“Enough,” a voice snapped, the edges of it sharp, the tenor of it so frighteningly familiar.
Ozik. She looked up through her lashes to see him glowering at the sentinel who had struck her.
“She is to be your empress,” Ozik snarled, taking a step forward. Vaasa heard shuffling behind her and wondered if the sentinel had… retreated.
Ozik reached for her, but she ground out, “Fuck you.” Vaasa put her hands beneath her and pushed herself to a kneel. Ozik stood in front of her, wearing a snow-white cloak clasped with an iron brooch depicting Asterya’s sigil—a single mountain with a sword plunging through it. He wore the emblem with the same pride that Vaasa’s father had. His chin lifted, and an ease washed over his features. He reached for her, rings of every color decorating his fingers. Red rubies and green emeralds, even a dark black stone that didn’t shine like the others.
Vaasa recoiled. Panic sprung to life in her chest. Memories of the recent weeks’ torture flooded her mind, and the way Ozik was watching her, it was like he could see them, too. Rage lit within her; there was nothing else to cling to, and Vaasa nursed that heat because everywhere else was cold.
Ozik lifted his hands, palms forward. “I only want to help you to your feet.”
The oily slick strings between them tugged lightly as if to say,Cooperate.
Whatever magic linked them, he was stronger than her right now. His fingers curled around her arm, and he lifted her to her feet, bearing her weight for a moment until she found her balance. He immediately started to undo the ropes around her wrists. The moment they slid to the floor, Vaasa took two steps away from Ozik. Across the small distance she’d created, he assessed her with keen golden eyes. No doubt he took in her tattered prison attire, which had torn at her left collarbone anddown her right arm. She must have been covered in dirt and blood, a wreck compared to his royal blue finery with stark iron buttons that gleamed, catching the sun.
Ozik turned to face Lord Vlacik, who narrowed his icy eyes at Vaasa as he marched down the pathway to meet them on the dock. A group of men followed him, their steps out of cadence. These guards were less refined than Vaasa remembered of the men who earned the rank of sentinel.
Vaasa shook her head so her hair would unstick from her cheeks and forced her expression into a soft, bored apathy. Every bone in her body weighed like a ton of bricks, but she squared her shoulders anyway.
The lord didn’t mutter a word, but the two sentinels who had helped Vlacik torture her day in and day out stepped back when they realized she was no longer tied up.
“You can go now,” Ozik told the lord, dipping his head in a small gesture of respect. “We’ll see you when the others arrive.”
The others?
Ozik gripped just above her elbow and started to guide her to the waiting ship. She wanted to frighten. To clamp her teeth down on his hand and rip through his skin. Fury burned in her chest at his audacity in touching her.
He had takeneverythingfrom her.
What did she have to lose?
Using the last reserves of her strength, Vaasa wrapped her fingers around a knife at Ozik’s belt and pulled. She slashed it across his cheek. He loosed a pained hiss and stumbled away from her. Before she could turn and strike again, the sentinels were on her, and she hit the dock with a guttural grunt. She screamed in fury as they wrenched her arms behind her and pried her fingers from the knife.
A curse ripped through the air as Ozik’s boot landed just next to her face. She struggled against the hold the sentinels hadon her, but they held firm. “Up,” he told them, and suddenly she was hauled to her feet once more. She panted, her ribs screaming with each breath she took, yet she curled her lip back in a defiant snarl.
Ozik dipped to bring them eye to eye, anger rippling across his normally calm features. Gone was the gentleness she was certain had only been an illusion for the sentinels who did not know the truth of Vaasa’s confinement. Blood trickled down the deep scratch in his cheek. “You’re going to cooperate,” he said, his face within inches of hers and his voice quietly menacing. “Do you want to know why?”
Vaasa only stared as her exhales came out as steam, refusing to answer him.
“Because I have someone you’d rather see unharmed,” he whispered.
Her vision faltered as his words sank in. Who could he possibly mean? But Vaasa knew better than to give herself away. Even a single word, a single expression, he could use against her.
He tsked in disappointment at her lack of emotion. His hand whipped out, fingers grasping her chin, and yanked her head to the side. Her eyes settled on the pathway that led to the prison, on a figure being hauled down it to meet them. There were at least ten sentinels surrounding the prisoner. Iron chains clanged together as they grew closer and closer.
Vaasa tried to suppress her adrenaline. Her fingers twitched at her side as if yearning to use magic she didn’t have. She started to shake—with the cold, with the fear. The sentinels emptied out onto the flat stone walkway and revealed Ozik’s second hostage, shackled more tightly than Vaasa had ever been.
“Amalie,” Vaasa breathed.
Every ounce of hope drained from Vaasa as she watched a sentinel kick at the back of Amalie’s knees, sending her careening forward onto the ground.
Vaasa instinctively tugged at the hands that held her. She broke away and threw herself off the dock onto the stone pathway, tripping and falling to her knees before her friend. The sharp stone of the walkway stung even through the fabric she wore.
Amalie looked up. “Vaasa,” she whispered. Her face was gaunt, shadowed. Her eye was bruised. Icrurian fell from her lips: “Don’t give them anything they want. Let me die, let me—”
Someone grabbed ahold of Vaasa’s waist and dragged her backward. She screamed and thrashed, causing the sentinel to stumble, but not enough to be set free.
The sentinel behind Amalie placed a knife at the witch’s throat, one of the very men who had tortured Vaasa, his striking green eyes alight with violence.
