His features contorted in insult. “I am your only partner in this,” he reminded her in a curt whisper.
She twisted her shoulders and broke his grasp, careening down the hallway as he hissed for her to stop. She burst into the servants’ hall, and Roman ceased trying to speak to her the moment another guard came into view. It was too much of a risk.Vaasa kept her quickened pace, mind turning in an unstoppable loop, until she slipped back into the emperor’s wing using one of the hidden passageways.
And then Roman pounced.
His hand caught her wrist, and he tugged her against his body. She struggled against him, but he didn’t release his vise grip. Instead, he dragged her toward the wall, attempting to pin her against it. Instinct told her to twist the wrist he held and break his grip, yet exhaustion crested over her in a dizzying wave. She stumbled and fell, back slamming against the wall. Weeks of pain caught up to her in a flash—weak. She was so fucking tired and weak. Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit down on her cheek to hold back any noise.
“What. Happened,” he said, each word its own sentence. “What the hell did Ozik just do to you? Why didn’t he die?”
Anger caught fire within her, swiftly replacing her desperation with something more familiar: rage. “You know why.” She wrenched her wrist free and slammed her hands into Roman’s chest, pushing him off her, her strength finally enough to demand space.
Roman stumbled back, eyes going wide. “Vaasa—”
“Why would I trust you? You’ve all but come back from the dead, and you are lying to me.”
“I haven’t lied—”
Vaasa spun on him. “Youknowhe has magic! That’s he’s a witch.”
Roman paused. Words seemed to dance on his lips. Finally, he asked, “Will it be truth between us, or should I question everything you say?”
“You have no right to ask me that.”
Her chest bone seemed to splinter. It was as if the light from his lantern revealed a side of him that Vaasa had never met, a terrible spinning of everything she’d once believed about him.There was a time in her life that Roman had been one of the only people who hadn’t lied to her. Hadn’t used her. She remembered the sound of his voice as he whispered those promises in her ear:I am here. I want you. I will never betray you.
Those words provided her the opportunity to see him as she had once seen him, this younger version of her reaching across the hallway, hoping those promises still held true. “My friend,” she said, stepping forward. “Take me to her. Now.Please.”
As Roman gauged the distance between them, he shook his head. “I can’t. You heard him, Vaasa. He’ll kill me.”
Magic. He was scared of magic, and he was going to let it stop him from helping her. Just like he had when Ozik had wrapped his hand around her throat on the stairwell.
Roman had donenothing.
Vaasa closed her eyes. Disappointment slithered through her, and she realized she might actually have told him everything if he’d given her a reason to.
She lifted her chin so she could meet his gaze with all the malice she could conjure. “I was under the impressionIwas the future ruler, not him.”
Roman stepped forward, but Vaasa shook her head, pulling swiftly away from him down the hall that led to the emperor’s private rooms. “Go back to your post,” she spat.
“You are my post,” he argued.
“Just go,” she said without looking back.
“Vaasa—”
She stopped and turned, dropping her voice to a clinical neutral, as if he were any guard in the palace. As if his lips had never touched hers, his body had never twisted in her sheets under the cover of night. “I can’t risk this throne on the rumor that I’m having an affair with my lead sentinel, and as the current holder of that position, you shouldn’t either.”
Something broke on his face. Something awful and deep.
He set off down the hall without another word, and Vaasa stood there alone.
CHAPTER
18
As Vaasa walked to the greenhouse the next morning, it was hard to keep her hands steady. Quietly, she worked out what she had seen in the stairwell the evening prior. Ozik should have died, and yet he didn’t. And the way he had spoken about her mother…
It was a direct contradiction to everything else he’d said about Vena Kozár. Those were not the words of a man who had lost someone he loved; they were the words of a murderer.
