The white light in Julianna’s eyes dimmed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
Julianna only shook her head. “We should go home.”
Home, to the house Ozik had built for them outside the city walls, where the river met moss and wildflowers did not have to hide from insular men. Ozik looked at Ellena, who would never receive his Zetyr magic. Instead, she would inherit her mother’s. It was the only reason Laus Vichardi had allowed the child to live; she was a girl, and that at least categorized her existence as a disappointment instead of a threat. The time Ozik could see Julianna and Ellena had grown shorter with every season; each year Ozik came closer to his Evocation, the less tolerant of a Veragi woman and a bastard child his father had become. Last year, his father had insisted the visitations cease altogether. He had demanded Ozik focus on morepermanentthings.
And so Ozik loved them in the shadows of the forest, beneath the leaves of an olive tree.
This half-life—it would all be over soon. When Ozik emerged from his Evocation and he had the complete anchor, Ozik would change every tile in his estate to suit their desires. The kitchenwould shift, the rooms would overturn, the bathing chambers would be whatever colors Ellena declared.
Then he would marry Julianna. Somehow, he would convince her. He would honor her in the way she deserved for having brought Ellena into this world. Ozik didn’t care if Julianna’s magic marked her as cursed, if she would never offer him the same bargain his mother had offered Laus. Ozik would be strong enough. He was destined to be the most powerful Zetyr witch in history. There was a reason Zetyr spoke to him directly before he even inherited his magic.
“It’s time,” Julianna said, black mist curling around her fingertips as she brushed them over their daughter’s shoulder. Ellena looked at Ozik with a somber lowering of her eyes. Goodbye did not suit either of them well. Still, she was an obedient girl, so Ellena rose from the grass and wandered, never farther than their hidden paths, her dainty hand dragging along the bushes and flowers. Ozik walked her to their home’s gate just as her hand splayed toward a bush of white bell-shaped flowers.
Ozik blocked her fingers. “Tisel, dear, is more deadly than a blade. A quiet killer, quick as a breath.”
Ellena’s small hand shot back to her chest, the other curling around it. “Sorry, Papa.”
“We’re almost there,” Julianna whispered, taking Ellena’s arm and guiding her through the gate.
Ozik said goodbye to his daughter silently, with a shared look only they two could understand. When he looked at her like that, the world around them went silent. But then she slipped through the gate, and Julianna, too, and though his heart lurched to follow them, all Ozik could do was grip the bars and watch.
His guard sat atop a horse at the edge of the forest, faithfully awaiting Ozik’s return.
“All is well?” his guard asked.
Ozik nodded.
They traveled through the mighty walls of Wrultho and back into the great city, going directly to the center where Ozik’s family estate was built. More guards lined the perimeter of the great Zetyr stronghold, but in the throes of his historic Evocation, Ozik had already begun to plant a seed. The guards knew his father had an expiration date, and so he had slowly, inconspicuously turned them to his own needs. The men protecting this home would bleed for him—for Ellena and Julianna, too, when he commanded it. Because his father could be many things: a ruler, a witch, a king in his own right, but he could not be Divine, no matter how hard he tried.
When Ozik ambled back through the door of his father’s estate, a part of him remained in that forest.Two more days, he repeated to himself.Two more days.
That evening at dinner, Ozik sat at his father’s table with a renewed sense of possibility. Raucous laughter filled even the corners of the room as most of the inner city tried to squeeze into their grand dining hall.Two more days, Ozik continued to tell himself. Such words were enough that when his father cracked a joke with Ozik as the punch line, it merely rolled off his shoulders. Yet when someone else laughed a little too hard, they were met with the keen puncture of his father’s stare; it was only the great Laus Vichardi who could mock his own heir. He boisterously told fables of his greatness, slouching in his chair and using exaggerated hand movements to add emphasis to his tales, the golden dagger containing his anchor strapped to his side. Behind him, his Miro’dag swayed back and forth, its crimson, beady eyes overlooking the entire room. The creature was a manifestation of Zetyr magic, a henchman that could do his father’s bidding. Every sentimental witch could manifest one, even if they took different forms. For Julianna, it was a fox.
Sitting at his father’s side, white hair falling down her back, was Ozik’s mother. She smiled upon him, her golden eyes sosimilar to Ellena’s. To his. At her neck was a dainty necklace, her small portion of their family anchor stark against her pale skin. In mere days, the dagger would be his for the wielding, the necklace his to bestow upon his own wife. Ozik would not waste his power the way his mother had, would not gallivant about the way his father did. He would do the very thing he had been born to, the thing Zetyr was leading him toward: He would unite the cities of Icruria under his name, underhisbloodline. Wrultho would be but one city that bowed to the Vichardi line. That bowed to Zetyr. The magic-less rebels would have no footing then, and any coven who defied him would fall.
Ozik stood, walking around the room and mingling with their visitors. He preferred to stay close to the walls, to know what was at his back at all times. The room only grew fuller as dancing began, and Ozik wanted nothing to do with it. He stepped into the hallway, but a voice drawled from behind him.
“You reek of the forest.”
Ozik turned to find his father standing there, gray eyes that matched his aging hair narrowed upon him. “What do you want, father?” Ozik asked.
Laus ambled forward, the guards standing at the door slipping into the main hall at Laus’s gesture to do so. “Does she smell of dirt, too?”
Ozik’s heart began to pound. Laus knew where he’d been that afternoon?
“Don’t look so surprised,” Laus said. “I see everything. I haven’t given you my magic yet, Ozik.”
This is the way it had grown between them; what was once a prideful gaze in his father’s eyes had soured. In many ways, Ozik had humiliated him when he’d come to Laus asking for shelter for Julianna and Ellena. Ozik was barely seventeen at the time Julianna’s stomach had started to swell, and to bear a child with a Veragi witch was in itself an indignity. But Ozik knew the truth;it was not disappointment that had stolen the pride from Laus’s gaze.
It was envy.
Every year they came closer to Ozik’s Evocation, the more Laus saw his own life fade into irrelevance. Ozik had to pretend he did not want this family; to cast his daughter and the love of his life aside so his father would allow him to take their family’s Zetyr magicwillingly.
That was the key. Zetyr magic could only be passed down through a bargain from father to son. Once Ozik had it, he could do whatever he wanted with the power. And he knew what he wanted.
His father would rot in the river then.
