Vaasa tilted her head. “Your manifestation is a demon. What exactly does that say aboutyoursoul?”
Ozik remained deadly serious as he said, “That it is dark and wicked and was lost long ago.”
Vaasa stared blankly, hoping her impassive grimace would be interpreted as a result of her deep-seated hatred for the advisor, not her own incompetence.
He sighed. “There is only one person in this world who can teach you what has been erased from history, and that is me. The question is whether you are willing to learn, or whether you are going to waste this opportunity.”
“Opportunity?” she shot back, poison on her tongue. “You are holding me hostage and torturing my best friend.”
Ozik merely chuckled. “The witch is alive and has not been harmed. Lord Vlacik hasn’t touched her. We are… trying another way.”
He had put a stop to the torture? Vaasa crossed her arms. “Fine. Let me see her.”
“Earn it.”
“Why? Why teach me anything at all?”
His severe gaze could have turned her into one of the statues that guarded the greenhouse. “Because soon you’re going to do something for me, Vaasalisa. And in order for you to accomplish it, you will need to become a more formidable ally.”
Vaasa narrowed her eyes. “I will never doanythingfor you. Not willingly.”
Ozik shifted his weight, frustration coating his features. She hadn’t been this obstinate with him since she was a teenager. Her magic tugged in her abdomen and then leaked onto her hands. She startled, stumbling backward a step, shaking her wrists like they were covered in water. “What are you doing?”
He began to walk, circling her. “What do you know of the Witches’ War?”
Vaasa hesitated, unsure if she wanted to engage. The magic tightened, and she sputtered, “I know that before it, Icruria was ruled by magical bloodlines. The Witches’ War extinguished most of them and made way for Icrurian unification.”
He nodded, his steps slow. Her magic calmed, and she let out a small sigh, her shoulders going slack.
“The covens used to rule Icruria,” he said. “But during the Witches’ War, most of the old texts were burned. And when the common tongue replaced the old dialects, it was the death of oral tradition. Therefore, the relative death of the gods and goddesses that the independent city-states worshipped.”
It had always surprised her that the Icrurians did not have deeper religious traditions; most of their deities were now fables or fuel for celebrations. The gods and goddesses that the sodalities were named after were the only real landmarks left. The deities had become cultural; the witches were the last remaining remnant of the gods’ and goddesses’ power.
The information curled in her ears and settled there, giving her that same inextinguishable hunger she’d had from a young age. She gathered history and languages like weapons because that was what understanding them could turn someone into.Thatwas the weapon her father and Ozik had created. So she couldn’t help herself—she leaned in to listen, and by the subtle curl of Ozik’s lips, he knew he had her.
“What the Icrurians refuse to speak about is that the deities were wicked, evil creatures,” he continued. “They need witches in order to keep their foothold in this realm. Without their covens, they can be sealed into tombs scattered across this continent. But even then, their bloodlines still pop up in unexpected places, and so if even one witch emerges, the deity has a foothold again.”
Vaasa leaned farther forward, memorizing every word he said, even if she didn’t entirely believe him. There was no telling whether this version of history was true.
“What is sentimental magic, then?” she asked.
“Begin wielding your magic again, and I will tell you.”
Vaasa pursed her lips. She shouldn’t obey. She knew the right choice. Yet the allure of knowledge pushed her forward, magic spilling from her fingertips. It coated the floor around her once more, spreading like fog on the water.
Ozik began again. “There are two types of magic, two types of covens, just like there are two classifications of deities. Ones that rule the outer world, the physical; and ones that rule the inner world, the emotional. Corporeal versus sentimental. Veragi is a sentimental deity—the most powerful one, as her witches have a skill unlike any other.”
Vaasa swallowed. Her magic slithered at her feet, then spread out into the greenhouse. She tried to bring it back inside herself, but Ozik shook his head. As the black tendrils coated the stones marking the pathway she stood upon, Vaasa tried not to rear back from her own power.
“Push it forward. Use everything around you instead of everything within you,” he said.
Vaasa’s eyebrows slammed together, his words not making sense. She stared down at the magic, hesitating, and then it reared forward out of her control. Knots in her body tightened and tugged, an outside force now guiding her power. She gasped and stumbled as it burst out in sharp tendrils, one of which snapped against an iron bench to her left. It knocked the bench sideways with a crash, and petals flew into the air, drifting softly to coat the ground.
“Stop,” she said.
Her magic slithered back up her dress, the wolf nowhere to be found. Vaasa’s heart beat faster, fear growing within heras the magic curled around her body. Her waist. Her chest. It consumed her arm, then her shoulders, brushing the nape of her neck. She knew better than to let the power reach her face. As it brushed her throat, terror slammed against her ribcage. “Stop!”
“It is a void because you don’t know what else to make it, but that doesn’t have to be its final form,” Ozik said, voice unbelievably calm as he watched her panic. “Your mother saw a spider, so afraid of being crushed beneath everyone else’s feet. What is it you’re so terrified of becoming?”
