Roman grabbed ahold of her arm anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Vaasa choked. “I’m so sorry.”
And then Amalie met her eyes with a burning fury. Something new seemed to emanate from her, this otherworldliness that Vaasa hadn’t seen before. Thisrage.
“You aren’t the one who will pay for this,” Amalie said. She slid her eyes to Ozik.
And he stepped back. “Now, Roman.”
Vaasa’s breath caught as she watched Roman drag Amalie out of the greenhouse, the entire exchange marking itself upon her. She swore she’d just seen trepidation in Ozik’s tight grimace. Vaasa watched Roman’s back as he exited the room with Amalie.
Was everything Roman had said to her a lie? He had cowed to Ozik within seconds.
Vaasa turned to face Ozik, prepared to argue further or at least attempt to pry information from him, but softly, gently, there came a whisper of something in her body.
Magic sprang from wherever it was hidden inside her, curling around her muscles and bones, fortifying her like armor. It sloshed into her gut and burned in her chest. Magic poured from her fingertips in tendrils of black mist, cloaking the ground around her feet. Vaasa stumbled back in shock, finding Ozik standing just a few feet away.
“I can and will take your magic back, should you get any futile notions of attacking,” he drawled. “You’ve always been a good student, Vaasalisa. Do not prove me wrong.”
The advisor held the same confident air about him that he had when she was young; he appeared as though he’d come to teach her something. Their daily lessons, sometimes multiple times a day, flashed before her eyes. The stern pull of his mouth, the crinkle of his brow when he found himself disappointed in her—all touchstones of her childhood. Building blocks of the woman she was now, who questioned the motivations of every person around her. Who had never been safe enough to trust anyone. So much so that when she’d finally been faced with authenticity, she had spent months convincing herself the people who loved her were lying.
Except Melisina had begun to banish that fear. Amalie, too. Her entire coven. They had taught her magic because they loved her, which made it far more difficult to look Ozik in the eyes now.
He had never taught her a single thing for her benefit. It had always been for his.
“What are you doing?” Vaasa choked out.
“You’re weak,” Ozik said, as if that was an explanation.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you know of your magic, Vaasalisa? What has your coven taught you?”
Vaasa could hardly process his questions. She focused instead on the snake, on the shifting of magic once again within her body. It was like something came loose within her, the power itself burrowing into her organs and tissues. It lapped against her insides as she transformed it from snake to water to bird of prey. Though it still felt different, this was closer to herself than anything she’d felt in weeks.
Cooperate. That’s what I want. Do that, and you will see her again.
“What doyouknow of my magic?” Vaasa asked, emboldened by her renewed connection to Veragi, the goddess of witchcraft herself.
“I know that in order to make the most of it, you must learn towieldit, even through pain,” Ozik said.
“Is that why you let Lord Vlacik torture me?” she dared to ask.
Ozik pursed his lips. “Your mother survived for years because of what I could show her. Did you think she got lucky? Veragi witches are the most tumultuous, the most haunted, of the bloodlines. Your magic is an art form that has been sorely lost.”
Silence coursed between them. There was nothing Vaasa could say in response to him, only listen. Only absorb. Once again, she saw the man she’d known as a teenager. Harsh, sharp, but incredibly intelligent. Though she feared him, she in a strange way trusted her value to him. There had been a time when Ozik’s tutelage was the one thing she clung to, desperately hoping the skills he taught her might lead to an ambassadorship instead of a marriage.
And now Vaasa was forced to reconcile that man with the one who stood across from her—who had murdered her mother, killed the love of her life, brought him back in a twisted bargain, and then locked her up in a prison to be tortured.
The one who still held Amalie as leverage.
“I saw the wolf,” Ozik said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve at least uncovered the most basic thing your magic can do: manifestations. You know mine well enough.”
Realization dawned upon her. “The Miro’dag.” Amanifestation. “What does that mean? Manifestation?”
“It is an expression of our magic, of our souls. That is the way with sentimental magic.”
Sentimental magic.His words swirled in her mind, connecting with everything she’d learned thus far. Admittedly, there were large gaps. Things Melisina and the rest of the coven hadn’t taught her, things they perhaps didn’t know themselves.Focus on what you do know, they’d repeated over and over. Sometimes those words had set her free, other times they had felt like a consolation prize for the fact that most information about magic had been irrevocably burned away.
