Ozik’s voice rose. “You cannot handle the answers to your questions until you learn to use your magic. I will tell you what you need to know when you are ready, but you arenot ready.”
“How could I be?” she barked back. “I am not my mother. I am not so desperate for love or power that I’ll eat it off a dagger. I am not afraid of being crushed—I’m afraid of beingyou.”
It was as if a sharp blade cut directly through her muscles. Her magic severed from her body once again, this time immediately and without rebellion. Ozik walked forward. Gasping, Vaasa lifted her hands to her throat as if to defend her own life, an innate reaction. Her knees buckled and scraped against the stones beneath her.
“You are an ignorant child with no understanding of who your mother was or what she gave to keep you alive. So long as you are in my presence, do not speak of her as if you knew her. You didn’t.”
Vaasa wanted to spit at him, to remind him that it was his fault that she’d never known her mother. That all she’d gottenwas the cold, aloof version of a woman fighting to stay alive in a place that hadn’t kept her safe.
And if Ozik had loved her, he would have saved her.
But he hadn’t.
He released the hold he had on Vaasa, and she fell forward, hands catching her just before her face hit the iridescent stones. Nausea tightened her throat, but she didn’t give in. She was at least tolerating their connection, tolerating the use of her magic. No darkness lined the edges of her vision this time.
“I said I was trying things a different way,” Ozik said. He picked up his cloak from the bench he’d draped it over. “Every morning, you will come here, and I will train your magic. Each time you make enough progress, I will have the witch brought to you.”
Vaasa looked down at the stones cutting into her knees. He had all the leverage in the world, and she had nothing. Any grasp on the life she had found in Mireh was smothered now.
No.
Even in darkness, even on the verge of death, Vaasa had never been helpless. She had an arsenal in her mind, and it was time she started using it.
You cannot handle the answers to your questions until you learn to use your magic.
Ozik wanted her to grow stronger. Each time he’d allowed Lord Vlacik to cut at her skin or for her magic to overtake her, it had been in pursuit of her endurance. He wastrainingher. Teaching her, just as he had done when she was a child.
The question was why. What was it that Ozik wanted her to become? To accomplish?
“I will see you tomorrow morning,” Ozik said.
He disappeared into a different room of the greenhouse, and Vaasa was left staring up at the olive tree, the words of her mother’s letter playing out in the back of her mind.
Whatever you do, stay in Mireh and do not unite the other pieces. The price is far too great.
The following day, Vaasa found Ozik waiting beneath the olive tree.
He stood at her arrival, striding forward with ease. Like it had yesterday, her magic unfurled in her gut, melding to the snake she had thought about all night. She swallowed down her fear, prepared to do things his way if that was what it took. She didn’t like the idea of the magic he claimed she could access—to feed on other people’s emotions instead of her own—but what choice did she have?
For now, her breath came easier. She let the power flow through her veins and leak onto her fingertips. Dark smoke licked the air, then curled around her hands and wrists.
“Are you ready to begin?” Ozik asked.
Vaasa met his eyes. Everything about him was calmer in here. Brighter. As if, with the flora and the late morning sunshine filtering through the glass walls, he was a different person. The warmth brought relief, and with it, the space for curiosity. For her to focus everything she had on finding out precisely what this man needed.
So she could take it all away.
“I’m ready,” Vaasa said.
Ozik grinned.
CHAPTER
13
It was almost morning when Vaasa woke, gut clenching and burning, the feeling of her magic being torn from her bones pervading every nerve she had. She cried out, turning over and pulling her legs up to her chest, rocking in agony. The pain seared down her neck and spine, spreading to every inch of her body, as if her very core was being flayed in two. Magic writhed beneath her skin.
Vaasa tried to breathe. She couldn’t. Tears streamed down her face as Ozik used Vaasa’s magic for something she couldn’t name. Couldn’t see. She dove into that pain, tried to connect with it, to find some thread to grasp between her fingers and give her access to whatever it was Ozik was doing.
