For a moment, she felt horribly stupid for ever believing she could change his mind.
Ozik stood just one step down from her, dressed in his royal blue coat and black breeches. He analyzed the room just as closely as she did, weighing the tension between families that seemed to fill the room to bursting. Vaasa looked to the rings upon his fingers, catching upon the black stone that seemed to beckon her gaze. The similarity to her mother’s necklace was uncanny. Filing that detail away in her mind, she plastered a smile on her face to greet the next family.
They approached, and the next, and the next. It was a parade of young sons, one after the other, cattle brought to slaughter, none of them any wiser. While they all maintained the same title, some lords had more land, more people and merchants and armies, than others. Those lords sat closest to the throne and seemed to draw the attention of the entire room. Old Asteryans and New Asteryans split the gallery like borders on a map. But as one lord entered, the entire room leaned forward—Lord Karev, whose footsteps echoed all the way to the throne as he approached the dais.
Thick black hair curled around his ears and fell just to the base of his neck, an equally plentiful beard framing his jawline. He was midway through his thirties but looked more like a man in his twenties, six years older than Vaasa. There was no denyingthat Lord Karev was handsome. His thunderstorm eyes coolly assessed everyone in the room with no particular care for their approval or thoughts, a sort of confidence that Vaasa believed was genetic: Some people were born with it, and others simply weren’t. While the room watched his smooth gait and broad, drawn-back shoulders, Vaasa couldn’t help but think to herself,I’ve seen broader. Felt broader. Dug my nails into broader.
His gray gaze locked onto her, then raked up and down the throne with approval. He dipped deeply at the waist. “Heiress,” he said by way of greeting, her title rolling off his tongue with such ease.
She wondered if he’d practiced this in the mirror.
“Lord Karev,” she responded, keeping her tone as demure as she could manage. It was precisely what these men expected.
He looked up through his eyelashes, still bent at the waist, and gave a knowing, haughty smile.
Vaasa held her weight comfortably in the chair. Stepping forward, Ozik extended a hand to Lord Karev, who readily took it. All feigned signs of respect as the gaggle of Old Asteryans looked on like vultures. Yet behind them, the New Asteryans thrummed with approval. It was then Vaasa realized that what this entire choice boiled down to was a battle between the old kingdom of Asterya and the more modern lifestyle of a young empire.
And that was something Vaasa could play off of.
“If I may be so bold,” Lord Karev said, “it is a gift to have you back in this city where you belong.”
Vaasa tilted her head. He’d come with intention, that much was clear in the strategic lift of his lips, but bold wasn’t quite enough of a word to categorize him. It was outright brazen to make his perspective so obvious on a dais in front of every single one of his enemies.
If Lord Karev kept this up, she wouldn’t have to sow discord herself. He would do it for her. Her eyes flicked to Lord Vlacik, who watched the interaction with a deep scowl.
“How charming,” Vaasa said, talking like the chameleon she’d been raised to be. Her eyes trailed back to Lord Karev. She gave a graceful lift of her lips that didn’t leave the impression she was thinking much at all.
He bowed deeply once again and sauntered off to his family’s seats. Peculiarly, she noticed, he sat alone. No wife, no heirs, no cousins. She knew he had extended family, but why hadn’t they come with him?
He struck her as capricious, which was perhaps more dangerous than his competition. At least Vlacik’s violence was predictable.
The formal welcome took all the patience she had, and by the time dinner arrived, Vaasa had little interest in conversation. Still, she let her smoothest Asteryan out to play. These lords only spoke her native language; the languages of the areas her father had conquered had since become a rarity. With each smile and bat of her lashes, she felt the slick of her skin as if she had shed it; this grimy pandering made her feel exactly like her father. She cared for half of what she said and meant none of it. Her responses were shallow and predictable, just as these men expected her to be. She couldn’t present herself as a threat; she needed to win some allies before she became an enemy.
A violin wept notes from the corner, music filling the room as the master of strings plucked and pulled. Wives and daughters of wealthy merchants cascaded about, their hungry eyes taking in the possibilities. Vaasa thought that maybe, for some of them, this was the opportunity they’d waited their entire lives for. It wasn’t just her hand in marriage that would be dangled like a carrot. Any of these women held the potential to find themselvesa match—particularly from the crop of men who did not leave this city with a throne.
Vaasa waited in her seat for a few minutes past appropriate. She itched to be anywhere else. It felt a betrayal to sit here and drink and dance while Amalie was trapped in the prison, while a war waged just past the snowcapped mountains.
When she had no idea where Reid was.
Vaasa’s heart beat loudly in her chest. She swallowed another mouthful of water from the silver goblet in her hands. No one knew it wasn’t wine—another small detail that would work to her advantage. Sobriety was the only option in the center of a lion’s den. She stood and stepped down from the raised platform, pausing at the front of the room while everyone seemed to watch the dancing couples in the center.
One lord stepped closer and invited her to dance. Vaasa swallowed the urge to run. Hands met her waist, and the music drawled in a slow embrace, and at first Vaasa kept her breath. But the more she moved her feet, the quicker the music played, the further the ground seemed to slip from beneath her. If she closed her eyes, she was right back in Reid’s arms, back in the Lower Garden with the steel drums and every pair of eyes on her and her foreman. She closed her eyes and swore she could hear Reid’s voice, his rolling Icrurian.Dance with me like lovers do.
Vaasa’s heart twisted. How could she have ever thought this world of pandering would be enough? That some ambassadorship would fulfill her? Gut empty, magic just out of her reach, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to keep her dinner down. She wanted her husband. She wanted Mireh. She wanted community and the witches and the Lower Garden and the smell of salt in the air.
Vaasa forced herself to take in a breath. She wouldn’t survive this if she didn’t get it together. She could not break Amalie out of this prison, couldn’t return to Reid and the place she wantedso desperately to call home, if she couldn’t make it through one dinner. She considered every person in the room; she had been raised to do this. To predict every intention, every need, every action of those around her.
She settled her eyes on Lord Vlacik. He wielded far too much power in the space, seeming to maintain a gravity all his own. People circled around him, rotating like stars, or moths to a flame. Vaasa hovered by the wall. As she kept tabs on the lord, a man slithered to the space next to her. His presence pulsed around her, and her body picked up on its own instinct—she fought the urge to tighten her jaw or slink away.
“Lord Karev,” she greeted without removing herself from the wall.
“Heiress,” he greeted her back, pulling his fingers through his dark tresses. “Not a fan of dancing?”
Vaasa schooled her expression, refusing to allow her face to give any of her thoughts away. “I’m not particularly good at it.”
“Strange.” He leaned back against the same wall as her, turning his dark head to peer down. “I vividly remember you dancing until the last song when we were younger.”
A map of their continent unrolled in Vaasa’s mind, and she located his territory upon it. Just below Innisjour, and a key stretch of valleys that Reid would inevitably have to bring armies across. To unsettle Lord Karev’s territory would make that task a whole lot easier; he had one of the largest mercenary armies in Asterya, and to unravel that strength would clear the path for the Icrurian Central Forces to reach the Loursevain Gap.
