The weight of what he told her bore down heavy in the air, smothering Vaasa. Her voice wavered, sadness coating every word. “You aren’t the reason she’s dead. I am.”
Ozik shook his head, dropping his hand. “Don’t ever say that again. I am, without a shadow of a doubt, the reason your mother is gone. If she had never loved me, if I had never learned of her magic and tried to trick her into resealing Zetyr, she would still be alive.”
Tears pricked Vaasa’s eyes. Ozik couldn’t guarantee a thing like that; the magic might very well have killed Vena Kozár even if Ozik had never intervened. Of this, Vaasa knew intimately. It was when Vena removed her necklace, when she tried to hide it for Vaasa, tried to give Vaasa something that would protect her—
Vaasa covered her mouth with her hand and choked back a sob. The image of her mother turning to stone lapped ceaselessly against the walls of her mind. “She tried to give me the one thing she knew would save her own life.”
“I know you have doubted your mother’s favor; I have seen it since you were a child. But to love you openly, to show you any affection… it would have put you in danger. You were your father’s daughter, but you were caught between two people who could not stand the life of the other. Your mother wanted to tell you what was coming, wanted me to train you, but your father wouldn’t allow it. He was hell-bent on finding a way to cleanseyou of what he believed was a curse.Thatwas when the torture of witches began.”
Her father knew. He’d known that Vaasa would someday inherit the magic crawling beneath her mother’s skin. “He conquered a continent in search of a cure?”
“When your mother inherited her magic and your fate became clear, your father demanded you be able to read any book you came across, to converse with even the eldest of history-keepers. If there was a way to eliminate magic from his bloodline, fromyou, he believed you would find it. Your parents were complicated people, Vaasalisa, but you must understand that they loved you and your brother, even if the only way they knew how to show it was how their parents had shown it to them.”
Tears slid down Vaasa’s face. Every language, every nation, every violent upheaval that Vaasa had been forced to witness, was in pursuit of saving her life. Her family had been fundamentally fractured, and now here Vaasa was, alone and still standing with the remnants of their choices in her hands.
And the remnants of her own.
Vaasa stared at Ozik, shocked that she could feel such pity wrap around her ribcage, such sorrow and compassion for a man who had calculated every moment of these weeks with precisely this exchange in mind. To steal her. Train her. Use her.
He was no better than her father. Selfish, ambitious men.
And once again, she had no choice but to bend to their schemes.
“Fine. State your bargain,” she said.
Ozik didn’t smile. Even though she knew he had been leading her to this exact moment every second she had been back in Mekës, satisfaction was nowhere on him. Not on his face, not in his voice. “I will help you and your friends escape this city if you will go to Wrultho and finish what your mother could not.”
Vaasa’s fists opened and closed. It was all she could do to stop herself from twitching. “What is the cost of reuniting the anchor? Why wouldn’t my mother do it?”
“Because,” Ozik said, voice leveling out, “in order to reseal Zetyr, you have to kill me.”
CHAPTER
34
Reid waited for her.
He swore he had spent his life doing exactly this. Even when he didn’t know her. Even when he didn’t realize she was coming. He had been moving through life in precisely the same way he paced in her grandfather’s library now: aimlessly, not understanding why he took the steps he did, just knowing he had to put one foot in front of the other.
The secret door unlatched.
Reid froze.
Vaasa burst through, her breath labored, her wild eyes searching.
They landed on him.
A sob burst from her chest at the same time Reid threw his body across the room. He scooped her into his arms as she wailed, her chest racking with her tears, and Reid’s own eyes watered at the sound. Pain emanated from her in waves. He ran his hand through her hair over and over. “Shhh,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m here.”
“I thought they found you,” she cried.
“They didn’t,” he said. “But they have Koen.”
She pulled back, tears staining her face, her eyes red with exhaustion. At that moment, Reid’s mother came barreling into the room, her eyes wide. His mother practically toppled Reid over as she pulled Vaasa into her arms.
Vaasa started to cry again, the release of her emotions so intense he thought she would rattle the building. Her guise of neutrality had completely fallen. There wasn’t even an attempt to put it back up. Reid’s mother whispered to her over and over, the two rocking back and forth.
Vaasa took a breath as she came back to herself. She looked around the room, likely feeling who was missing, just as Reid did. “Do you believe he’s alive?” Reid asked, voice so low.
