenager, immediately eliciting their father’s ire.
Vaasa walked to the windows, running her fingers along the thick glass. Behind her, Lord Karev dismissed Roman from the room.
“I’ll be just outside the door, should you need me,” he told them both.
On the first night he’d come into her room, Roman said he had met Reid in the war camps. He had watched the arrest, had spoken to Sachia. He knew the man being tied to that pole wasn’t Reid of Mireh, and he had allowed her to believe it was.
“Go downstairs,” she instructed. “Find Ozik.”
“What—”
“Your future empress just gave you a command,” Lord Karev bit.
Roman grit his teeth. He tried to make eye contact with her, but she just stared out at the execution square, keeping her eyes on the clock tower, doing everything she could not to aggravate the scowling lord in the corner. Everything hinged on her perfect behavior.
The door closed, and she was alone with Karev.
Vaasa stood next to the glass, holding tight to her rage and her violence, the only movement in her body the way her finger tapped against the glass. Each press in time with the hand on the clock.
Vaasa peered down with her heart in her throat. Below, the crowd began to part the way fish did when a predator was near.
She sucked in a breath. Her eyes caught on Koen’s head of brown hair. He was dragged in chains to the iron pole by at least ten sentinels.
He lifted his spectacled eyes to the sky.
Surely, he knew they were coming for him. Ozik had assured her that Koen was alive by his own orders.
Guards began to wrap chains around the pole, and on the far-left side of the square, a member of the city guard ostentatiously sharpened his blade.
Vaasa knew the shape of that man’s body, despite the mask that covered his features—a security measure always taken by the executioner, lest someone’s broken family come seeking revenge.
Every instinct she had homed in on Reid as he sharpened a large blade over and over.
Vaasa kept her eyes peeled, her chest rising and falling with her breath. She stared straight out at the square as the hands on the clock moved closer to the hour. Vaasa’s voice threaded the air around them as she watched each tick, tick, tick of the clock.
“You’re going to forgive me one day,” Lord Karev said, his voice approaching from behind until he settled into a spot near where she stood, gazing down at the city square.
At Koen. “You’ll wake up and realize the absurdity of your treason, and then you’ll find yourself thankful for a partner who saved you from yourself. ”
Vaasa kept her eyes glued to Koen as they secured him to the iron pole. “You know, my lord, you have the same flaw my brother did.”
Lord Karev chuckled with such little care. “And what’s that?”
Vaasa turned, meeting Lord Karev’s amused gaze. Likely, he’d believed the same whispers that Roman had, the ones that pinned Dominik’s death on Reid. He wouldn’t consider her smart enough or well versed with a blade. “Confidence,” Vaasa said. “He did not believe I would kill him, either.”
A thick brow rose on Lord Karev’s face, a thread of fear replacing the haughty gratification that had overcome him from the moment he’d found her in that mausoleum.
Vaasa gave a serpentine smile. “That isn’t Reid of Mireh,” she confessed. “He was the bodyguard.”
Lord Karev’s expression dropped, first bleeding to confusion, then melding into rage. He opened his mouth to speak, but the clock struck the hour, the chimes of it pealing in the air.
Cracking booms rattled the Sanctum, one after the other, and screams reached all corners of the city square.
Vaasa released every ounce of her tethered magic into the room.