Reid couldn’t breathe fully, his chest burning. If Vaasa did figure it out, would she go there? Would he be able to flee with her then? “She’s the cleverest woman I know. She will understand.”
“We need to be there,” Koen said.
Sachia nodded. “I agree. Lord Karev already knows I have an interest in gaining access to the prison, so he wouldn’t have offered unless he intended to give that to me.”
Reid realized then that their interests weren’t entirely aligned; if he found Vaasa, could see a way to get her out, it might delay their escape to wait for Sachia to gain access to the prison. He wondered if Sachia had considered this, too. But as he looked over at her, Sachia grit her teeth, and he realized she was holding back tears.
“What happened?” Reid asked.
At first, it seemed as though Sachia wouldn’t answer. But then she batted at her cheeks, the tears falling despite all the effort she had put into holding them back. “My brother was there tonight. He was in that fucking fighting ring.”
“Sachia,” Melisina started, speaking for the first time since the witch had arrived.
She scoffed. “He won, and he’s alive, so at least there’s that. Tomorrow night, Vlacik will get exactly what he deserves.”
Reid furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”
“Karev believes his only competition is Vlacik.” Sachia turned her knife in her hand, nimble fingers narrowly avoiding theblade. “So, in exchange for my brother, I’m going to remove the opposition.”
CHAPTER
17
This way,” Roman said, gesturing to the end of the hall. Vaasa had changed from the dress Karev bought her into the warm clothes of a fortress guard, prepared for the shocking cold of the Iron Bay at night, for the way wind whipped around the prison. Clear skies served as an omen or an irony—it all depended on whether they could get out of the fortress unseen.
They slinked through the corridors on quiet feet, dipping into the servants’ halls in order to avoid the other guards. Roman knew their placements and schedules by heart. The costume Vaasa wore would only work from afar; if any guards came too close, they would immediately know she wasn’t one of them.
She couldn’t shake the fear that one of those guards would alert Vlacik—it was possible any one of them worked for him, after all.
Roman was truly her only ally in this city.
They took a narrow passageway into the bowels of the fortress. The gray stone walls mirrored the ones built in the old wing on the far side that she and Roman had gone to the first night she found him. They were built at the same time, before Vaasa’s father had expanded the fortress to even greater heights and architectural miracles. He’d built around the original structure, so it often ebbed and flowed, old to new, much like Asterya itself.
This part of the castle was warmer, further in the depths where heat was trapped. They took a wide staircase decorated on one side by a statue of the monotheistic Asteryan god, arms raised in triumph. Vaasa stared at it for only a moment before sliding around the corner. She collided with something—someone.
Ozik.
He looked at her, lips drawn. At the bottom of his neck where his cloak clipped together with an iron buckle, black crept up his veins. Vaasa didn’t dare gasp or make any indication of what she’d noticed. There was something deeply different about Ozik in this moment—he was far closer to the advisor she had faced upon the platform at the Icrurian election. Dressed in his usual blue regalia with his bright-white cloak, he looked ready for an important dinner, not for the stroke of midnight.
Roman rounded the corner next. His footsteps halted, and the air in the stairwell shifted.
“My, my, my,” Ozik crooned in Icrurian, voice dripping like the oil of his magic. Slick. Dark. Fury lit in his gaze, dragging between her and Roman. Threads of crimson bled into the brilliant gold of his irises. This was doubtlessly different thanhow he’d been that morning at training. The tight control with which he’d held himself was missing. “If it isn’t a perfect rendition of the past. Just history repeating itself.”
“Sire—” Roman tried, but Ozik lifted a hand to silence him.
“You’re using your position a little too liberally, aren’t you?” Ozik snarled.
Roman paled.
But Ozik turned his fury only on Vaasa. “If I were a lord?” Ozik asked, stepping into her space. “If I were Lord Karev?”
Vaasa narrowed her eyes. Roman said nothing—an act that felt like a betrayal. Vaasa sneered, “You aren’t a lord.”
The red of Ozik’s eyes grew, no longer whispers of color, but a full claiming of his irises that bled into the whites. Hand snaking out, he gripped Vaasa’s throat, cutting off her airway before she could draw another breath. “You think you are so clever,” he growled, his voice taking on a tenor it never had before.
This was not the man who had helped raise her.
Panic tore at her body from within, and she had no chance to stifle the choked plea at her lips. She couldn’t breathe. Ozik tipped back his head and laughed, the veins in his neck growing darker beneath his pale skin.
