Vaasa closed her eyes.
And then there was a small tug somewhere in her core, a strange summoning down the line of her connection to Ozik. On instinct, Vaasa reached for those cords, the ones still very much tangled in her body. Their bargain wasn’t broken, though seemingly more direct, as if she now knew each curve and twist of the string. A pathway she could easily navigate.
There you are, Ozik’s voice drifted through her mind. Distant and quieter, but still there.
Vaasa went rigid. Reid shifted next to her, but he didn’t speak. He only trailed his fingertips up and down her arm in an effort to calm her, ignorant of the advisor’s voice inside her mind.
Is it really you?she asked Ozik.
For now.
Then he went quiet. Vaasa squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the shape of the necklace in her pocket. Ozik had given her everything he’d promised—they’d escaped, and Asterya would likely crumble into itself before it ever had the chance of fighting Icruria.
And now, she was supposed to reunite the pieces of the anchor. To reseal Zetyr in his tomb. A second bargain now lived between them—her freedom for her agreement to do the very thing her mother couldn’t. To unite the pieces of the anchor and vanquish Zetyr once and for all, killing Ozik in the process.
The thing her mother had said was not worth the price.
Vaasa didn’t believe that Vena Kozár had left her children in Zetyr’s path simply because she’d loved Ozik too much to kill him. Her mother had been just as steadfast as her father in this way; between love and power, they would both choose power. Vaasa was certain of it. Which meant there was another price, another reason her mother had not wanted to unite the anchor. Something Ozik hadn’t told her, because he knew it would stop Vaasa, too.
So, Vaasa had left Ozik’s ring on that bridge.
Without it, she could never unite the pieces. She could leave Ozik to be ravaged, leave the Asteryan nobles to contend with a god none of them believed was real. Whatever havoc Zetyr wreaked, it could only serve to weaken Asterya.
Vaasa had no wish to know what that price of reuniting the anchors was. The way to survive a broken bargain now lived in her pocket, after all. She would tell Reid to bring them back to Mireh, to take advantage of the ruined empire Vaasa had left in her wake. Once they won the war, she would decide what to do with Ozik. With Zetyr.
She shifted in Reid’s arms, panic building in her throat. For a while, she tried to focus on the rise and fall of her own chest. But then she felt Ozik again, stronger now. Something shook onthe other side of her bond with Ozik. Magic pulsed around her, within her. It flooded down the cords that bound her to him, until his voice was inescapable, begging to be heard. It was only screams, as if Ozik was locked behind a wall.
Ozik repeated something over and over, though Vaasa had the strange sensation that he wasn’t speaking to her. She listened closely, distinguishing the words the best she could, until they finally rang clear.
Remember our bargain.
And then he went silent, his presence completely gone, like a candle extinguished by the wind.
EPILOGUE
Ozik distinctly remembered the night of Vena Kozár’s death; even trapped in the back of his own mind, he had felt the bond between them extinguish. Their bargain made null. Ozik had been there in that hallway, watching the world through his own eyes but unable to move. Subject only to Zetyr’s whims. Ozik had not held her in the last moments she pulled breath, hadn’t whispered a promise that he would find her in whatever came next, whether it be another world or another lifetime. That silence had haunted him every day since. The sheernothingnessthat had existed on the other end.
It felt much like losing a limb.
The night Vena Kozár was taken from him, he had fought Zetyr until her last breath. When she was gone, Ozik had sunk into himself. For months, he had lived in the back of his own mind like a coward, grief-stricken and sick, while Zetyr ravagedthe Asteryan empire. The god of bargains and souls had surfaced before, but never with the kind of autonomy Ozik had granted him after Vena. Zetyr had twisted Dominik into the boy’s darkest potential, had spun fear into his mind of Vaasa’s intentions to overthrow him. Had sicced brother upon sister in the deity’s first attempt to kill her.
He wanted every Veragi witch dead, for they were the ones capable of sealing him away.
By the time Ozik had beaten Zetyr back into submission, it had been too late. Dominik’s plans were in motion, deals had been struck with the foreman of Wrultho, and the Icrurian election had been infiltrated. He had tried to guide Dominik into different choices, but the path had been carved, and all Ozik could do was find a way to help Vaasa survive it. They’d visited Mireh, and despite the lies Vaasa had tried to spin, Ozik had known she could finally control her magic. That whatever the witches in Mireh had taught her was working.
And he knew this was his last opportunity. He would likely never again be so close to a Veragi witch, and if anyone was capable of resealing Zetyr, it was her.
So this was worth it. Ozik sat there, a prisoner in his own mind, a spectator to his own life. Zetyr had taken control, and Ozik’s only hope was sailing on a ship into the Loursevain Gap.
Roman Katayev approached the dais where Ozik’s body sat. Ozik felt each of Zetyr’s movements: the twitch of his eyebrow, the cocking of his head. It was as if Ozik had committed the motion himself, though it was entirely against his will. A complete disconnect of his own intentions from his body, yet trapped here all the same. Witnessing. Hearing. Knowing. By now, the red in Zetyr’s eyes had faded. The bulging black veins had burrowed once more beneath the surface. Those things were only symptoms of Ozik’s resistance, and Ozik could no longerfight. Zetyr was perfectly camouflaged, as he’d been in those months after Vena’s death.
A man walked at Roman’s side. Tall and burly, with a jagged scar running vertically upon his neck. His blond hair was unkempt, but his face was shaven, a strange contradiction that Ozik had never been able to place about this particular pirate. Perhaps he wanted the world to see that scar. It didn’t matter; Zetyr had already manipulated Captain Sutherland the same way he’d manipulated Vlacik.
But Zetyr did not know the stakes for Roman. Ozik’s dealings with the sentinel had been one of the things he managed to keep from Zetyr. So swift, so brief, one single bargain lived between them that Zetyr had never caught on to. It had been brokered in one of those rare moments when Zetyr was locked so deep in his tomb that he had no access to Ozik’s world.
Ozik felt sick at the sound of his own voice, of the dark tenor it had taken with this deity’s occupation of his body. “Sutherland,” Zetyr greeted the pirate captain, rendering Roman as nothing but a scorned lover who would chase Vaasa into hell if that’s what it took to avenge her abandonment of him.
Captain Sutherland looked up. He had just spent the past few weeks locked in the Mekës prison, courtesy of Lord Karev and the new regime he had established in the prison. No doubt, Roman had set Sutherland free. Ozik needed very little to know the truths of people—to see their faults. Roman’s was his delusional loyalty. He followed even the worst of people into battle.
