21
Cold stung Vaasa’s eyes as she exited the brothel into the threshold between late night and early morning, only sparing enough minutes to change back into her clothes. The sun still hadn’t started to rise, and darkness bathed the snowcapped mountains Mekës was built upon. She could just barely make out the curtain walls of the fortress. She knew the way, though, and she immediately made for the back of the building, entering one of the narrow streets that would lead her there.
A body stepped into her path, coming too close too quickly. Panic splintered her rib cage for only a moment, and she retreated, hands fumbling for the dagger she’d tucked in theinterlining of her cloak. And then he was close enough that his brown eyes were illuminated beneath a thick hooded cloak.
Roman, she realized. Her adrenaline remained constant, as did her hand on the pommel of her knife.
Roman thrust down his hood and the scarf covering his face, frustration in his voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Vaasa? Thebrothel?”
She looked around them to be sure no one was watching, but a few people spilled from the front door of The Lady Fortune just fifty feet away. “You shouldn’t have come,” she whispered, scurrying past him and rounding the corner of the building down the cobblestone street.
“I am your lead sentinel. I had no other choice,” he seethed, coming up behind her. “Iknewyou would be here. That you just couldn’t help yourself. I should have set off every—”
“Keep your voicedown,” she hissed over her shoulder.
He grabbed her wrist to slow her, and something in her went cold. She hadn’t given him permission to touch her. Even if there had once been a time she wanted him to touch her this way, a time when she would have followed his lead.
Roman stepped to cover her back, his breath warm on her exposed neck. “I know you’re angry with me,” he said, still so delicately holding her forearm. “But you can’t leave the fortress without me, without one of my men.”
His touch was different and wrong, especially as she considered where she had been tonight, who she had been with. She started to turn on him, to—
Something slammed into the ground. An awful crunching sound echoed around them. Roman jumped back on instinct, but then Vaasa’s eyes landed on the source.
It was a body.
Someone had thrown a body out of the window.
Mangled, broken limbs lay strewn in the wrong direction, blood pooling around the corpse and running through the cracks between cobblestones. The head was turned, though, and Vaasa stared into lifeless, ice-blue eyes.
It was Lord Vlacik.
No.
“Run!” Roman hissed, pulling her back and away from the scene. Vaasa fought the urge to vomit, the overwhelming tang of blood suffocating the air.
Vaasa stumbled away at Roman’s direction. They fled down another street, any direction that would take them away from the scene. As breath pumped in and out of Vaasa’s lungs, the cold air burned her throat, but she kept pace until they were at least three streets away. A line of horses waited outside a dimly lit building, secured to a tie rail. Roman’s was among them, she realized. He’d hidden his steed there. They slowed for the first time, and adrenaline leaked into her fingertips. She felt every inch of her connection to Ozik in that moment, every place her magic no longer touched.
It would have flooded her body mercilessly. She wanted that sensation, craved it.
“Are you okay?” Roman asked, both hands on her shoulders as he looked her over.
She shooed his hands away, turning and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. Her hand covered her mouth. “I’m fine,” she insisted, though it came out breathy and strained. “That was Vlacik. That was fuckingVlacik.”
“Look at me,” Roman demanded.
She had to school her emotions, to get ahold of herself if she wanted to play this right. Vaasa turned and kept her mouth covered.
“Did anyone recognize you in that brothel, Vaasa?Think.”
There was so much she couldn’t say. “No, of course not,” she decided, lying through her teeth. She pulled air in through her nose.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
And then as she looked at him, she realized… “You wore that to the brothel, correct?”
Roman went still. He looked down at his nonregulation attire and swore. “My jacket is inside.”
