“I know I won’t survive disobeying him,” he finally said. “Not until you are formally the empress.”
Was that his plan, then? To obey Ozik long enough to make it to her wedding? “I think you know as well as I do that a title won’t save either of us from him,” she whispered, the two of them staring at each other in the dark.
“You believe he will kill you?”
Vaasa knew Ozik wouldn’t. Not as long as he needed her magic, and given the strength and youth he had gained from their bond, she suspected Ozik would do just about anything to keep her alive. “No,” she said. “But he intends to rule with me as a puppet for life. Likely, once there are heirs, he will kill whoever I marry.”
Roman didn’t move. His expression melded to one of impassivity, even more guarded than he had been before. “Is that why you accepted Lord Karev’s invitation for tomorrow night? To move forward with one of your suitors?”
Vaasa sat more upright, trying to keep her composure. “I don’t see what other choice I have.” It was the best she could do to create the illusion of a real competition for her hand, for the Asteryan throne, and delay an actual marriage. She wasn’t certain she could outmaneuver Ozik, but if she had the opportunity to sow discord between the lords, it might be enough to damage any chance they had at gathering an army strong enough to outlast the Icrurian Central Forces. Perhaps that was her only way to escape—to lie in wait. “I don’t want to marry any of them,” she confessed.
At those words, Roman crawled to the fire, stoking it, and the flames roared back to life. Light flooded the room as he turned to face her again. With the fire at his back, his face was still shadowed, making him look almost ethereal. Truly and wholly a ghost. “I—” He paused for a moment. “I don’t know what to do. Who to trust.”
“Trust with what?”
Roman pursed his lips, then started to crawl toward her again. The closer he came, the more her body recognized him. He had snuck into her rooms countless times before. They had been in similar positions as this. He stopped just before where she sat, her back against the couch, his knees only a few feet from her.
“Did you love him?” Roman asked so quietly. “The Wolf of Mireh.”
The wolf.Herwolf. The person her magic had seemed to model itself after, as if it, too, wanted to be more like him. Her soul and his, similar enough to reflect in her power. The thought of Reid caused a knot to form in her throat. This was the first time they had spoken of him, had acknowledged that she’d been married to another man.
She and Roman were incapable of casual conversation, she realized. It was impossible to know someone and then unknow them. Without trying, they would pick up where they’d left off, because that was what people did. She saw the anger in Roman’s eyes. He had always been a jealous creature. And she couldn’t bring herself to break his heart—not yet. She pulled her blankets over her lap, careful to keep the majority of herself covered. “Being in Icruria saved my life,” she said. “Dominik would have killed me.”
Roman pursed his lips. “I don’t think you would have stayed anywhere you were in danger. That’s why I find this whole story about Icruria difficult to believe.”
“That Ozik came and rescued me from the clutches of a violent warlord?”
A pause, and then: “How did Dominik die?”
Vaasa kept silent. She kept waiting for that serpent to coil, for the wolf to raise its head and howl, but was left with an utter sense of emptiness that was almost more consuming than the magic had been. Whatever trickle of it she’d felt earlier had gone.
Roman waited, eyes burning into her. “Was it Reid of Mireh? There are so many rumors.”
Her defensiveness reared up—it was instinct. “Ikilled Dominik.”
Roman raised his eyebrows and then looked her over like he was seeing her for the first time. His gaze dragged up and down her, to the line where her nightgown met the blankets. “You are not who you used to be.”
“No, I am not.”
“Neither am I.”
She bristled. “No, I am nothing like who I was, Roman. You can’t even begin to fathom.”
“Do you believe me afraid of you? With one death on your hands?” He chuckled with a desperate lilt. “I went towar, Vaasa. I was a prisoner. You have no idea what I have seen and sacrificed to be sitting here next to you.”
Vaasa glanced at Roman’s hands as if the blood would still be there, but they looked the same as they always had. And though she could tell him everything, of the magic she had gained and the lives she had taken with it, she didn’t. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” she said instead. Vaasa didn’t tell him the other things she had pieced together here or the questions that plagued her. She didn’t quite know how to breathe correctly in his presence, like there was still a part of her reaching backward, seizing at her chest.
Roman ran his tongue over his teeth. “The Wolf. He was… kind to you, then?”
Vaasa fiddled with her hands. Yes. Kinder than any other person had ever been to her. But what good did it do to reveal such a thing to Roman?
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Of course it matters.” He gritted his teeth and looked away from her, staring into the fire once more. “When I found outyou were marrying him, I was sick, Vaasa. Terrified. And when I heard he was parading you around his city and that your brother was opening trade with Icruria, it just destroyed me. I know what kind of man Reid of Mireh is.”
Vaasa paused. It was odd to hear of hers and Reid’s escapades, their games of love that had blossomed into the real thing, from someone who heard the whispers they had purposefully stoked. Icruria had always been a secret, yet upon her marriage, the curtain had fallen. Trade had assured it. Still, it was personal: the flicker of hatred that marked the way Roman tightened his fists. “What do you mean, you know what kind of man he is?”
Roman finally lifted his chin, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “He often passed through Wrultho. His father was the head of their squadron, but I noticed him the first time he arrived, young to be the leader of anything and brutal. People whispered about him, about the sheer amount of Asteryans he killed along the Sanguine. He…” Roman shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Each time he returned, he was decorated with something new, earned from yet another mass slaughter on the river. He was a cruel man. There’s a reason they call him the Wolf of Mireh.”
