“No,” Ozik replied, staring into Vaasa’s eyes. “Your time is up.”
“Ozik—”
“I said your time is up,” Ozik snarled, composure slipping. “I agreed to six weeks. No more, no less.”
Six weeks.That was how long she had been in this prison, then. Vaasa filed away the detail, wondering why Ozik had let such a thing slip. Did he want her to know how much time had passed?
“We have spent more time trying to keep her contained than we have learning anything,” Lord Vlacik argued. “Between her attempts to escape and her striking—”
“I fail to see how any of this is my problem,” Ozik interrupted. “You were promised six weeks, and six weeks have passed.” Vaasa watched him as he walked to the door. He looked back over his shoulder once, eyes lingering on her for only a moment before landing on the two sentinels waiting dutifully for a command. “Take her back to her cell.”
Lord Vlacik stormed out the door after Ozik, and Vaasa was left with the two sentinels and quiet clergyman who continued to jot down notes without bothering to look at her again. The sentinels undid the collar around her neck. It didn’t make a difference; Ozik had once again taken away her access to magic, leaving her empty and powerless. Vaasa’s wrist came free, and she let her arms sag against the table. Soon, they hauled her up and out of the room, but each step she took was a strain, knees wobbling. She fought to keep upright but lost, tripping over her own dragging feet, and the sentinels barely caught her. She came face-to-face with the iron keys at their belts, studying them, locking away every detail she could.
Now wasn’t the time to hatch an escape, but that time would come.
They carried her into a dark, narrow stairwell and up two flights of stairs until they stopped in front of her cell’s wooden door. She stared at the small window of iron bars upon it as one of the sentinels used his set of dangling keys to open it.
“Witch,” he sneered at her. He threw her in, and Vaasa slammed into the dirty floor. When she looked up, both sentinels had disappeared into the unquiet tomb.
Within this cell, all she could feel was the biting cold, the musty air, and the strange sense that though she was by herself, she wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER
2
Something rattled the iron lock of Vaasa’s cell. Faintly, she recognized the sound as a key turning. Her vision only registered the hands, cold and harsh and far sturdier than her own, coming toward her as they found her. A sentinel gripped her forearm and neck, slamming her already-injured cheek into the grimy floor so she was face down and unable to move. She thrashed, but his grip was too tight. Another sentinel took a fistful of her dirty hair and tugged, her scalp screaming as he forced her to look up. Her wrists were bound in front of her, and once again she felt an ache in her body where her magic used to be.
Footsteps echoed against the floor. Slow and menacing, someone appeared at the entrance to her cell, stepping throughthe doorway into her small confinement. Lord Vlacik wore a royal blue Asteryan uniform that winked with iron brooches—none of them earned in war, all inherited from his late father. With a well-kept blond beard and beady ice-blue eyes, he looked as frightening as he had every other time Vaasa had seen him. He was only about ten years her senior, but she remembered the way he’d circled her like a shark the moment she had come of age.
She wanted to lift her head and spit in his face, but she couldn’t muster the strength. As it was, it would take all she had to pull herself from the floor. Fear curled in her gut. The cuts along her upper arms and thighs stung.
“Cover her,” Lord Vlacik commanded, eyes raking over her torn woolen pants and shirt. Someone draped a cloak over her shoulders, the warmth of it almost useless with how cold she had become. “On your feet,” he said.
Strength wavering, Vaasa struggled to stand. Harsh hands dug into her upper arms as a sentinel dragged her upright, forcing her to balance on wobbly legs.
Lord Vlacik looked disgusted at her weakness, his upper lip curled and his nose scrunched at the undeniable smell of piss and blood that permeated the prison. He turned on his heel and started back down the hallway. The sentinels holding her ropes tugged, and she had no choice but to follow. They led her across the slick floor, out of the cell and down a cold, dark walkway lined on either side with wood-and-iron doors much like the ones that had held her captive. They plunged into the narrow stairwell and dragged her down a set of steep stairs, then through a set of double doors, bathing the hallway in bright white.
Light reflecting off snow could be beautiful, but it could also be blinding. She squinted, and her eyes watered. Bitter coldnessassaulted her uncovered face as she stumbled onto one of the many iron platforms that wrapped around the prison of Mekës.
Wind lifted her knotted, greasy hair in tendrils, salt stinging her lips. Different from the salt she had known, the Icrurian scent she had come to love. The smell and taste of this salt was acrid, fishy, without a hint of warmth. Her eyes adjusted as they pushed her forward; sprawled on the horizon was Mekës’s shoreline, the trade port a full and bustling thing, separated from her by the frigid ocean, which churned angrily in the wind.
The prison was built upon an elevated island in the Iron Bay. Only reachable by boat, it was as inescapable as the cold itself. The east side of the prison held the cells, three enormous towers surrounded by steep cliffs, the tops of the stone structures covered in iron spires. The west side of the prison held the offices where the prison guards, the higher-ranking sentinels, and the warden gazed over the bleak scene from a tall watchtower that jutted into the sky like an angry index finger. Today, the prison appeared empty. Only Vlacik and his trusted sentinels were privy to her movements, she presumed.
Four of those sentinels led her over an arching bridge that connected the two sides of the prison. “The Last Crossing,” people called it. Jumping from this very bridge was a rite of passage for the fortress and city guards—to dive into the water and survive was one of the ways they proved themselves to their peers. Vaasa peered over the edge, a sentinel muttering a warning to her in Asteryan. She wondered if she could even escape the Iron Bay if she somehow survived the jump.
Likely not. She was already too starved, too cold. That swim would leave her as nothing more than fodder for the sharks.
But she could see all of Mekës from here—the granite and iron city covered the mountainside. The enormous trade port led into winding streets covered in snow. The city hugged the coastline of the Iron Bay all the way to the entrance to the LoursevainGap, the untenable river route winding through the Iron Peaks. After ascending the throne, Dominik had gone to Mireh under the guise of building ships that could navigate that canyon, that would grant water access to the entirety of northern Asterya. As it stood, only pirates ever dared enter the canyon. Vaasa’s eye caught on a single iron statue depicting her late grandfather, who had conquered this very bay and relocated Asterya’s capital here.
The view from this bridge was both a beauty and a tragedy, because prisoners that crossed it were said to stand here and stare at the expanse of the city, knowing it was the last time they would ever see sunlight casting its colorful rays upon the smooth granite buildings of Mekës.
A sentinel pulled on her ropes again, and Vaasa stumbled after him. They plunged through a stone archway that led into the western courtyard, which was entirely empty of sentinels. The prison felt like a graveyard, ghosts dancing in the walkways, sounds echoing off the walls. Ozik must have removed any prying eyes; every hallway or turn they took came up just as empty as the last. They emerged on the opposite side of the administrative building, facing the ocean once more. Soon, Vaasa was on the pathway that led directly to the ocean.
Waiting at the bottom was an Asteryan ship.
Flurries of snow fell from the sky, cloaking the air in front of her and blurring her sight. Her legs burned as they walked. At the bottom of the pathway, she tried to halt, digging her heels into the ground to keep from going any further.
A sentinel’s hands slammed between her shoulder blades and sent her careening down the last few steps of the stone pathway, knees cracking against the stone. Her chin followed suit. Jaw thrumming with pain, she thought herself no different than a sheep being herded into a pen.
