Ozik furrowed his brow and watched as Julianna’s eyes lost focus, as a subtle white glow emanated from them. She came back to him almost instantly, her eyes lifting to his.
Something so unreadable crossed her features.
Her voice came out a whisper. “You cannot marry me. You need magic, Ozik. Someone to fuel your power.”
He didn’t understand or deign to guess what Veragi had just spoken to Julianna, but she wasn’t running. She wasn’t asking him to leave. He curled his fingers around the necklace and put it back into his pocket. “Then I will make it so. I will find someone willing, for surely I have something that they need. And until then, bargain with me.” His hand brushed up her arm and curled to her waist, pulling her into him. She didn’t push away.
And so he took a risk. “I will offer you a kiss for every one.” He dropped his mouth to within inches of hers, almost kissing her, almost tasting her, until he pressed his lips to her neck. She sighed in his arms. He trailed his finger along the curve of her ribcage, up to the neckline of her dress. He drew a line where the fabric met the skin of her breast just as his mouth brushed her ear. “A touch for each agreement we make.”
She curled into him, her body loosening with each word. Her magic coasted around them in tendrils of black. With the skim of his fingertips along her collarbone, she shivered.
“Be my wife,” he whispered again. “I will keep you both safe. We will give Ellena siblings. Brothers. Heirs. The most beautiful family this world has ever seen.”
He had the distinct fear that she wouldn’t believe him. That she would shirk his words and his intentions because that was the fair thing to do. It was what he deserved. In every way, he had failed her.
But not anymore.
His fingers curled around the nape of her neck, and he pulled back just enough to tilt her face up to his. Tears welled in Julianna’s dark blue eyes, an admission of vulnerability he had not seen from her in years. “And if the city does not agree?”
“I am the city,” Ozik told her. “And the people will fall to their knees.”
She was at war; he could see it in the rise and fall of her breath, in the way her fingers curled tightly into his shirt.
“You have given me the world. Let me give you a lifetime,” Ozik whispered.
At his words, she closed the space between their lips. Her mouth met his, and Ozik groaned low in his throat. He tangled his fingers into her hair. And he kissed her. He kissed her with seven years in the making, with the heat of every moment he’d looked upon her and could not have her. There was no comparable happiness. It did not get bigger than this moment. She fisted his shirt and pulled them to the door, their bodies pressing to the house he had built, until she fumbled with the knob, never breaking their mouths apart.
He gathered Julianna up in his arms, the feel of her body summoning a memory from so long ago. A memory of hope. Of need. Of breathless fate that could be molded into whatever Ozik wanted it to be. He would give anything for this woman. For their daughter. “Let me in again,” he begged against her mouth. “Let me worship you like our gods intended.”
She tugged him through the threshold, the two of them practically falling into the small house. Passing the hallway that led to Ellena’s room and plunging straight into Julianna’s on theopposite side. The four walls were small yet limitless—quaint, but more like home than he had ever felt on his vast estate. As he slowly peeled off Julianna’s clothes, as he kissed every inch of her skin, he didn’t care for the dead or the living or the concept of fate at all. He thought he could make it himself, as he always thought when he was with her.
And when he buried himself inside her, when she blushed at her nakedness and then moaned with her pleasure, he thought himself an oracle in his own right.
As they lay together, she turned in the crook of his body, his chest to her back. She swept the hair from the nape of her neck, making room for the necklace. An invitation, an agreement. As he latched the clasp, he pressed a kiss to where it settled on her neck.
“Say yes,” he whispered into her hair. “Say you’ll marry me.”
And that look on her face when she finally gave herself over to him, when she whispered yes and agreed to the future he’d written, burned into his mind. The image held a place there, a home, unmoving and equally unforgiving, for the rest of Ozik’s life.
CHAPTER
33
It was agony—absoluteagonythat pulled Vaasa from her vision of Ozik. The magic in her body twisted like chains around her organs, yanking in every different direction.
Get up, a voice snarled in her mind.
Her eyes flew open. She was lying on the smooth mausoleum floor, her fingers digging into the stone steps, coldness seeping into her bones. If she hadn’t known better, she would think she was still in the prison. That everything until now had been some twisted, torturous dream that Ozik had sent her.
Reid wasn’t real.
Melisina had never come.
There was no way out.
But it was still the mausoleum she stared at. The necklace lay inches from her hand. She must have collapsed. Her head was fuzzy, and it pounded with the increasing pain of whatever her connection to Ozik caused. She sat up, rubbing at her temples, taking in her surroundings once more. She stared down at the necklace on the floor, at the stark black stone in the center.
It was the same stone. The same piece of raw gem that she had just seen in that vision. Set in a different chain and pendant, sure, but the same anchor.
