“I have finalized your marriage agreement with Diana’s family,” Laus said. “We intend to announce it tonight. It’s best you come inside.”
Diana. An Ohros witch, just like Ozik’s mother.
“She is willing to sacrifice her power?” Ozik asked, disbelief riding his words. “Her family wants that?”
Laus sneered. “You know how the sentimental magics can be, especially when inherited so young. Diana is wildly powerful, but she is capricious and cannot tell the difference between a hallucination and a vision. It is a favor to relieve her of her burden, just as it was for your mother.”
Ozik scoffed. “And if I do not want to spend my days bedding a mad woman?”
“Have you not already bedded a mad woman? Given her a child?”
“You know nothing of what you speak,” Ozik warned.
“No, Ozik,youknow nothing. I have been patient enough with your ignorance. Your choice is simple. Come inside, accept the marriage agreement, and in two days’ time, you will ascend to the position I have created for you. Or I will rid us all of yourbastard child and whore witch, and you will inevitably do as I say anyway.”
Ozik grit his teeth, his anger a scorpion, his righteousness the stinger.
“Your mother is waiting,” Laus said before he turned and opened the doors.
The raucous crowd screamed and stomped their feet as Ozik followed his father into the room. As Diana, with her tight emerald-green dress and wild blond ringlets, stepped forward to meet him. Ozik looked into her cloudy eyes, and her brows twitched, the smallest furrow. And then her irises cleared, whatever vision she had just seen gone to her now.
Ozik danced with Diana, his hands heavy. His father watched on with an expression that was never quite satisfied, but his rage had quelled at Ozik’s compliance.
And then when the night was coming to an end, his mother walked him to his room. Nimble fingers unlatched the necklace at her neck, and she placed the links in his hand, curling his fingers around the small portion of the black stone anchor. The smallest of the three pieces. “I know it is two days early, but give this to Diana when you are ready,” she whispered. “It will… help her, as it has helped me.”
His mother squeezed his hands and then left him standing there.
And Zetyr’s voice floated through his mind, ancient and all-knowing.Your future is yours, Divine. Do not give your power away so callously.
Will this protect her from my father?
That is a piece of me, the voice said.Its wielder carries my strength and protection.
Ozik stared down at the necklace, his fist tightening around it once more. And he knew what he needed to do.
As the afternoon sun started its descent to night, the last that Ozik would ever have to wait, he met Ellena and Julianna in the same place at the edge of their home. Julianna wore a long dress, only offering a glimpse of her legs for Ozik to feast upon. Something in him stirred; she had always had that effect upon him. When she was near, he could practicallytastemagic.
After five rounds of hide-and-seek, Ellena sat with her legs curled beneath her, her small fingers diligently braiding together pieces of grass while she caught her breath. Once more, she wove in small, pink flowers. Her black hair was braided away from her face in that unique way Julianna always accomplished, and her golden eyes stayed entirely focused upon her task. Julianna crouched in front of Ellena. “Go inside, dear. It’s time to say goodbye.”
Obediently, Ellena stood and bid Ozik goodbye, another sorrowful moment that Ozik would put an end to in just a day. Ozik wrapped his hands around the bars of the gate surrounding their house. Ellena shimmied through, but before she darted into the house, she reached back and pressed something into his palm.
It was the bracelet she had woven the day prior, the little pink flowers tied securely by small knots of grass.
“For you,” Ellena said, then she disappeared into the home.
Ozik’s eyes began to water.
This time, Julianna didn’t follow Ellena directly inside. She halted by the gate, waiting until Ellena had shut the door and could no longer hear them. Squeezing her eyes shut, Julianna took a breath, but her dark power leaked onto her hands. She shook them, trying to rid herself of it, but it only grew.
“Dearest,” he whispered, tucking Ellena’s bracelet into the pocket of his cloak and capturing Julianna’s hands in his own.Her black mist crawled along his skin. He didn’t recoil the way others did. He liked how it felt on his skin. He wanted to taste it. To taste her. To steal away whatever caused such turmoil tonight. “What is it?”
“I went into the city today,” Julianna whispered low. “I heard about your engagement.”
Ozik kept his expression neutral. “It is not what it seems.”
Julianna knew well enough that Ozik needed to marry someone eventually. That he had been a man of great power with a fate as sealed as the catacombs beneath their city, at least until she had unraveled it. When he’d finally taken her to his bed, it was the first time he had felt that his life was his own for the shaping. That the prophecies were true, and that he could have anything he wanted because of it.
The flickers of Julianna’s magic were enough to tell Ozik she was on edge. That her emotions were running too high. He couldn’t help the way he bloomed at the idea that this bothered her.
