Stoic as the stone around her, Vaasa didn’t dare breathe.Cruelwas not a word she would ever use to describe Reid.
“I…” Vaasa looked down at her hands. The choice to lie to Roman fully, to spin some mistruth about her marriage—it was a choice she couldn’t undo.
“Did you consummate the union?” Roman asked outright, leaning forward as if he’d been anticipating this very line of conversation since the moment they found each other again.
What an outdated Asteryan concept, Reid had once said to her.
Vaasa parted her lips, then snapped them shut. Each moment she’d spent with Reid had set her on fire, no matter how hardshe’d fought it. When she’d finally had him, had his mouth on hers and his bare skin against her own, she had never wanted anything more. It wasn’t a consummation. It was a choice. And if the world hadn’t done exactly what she’d predicted it would do, if Dominik and Ozik hadn’t ruined everything, she knew with certainty she would still be there with Reid, sleeping next to him now.
But what of that could Roman understand, especially after what he’d just told her? She sighed. “I did.”
Roman closed his eyes. Shook his head. “Of course you did. I… I don’t know why I thought otherwise.”
“But it upsets you,” she noted.
Roman shrugged, leaning back onto his hands. “It was foolish to believe you hadn’t been with someone after me. That I’m the only man to know you that way.”
Vaasa couldn’t explain the anxiety that welled in her at this line of conversation. The insurmountable guilt for having lived when she thought he hadn’t. “I mourned you for a very long time, Roman.”
He stared at her for a drawn-out moment. “I don’t believe I’ve stopped mourning you, Vaasa.”
Breath stilled in her chest. How many times had she wished for the chance to see him again? To hear his voice? Yet he was looking right at her, and she would trade just about anything to be staring at another man. What kind of person did that make her?
“Reid of Mireh sacked Innisjour,” Roman said, changing the topic before Vaasa had the opportunity to say more. “Slaughtered the young lord there and hundreds of civilians. He tore down the dam and demolished an entire city, claiming his marriage to you makes him emperor of Asterya.”
“Ozik told me he crossed the border,” Vaasa said.
Roman narrowed his eyes just slightly. “He’s been injured. He retreated from battle.”
The world seemed to stall on its axis. That word stole the air from the room.Injured.
Roman’s eyes searched her expression more closely than he ever had before.
She pushed it down—the wanting. The panic. The pain. Now was not the time. She had already given away too much.
Roman stood abruptly, taking a few steps away from her. “Vaasa, are you in love with him?”
“Roman, I—”
“He’s already killed hundreds under the pretense that he has a claim to your throne. To our empire.”
She saw Roman so clearly now, saw the betrayal written in the lines of his face at the thought of her having fallen in love with an Icrurian. With his enemy. But it was more than that.
There, in the depths of his eyes, was a glimmer of desire.
Ourempire.
Suddenly, he morphed into someone entirely new before her. Gone was the remnant of the boy who had loved her, of the rebellion she’d found in him. He had been the safest thing. A man who couldn’t take anything real from her. It wasn’t like she would have ever been allowed to marry him.
And now there was a throne dangling above all their heads, and she wondered… was it enough to tempt Roman, too? Was that why he was here? To make himself a contender?
It hurt to think about Reid, even more so to pretend he wasn’t the love of her life. That each inch of her didn’t ache for him now. But survival demanded the worst of people, and she had always been capable of deception. A voice in her head whispered that she must lie, that she must spin whatever tale she needed in order to keep this inextinguishable truth from coming out: She was in love with the man who should be her greatest enemy, andif given half the chance, she would tear her home apart in his name.
“I wasmarriedto Reid of Mireh,” Vaasa clarified, voice growing sharp. “He became my only political ally while Dominik was two steps away from taking my life. If you’re asking if he was cruel or if I hated him, the answer is no.”
It was purposeful, to twist his question and then to say the wordno. He was waiting, hoping,craving, that exact word in response. It gave the appearance of disagreement—manipulated a palatable answer and put the onus on him to continue demanding further truth.
Roman pursed his lips, digesting her words slowly. Likely, he would interpret them to mean what he wanted to hear because that was far easier than stomaching reality. “And what did he want, then? Your throne?”
