Vaasa forced herself to turn the page. The further she went, the more menacing the subjects became. Where the playful lines of a boy entranced with fiction once thrived, there were now depictions of death and mindless scribbles. Angry strokes cut through sketches like jagged scars, marking the things Dominik did not like. Labeling his own work as intolerable. Vaasa turned another page.
Her breath caught in her throat and swelled.
The Miro’dag.
The creature of oil and darkness stained the paper in a perfect rendition of each curve, every snag of its wings placed precisely where they belonged. She ran her fingertips over the spikes on both of the wings that served as replacements for where arms should have been. Along the curling horns that ripped mercilessly from the top of its head and stroked downward to its waist with one flick of Dominik’s wrist. Ribs poking out from broken skin like prisoners dying to escape. The drawing she looked upon was technically perfect and frightening in its accuracy.
And beneath it, one word:Zetyr.
She immediately turned the page again and found scribbled numbers in the harsh lines of Dominik’s handwriting. There was a list of them, little scratches in sequential order. Vaasa turned to the bound files behind her, stacked upon bookshelves that covered the back wall and two sidewalls.
She turned back to the numbers. It took a moment for it to click, but this was simply a code their father had taught them once upon a time—a way to mask his notes from wandering eyes. Vaasa got to work translating the numbers into letters, falling into a somewhat cathartic routine of solving a puzzle.
Standing and perusing the shelves, she plucked out the first notebook indicated in Dominik’s journal. She began to flip through it, her heart pounding as she read, bile rising in her throat. Vaasa’s hands started to shake.
It was a detailed account of the torture and execution of a woman her father’s men had taken from one of the inland territories, written by the late Lord Vlacik, the dead father of the very man who had tortured Vaasa in the prison. Who now vied for the Asteryan throne through a betrothal to her.
This woman they tortured had been a witch. A Zohar witch, Vaasa remembered, given the woman could manipulate water. All Melisina’s teachings came pouring back to her—the secrets of the covens, how Icrurian unification had decimated the witch population to few, if any, per coven. That was the true limiter of their magic: to only inherit it after a parent’s death, to only ever have one witch per generation within a family. It made weaponizing magic difficult, and understanding it even more so. Witches weren’t usually young people—they were men and women in the second half of their lives who had already put down roots and had entire families to lose if they fought.
With a heavy heart, Vaasa closed the bound notebook and moved on to the next one noted in Dominik’s journal, finding a similar result. It was another notebook littered in entries from the late Lord Vlacik, but this time, the victim was a witch who could heal her own wounds. Zuheia, the goddess of healing, who could be traced back to Wrultho. They had pushed and prodded the older woman, injuring her just to see if she was capable of mending the damage. The last entry described a rope theyhad rubbed in a processed form of iron, and then sealed. When placed upon the witch, she could no longer heal herself.
She had not survived the torture.
They had discovered beyond a shadow of a doubt that the processed iron was capable of cutting off whatever connection the witch had to her power. A shiver crawled down Vaasa’s spine. Had that been the type of rope Dominik had used to tie Vaasa up under the colosseum in Dihrah? In the prison, iron chains had cut off her magic, even when Ozik had granted her access to it. They must have been coated in that same processed metal.
Vaasa read seven more accounts, each from a different territory that Vaasa’s father had conquered, five of them contributed by the late Lord Vlacik. The two accounts at the end were done by the current Lord Vlacik, and Vaasa recognized Dominik’s handwriting. There was another contributor, a clergyman, which indicated the beginning of the Asteryan church’s involvement. It had been under Dominik’s reign. Her father had been trying to contain witches’ magic. But by the time Dominik was involved, the goal of the torture had changed. It became about manifesting it.
Vaasa reopened Dominik’s notebook, flipping through the pages and scanning his drawings of the Miro’dag once more. There were no more mentions of Zetyr, but Dominik had known of the god Ozik gained his powers from—the god of bargains and souls. She kept turning, turning, until something slipped out of the pages in the back.
Folded in the notebook was a small parchment envelope that had been torn open, her mother’s wax seal broken. Vaasa gently lifted the seal, the envelope’s parchment dry and covered in fingermarks. This had been looked at more than once.
Inside was a small letter. As it unfolded, Vaasa’s breath left her body.
Vaasalisa, her mother’s handwriting began.A wedding present. There is so little I can pass down to you other than pain. But I can give you this. It is the only thing that will protect you from him. Whatever you do, stay in Mireh and do not unite the other pieces. The price is far too great.
Vaasa stared at the writing. She reread it again and again, her mind churning, her body feeling suddenly heavy and weightless at once. Who washe? What other pieces?
And what was the price?
The only person she could think of was Ozik.
Vena Kozár had arranged Vaasa’s marriage the summer before she died, when she’d visited Mireh and trained with Melisina. This had apparently been paired with a wedding gift, one Dominik had never delivered.
As she looked at the page where the note had been hidden, she saw exactly what item her mother had been speaking of, drawn with Dominik’s expert shading and strokes. Woven iron links fastened irrevocably to a small, ominous black stone.
Her mother’s necklace.
She sucked in a breath. The obsidian piece on the necklace looked just like Ozik’s black stone ring. How had she not made the connection before? She couldn’t recall exactly when her mother had started wearing the necklace, but it had been a decorative fixture on Vena Kozár for years. Vaasa ran her fingers over the drawing, realizing something.
The necklace was missing.
She started to paw through the hidden compartment of the desk, but it was empty. She opened every drawer. No necklace. It was gone.
Her final conversation with Dominik played on a loop in her head.I want to understand. To know why she gave you the one thing she knew would be a threat to me.Vaasa had assumed he’d meant her marriage to Reid—that their motherhad negotiated Vaasa’s arrival in Mireh, her access to the Veragi coven and an ability to overcome what he believed to be a curse. But what if it was actually this? What if he had found the necklace and known something she didn’t about what it was capable of?
ThehimVena Kozár had written about… was it her lover, or her own son?
Vaasa closed Dominik’s notebook, unable to look at it further. She wasn’t certain she could ever bring herself to open it again. But one thing was definite: Her mother had sent her away from this place for a reason. She’d wanted to protect Vaasa from whatever Dominik and Lord Vlacik were doing.
