On the first night he’d come into her room, Roman said he had met Reid in the war camps. He had watched the arrest, had spoken to Sachia. Heknewthe man being tied to that pole wasn’t Reid of Mireh, and he had allowed her to believe it was.
“Go downstairs,” she instructed. “Find Ozik.”
“What—”
“Your future empress just gave you a command,” Lord Karev bit.
Roman grit his teeth. He tried to make eye contact with her, but she just stared out at the execution square, keeping her eyes on the clock tower, doing everything she could not to aggravate the scowling lord in the corner. Everything hinged on her perfect behavior.
The door closed, and she was alone with Karev.
Vaasa stood next to the glass, holding tight to her rage and her violence, the only movement in her body the way her finger tapped against the glass. Each press in time with the hand on the clock.
Vaasa peered down with her heart in her throat. Below, the crowd began to part the way fish did when a predator was near.
She sucked in a breath. Her eyes caught on Koen’s head of brown hair. He was dragged in chains to the iron pole by at least ten sentinels.
He lifted his spectacled eyes to the sky.
Surely, he knew they were coming for him. Ozik had assured her that Koen was alive by his own orders.
Guards began to wrap chains around the pole, and on the far-left side of the square, a member of the city guard ostentatiouslysharpened his blade. Vaasa knew the shape of that man’s body, despite the mask that covered his features—a security measure always taken by the executioner, lest someone’s broken family come seeking revenge. Every instinct she had homed in on Reid as he sharpened a large blade over and over.
Vaasa kept her eyes peeled, her chest rising and falling with her breath. She stared straight out at the square as the hands on the clock moved closer to the hour. Vaasa’s voice threaded the air around them as she watched eachtick, tick, tickof the clock.
“You’re going to forgive me one day,” Lord Karev said, his voice approaching from behind until he settled into a spot near where she stood, gazing down at the city square. At Koen. “You’ll wake up and realize the absurdity of your treason, and then you’ll find yourself thankful for a partner who saved you from yourself.”
Vaasa kept her eyes glued to Koen as they secured him to the iron pole. “You know, my lord, you have the same flaw my brother did.”
Lord Karev chuckled with such little care. “And what’s that?”
Vaasa turned, meeting Lord Karev’s amused gaze. Likely, he’d believed the same whispers that Roman had, the ones that pinned Dominik’s death on Reid. He wouldn’t consider her smart enough or well versed with a blade. “Confidence,” Vaasa said. “He did not believe I would kill him, either.”
A thick brow rose on Lord Karev’s face, a thread of fear replacing the haughty gratification that had overcome him from the moment he’d found her in that mausoleum.
Vaasa gave a serpentine smile. “That isn’t Reid of Mireh,” she confessed. “He was the bodyguard.”
Lord Karev’s expression dropped, first bleeding to confusion, then melding into rage. He opened his mouth to speak, but the clock struck the hour, the chimes of it pealing in the air.
Cracking booms rattled the Sanctum, one after the other, and screams reached all corners of the city square.
Vaasa released every ounce of her tethered magic into the room.
CHAPTER
36
Reid sprinted through the madness of the city square, eyes on the iron pole looming next to the ocean. Explosions rang out from the Sanctum, one by one, black powder ignited by members of Sachia’s crew who had laid the sort of firetraps that would put even the Icrurian Central Forces to shame.
People screamed as they fled the square. Guards watched Reid pass as they, too, ran, fires breaking out along the side of the building. Explosion after explosion knocked the scaffolding down. Donning a stolen blue Asteryan coat and the mask of the executioner, there were only mere seconds more that Reid could continue to blend in.
He only needed twenty feet to reach Koen.
He caught the eye of a city guard who noticed which direction Reid’s body turned, and the man unsheathed his weapon the moment Reid stepped forward.
Reid lifted his sword and ducked, narrowly avoiding the swing of the guard’s blade. He spun and plunged his sword into the man’s kidneys, then twisted, spinning his body to stab another guard in the side. He didn’t have time to appreciate the bloom of red on Asteryan royal blue. Swinging his sword in tandem with his steps, Reid roared as he sprinted at another man. Steel clashed with a ring in the air, and the sound of it settled with familiarity in Reid’s bones.
He might not understand Asteryan, but this was a language he spoke.
