EPILOGUE
Ozik distinctly remembered the night of Vena Kozár’s death; even trapped in the back of his own mind, he had felt the bond between them extinguish.
Their bargain made null. Ozik had been there in that hallway, watching the world through his own eyes but unable to move.
Subject only to Zetyr’s whims. Ozik had not held her in the last moments she pulled breath, hadn’t whispered a promise that he would find her in whatever came next, whether it be another world or another lifetime.
That silence had haunted him every day since.
The sheer nothingness that had existed on the other end.
It felt much like losing a limb.
The night Vena Kozár was taken from him, he had fought Zetyr until her last breath.
When she was gone, Ozik had sunk into himself.
For months, he had lived in the back of his own mind like a coward, grief-stricken and sick, while Zetyr ravaged the Asteryan empire.
The god of bargains and souls had surfaced before, but never with the kind of autonomy Ozik had granted him after Vena.
Zetyr had twisted Dominik into the boy’s darkest potential, had spun fear into his mind of Vaasa’s intentions to overthrow him.
Had sicced brother upon sister in the deity’s first attempt to kill her.
He wanted every Veragi witch dead, for they were the ones capable of sealing him away.
By the time Ozik had beaten Zetyr back into submission, it had been too late.
Dominik’s plans were in motion, deals had been struck with the foreman of Wrultho, and the Icrurian election had been infiltrated.
He had tried to guide Dominik into different choices, but the path had been carved, and all Ozik could do was find a way to help Vaasa survive it.
They’d visited Mireh, and despite the lies Vaasa had tried to spin, Ozik had known she could finally control her magic.
That whatever the witches in Mireh had taught her was working.
And he knew this was his last opportunity. He would likely never again be so close to a Veragi witch, and if anyone was capable of resealing Zetyr, it was her.
So this was worth it. Ozik sat there, a prisoner in his own mind, a spectator to his own life. Zetyr had taken control, and Ozik’s only hope was sailing on a ship into the Loursevain Gap.
Roman Katayev approached the dais where Ozik’s body sat.
Ozik felt each of Zetyr’s movements: the twitch of his eyebrow, the cocking of his head.
It was as if Ozik had committed the motion himself, though it was entirely against his will.
A complete disconnect of his own intentions from his body, yet trapped here all the same.
Witnessing. Hearing. Knowing. By now, the red in Zetyr’s eyes had faded.
The bulging black veins had burrowed once more beneath the surface.
Those things were only symptoms of Ozik’s resistance, and Ozik could no longer fight.
Zetyr was perfectly camouflaged, as he’d been in those months after Vena’s death.
A man walked at Roman’s side. Tall and burly, with a jagged scar running vertically upon his neck.
His blond hair was unkempt, but his face was shaven, a strange contradiction that Ozik had never been able to place about this particular pirate.
Perhaps he wanted the world to see that scar.
It didn’t matter; Zetyr had already manipulated Captain Sutherland the same way he’d manipulated Vlacik.
But Zetyr did not know the stakes for Roman.
Ozik’s dealings with the sentinel had been one of the things he managed to keep from Zetyr.
So swift, so brief, one single bargain lived between them that Zetyr had never caught on to.
It had been brokered in one of those rare moments when Zetyr was locked so deep in his tomb that he had no access to Ozik’s world.
Ozik felt sick at the sound of his own voice, of the dark tenor it had taken with this deity’s occupation of his body.
“Sutherland,” Zetyr greeted the pirate captain, rendering Roman as nothing but a scorned lover who would chase Vaasa into hell if that’s what it took to avenge her abandonment of him.
Captain Sutherland looked up. He had just spent the past few weeks locked in the Mekes prison, courtesy of Lord Karev and the new regime he had established in the prison.
No doubt, Roman had set Sutherland free.
Ozik needed very little to know the truths of people—to see their faults.
Roman’s was his delusional loyalty. He followed even the worst of people into battle.
“We intend to depart now,” the pirate king said, his Asteryan accent thick. “They will be lost beneath the waves.”
Zetyr looked down at where Veragi had severed his hand.
Though magic had healed him in kind, this time, the goddess had a left a mark.
An ugly, jagged scar that extended around his wrist like a bracelet.
Proof of his vulnerability. Proof that Zetyr, and therefore Ozik, could be killed.
“Bring me back the necklace and the ring, or do not bother to return,” Zetyr stated.
The ring. But Vaasa didn’t have it.
Roman gazed upon the deity, seemingly without a clue it wasn’t Ozik he spoke to.
Yet Roman’s gaze turned assessing, even if just for a moment.
The sentinel had always been smarter than he seemed, more resourceful.
He had witnessed Ozik’s struggle against Zetyr in the hallway the night Vaasa had attempted to slit Ozik’s throat.
He knew the magic that plagued Ozik made him less like himself.
Roman’s gaze darted down to the empty finger on Zetyr’s hand, where the anchor no longer lived. Just as quickly as he’d looked, he met Zetyr’s eyes once more.
It was the only chance Ozik had.
Ozik screamed in his own mind, used every ounce of strength he had left to send one phrase across the planes between them, to force one thing up his throat and out of Zetyr’s lips. He said it over and over and—
“Remember our bargain,” Zetyr spat angrily, communicating the words Ozik was trying to say.
In exchange for Roman’s position as lead sentinel, he had agreed to do one thing above all else: Keep Vaasalisa Kozár alive. If she died, so did Roman.
It was the only promise Ozik had made to Vena Kozár that he would not break. To save her daughter, no matter what it cost.
Pain shot through all that was left of Ozik, and exhaustion overtook him.
Zetyr beat Ozik back until he couldn’t even see out his own eyes.
His senses went dark, and he hid in the burrows of his magic, in the place that Zetyr had occupied for hundreds of years before Ozik’s father had set him loose.
The place Ozik had built inside himself that fateful day when he’d sealed Zetyr into his own body.
Around Ozik, the dark walls of the tomb of Zetyr rose higher and higher, a perfect replica of the one waiting for Vaasa in Wrultho.
Next to his feet, a red pool of magic swirled.
He had shown Vaasa this place, this darkest recess of his mind, so she knew precisely what to look for when she was strong enough to channel his magic entirely.
If she wanted to, she could find him here.
Ozik sat upon the ground next to the pool of magic, dipping his fingers into the crimson water. And just as he had after Vena’s death, Ozik faded into obscurity, having lost his fight against Zetyr.
He was unsure when, or if, he would ever rise again.