Vaasa ran as best as she could into the greenhouse, nausea sweeping over her, the moment Roman left the emperor’s wing. One of his many guards trailed her, but when she entered the greenhouse, he waited dutifully outside.
The necklace still sat in her pocket. The last rays of light bathed the ocean, the room dimming but not dark yet. Her eyes immediately landed on the black stone statues, tracing the lines of gold threading them. She put her hand over her mouth, the image of her mother in that sarcophagus unfolding in her mind.
She searched the statue nearest her, the round eyes of a woman with her delicate hand over her mouth. Drapes covered just one of her shoulders, cascading down her body to pool on the floor. Magic bubbled in Vaasa’s veins and here, in the greenhouse, she let it out. Black tendrils of power seeped from her fingers and wrapped up her arms. Lord Karev’s attack had left her no time to process what she’d seen.
To decide if any of it was true.
Ozik, so in love it was sickening. He’d had plans. A family. Achild. All in an ancient version of Icruria, of Wrultho specifically. The precise location Vaasa’s father had targeted in Icruria. He’d struck an economic deal with Ton of Wrultho and ultimatelybetrayed him, cutting off Wrultho’s water source and sparking conflict at the border. It was the first step to conquering the city.
That was Ozik’s doing, not her father’s. Vaasa was certain.
There were three parts of this anchor, three pieces that Ozik’s father had broken. One in the necklace in her pocket, the other in the ring Ozik wore. The third, Vaasa bet, was in Wrultho.
The dagger.
The pieces her mother said not to unite.
Vaasa looked up at the statue and wondered if everything she’d once made up about them was true. People with stories of their own, lives they had lived.
“The cost of a broken bargain,” Ozik’s voice said from behind her, but something was different about it. It carried an ancient tenor—a deep, echoing rumble. Like it had in the hallway when she and Roman tried to sneak to the prison the first time.
Vaasa froze. Turned.
His hands were in his pockets, his white hair brushing his shoulders. Shadows warped his otherwise smooth, pale skin, which had lost most of its natural color. Drained was the only way Vaasa could describe it. Far past how she’d seen him on the platform at the election. His blackened veins were stark against his pale skin, his eyes so bloodshot they might have well been red. Muted was the golden hue he had given to Ellena, the color he had inherited from his own mother.
An Ohros witch, capable of seeing visions of the future. The goddess of fate and sight.
Ozikhadaged compared to the version of him she’d seen in the vision, but not nearly enough. A young man then, barely older than a teenager, while now he seemed to be middle-aged. He was still aging, even if it was happening very slowly.
“That’s what you did to my mother, then?” Vaasa whispered. “To all of these women?”
“All of these witches,” Ozik corrected. He stepped further into the greenhouse, eyeing the statue nearest Vaasa that she had been staring at. “A Cota witch, the goddess of wind and sky. This coven was the fourth I drove to extinction.”
Vaasa watched every step he took, careful to place herself away from him. As he drew closer, she backed away. Her magic leaked freely onto her hands, which she refused to dip into her pockets. If the anchor strengthened or weakened him, she couldn’t tell. “How?” Vaasa asked. “How did you drive entire covens to extinction?”
He chuckled at her defensive pose. “It used to suffice, the game of bargains. People took them freely. It was so simple to offer them that one thing they wanted and to watch regret pool in their eyes when they realized the cost.”
Vaasa noted the wordcost, her ears ringing with it. The magic in her sharpened. It clawed at her abdomen. She held it back, careful to keep her control, terror pulsing in her mind.
“The last of a bloodline, dead at their own hands, chasing a selfish dream or a lost love. It’s always those two things, you know. Without fail. Love or power, it’s all anyone wants.” He gazed up at the statue Vaasa had been staring at, running his hand along the crook of the woman’s elbow. “Without a witch to their name, a deity can be sealed away. Cota has been sealed for two generations.”
Sealed.Not dead.
“How does one seal a deity?” Vaasa asked.
His lip curled in anger. “Ask Veragi.”
Vaasa’s brows threaded, this strange sense of understanding striking her like lightning. Ozik was not himself. He behaved and spoke the way he had on the stairs the night she had put a knife through his throat and he did not die. Vaasa latched her gaze on Ozik’s hand. On the ring.
His anchor. The thing that connected him to his Zetyr magic.Divine, he had called himself and Julianna. But he had spoken to Zetyr long before he’d ever inherited that ring—like Amalie claimed she had spoken to Veragi.
It was such a wicked turn of Ozik’s lips, the way he smiled at her. He curled his fingers on the statue. “You know, that little anchor in your pocket… your brother hid it, just like I told him to. He begged me for one of his own, and the stupid boy thought I’d given it to him. He wore that clawed ring everywhere, no idea it was just a useless stone. He never understood why he couldn’t do what you and your mother could.”
Vaasa’s lips parted in confusion, and she furrowed her brow. Her final conversation with Dominik churned in her mind, and she remembered that in the catacombs beneath Dihrah, the first question he’d asked her was how she had learned to manipulate the curse. She had thought it was because he wanted her to die, that he was angry she hadn’t. “Dominik was trying to learn to wield magic?”
“What else do you think Lord Vlacik wanted to discover? The two were insatiable, so desperate to harness the power of deities they didn’t even believe in.”
Dominik had worn that ring until the moment he died. Until the moment Vaasa killed him. And he’d thought it was an anchor that would protect him.
