Melisina closed her eyes in a shared understanding and sorrow.
“I can’t do it. But you can,” Vaasa realized. She ran to the desk and put the notebook back, latching it. “You can go in there.”
“Come,” Melisina said, gesturing to the door. Together, they left her father’s office and returned to the entertaining room, finding Sachia laying out swatches of fabrics upon the floor. While Vaasa knew it wasn’t to serve the purpose they claimed, it at least kept up the ruse, should any attendants walk in.
“It’s there,” Vaasa whispered, raising her hand to point. She didn’t often stare at the carpet or down the walls any longer because even as she did so now, her throat closed. “The room on the left,” she managed.
Melisina extended Vaasa a hand. “Together,” she said.
Vaasa shook her head, tears already pricking her eyes.
“One witch is a problem,” Melisina whispered.
A tear, unbidden, rolled down Vaasa’s cheek. “Please. I can’t.”
Melisina spoke again, still so soft, so gentle. “A coven is a nightmare.”
Vaasa looked at the woman, the many roles Melisina filled seeming to spin around her. Mentor. High witch. Mother-in-law. And it had been so long since someone had offered her a hand with such pure assurance, since a moment of progress had been coupled with kindness instead of pain.
Hatred for Ozik spun itself out in Vaasa’s body. For the things he had stolen from her, for the tactics he used now to teach her. As she stared at Melisina’s hand, it was as if Vaasa stood in the witches’ tower of Mireh. As if air came easy and warmth floated throughout the room. The same choice Melisina had given her from the very start: Walk forward together or stay standing still. Not an ounce of judgment to be had for the direction Vaasa took.
Hands shaking, she took Melisina’s outstretched palm.
Melisina curled her fingers around Vaasa’s and squeezed. “Even slowly, forward is forward.”
And then they began to walk, Melisina leading and Vaasa trailing her. Her body tensed, and panic caused her breaths to speed up. She took one step. Another. Faintly, Vaasa knew she was shaking.
She stopped. Stared.
The memory appeared fresh in her mind. The body on the floor. The jade of her mother’s dress. The sunken cheeks and scent of rancid burning flesh in the air. In Icruria, it had been easier to picture the world as turning, to feel time as it passed. But here, in this city, time stood still. It froze on the moment she’d found her mother and hadn’t moved past that place. In so many ways, these weeks had presented her with snippets of the past like dogs barking on her heels. Roman. Lord Karev. A path to the throne. All choices she might have made had she never known Icruria. Had she never known love and a coven and the way comfort could be found in the hearts of others.
Vaasa felt so desperately lost.
She looked up at Melisina, who still held her hand with a firm grip. Reassurance emanated from the high witch’s eyes.
And so Vaasa looked at the hallway, and the world began to turn again.
She saw her mother’s body disappearing. The jade dress disintegrating into ash that blew away with the cold. The rug clearing of blood and that one single moment being replaced by every moment after.
Feet walking down the hallway.
Light reflecting on the walls, signaling the turn of night to day.
Time moving, spaces changing, and life continuing past the moment it felt like it had stopped.
She didn’t think this place would ever feel clean. That she could ever stare down the entirety of it without considering what had been found here. But with the feel of Melisina’s hand on her own, Vaasa thought it was possible to see the place as more than just one thing. It was possible to acknowledge what it had been, and then let it become something else, too.
Just like herself. A liar, a manipulator, and also someone who would do anything for the people she loved. A person who months ago would never have taken Melisina’s hand. Who never would have looked Reid in the eyes and told him she loved him.
Now those words could roll right off her tongue.
Her body no longer needed to function as the scene of a crime.
She took another step forward. And then another. It wasn’t a confident stride or a commanding march by any means—her body shook with every inch she moved—but she walked. Vaasa walked until her hand was on her mother’s door, and she turned the knob before she had a chance to stop herself. Before she could overthink.
Inside was a four-poster bed, white chiffon drapes hanging from each top corner and shielding the quilts in a veil of blurredwhite. Along one wall was a light birch armoire, the natural knots of which had been sanded out to leave a uniform beige. The chambers were untouched, as if her mother would rise from that bed any day now. A place Dominik hadn’t dared to overthrow. Vaasa glanced around, and it all felt less scary than the hallway.
It still felt sacrilegious to search through every crevice and armoire. Yet Vaasa did it. She parsed through each one feeling as if she were overturning a grave, and even more so when her hands came up empty. There was no necklace. Not in the pockets of Vena’s dresses, not in the bottoms of her drawers. It was not under the bed or slid beneath the rug.
