Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

Mathjin, what did you do?” Vaasa barked in Icrurian. “ What did you do? ”

“I did what I had to,” Mathjin said in Asteryan, eyeing each step Dominik took and using Asteryan to ensure Dominik could understand the words between them. Six other people stood at the perimeter—Asteryan guards.

Vaasa’s breath started to quicken. Were the Asteryan forces in the city?

“He made a deal, not so unlike our own,” Dominik said simply with his hands clasped behind his back as he stepped up the stairs. “If he gave me you, I would kill the general who murdered his family. Tell me, Mathjin, did Ignac Kozár suffer to your liking?”

Mathjin moved away from him and didn’t deign a response.

The gift , Vaasa realized. That letter had never been for her; Dominik had known she’d show it to Mathjin. He’d communicated with the advisor through Vaasa, and she hadn’t even noticed.

Had she ever had the advantage, or had Dominik outplayed her at every turn?

Dominik stepped closer to Amalie, and fear flooded into Vaasa’s trembling hands. “It was a simple deal, really,” Dominik said. Running his knuckle along Amalie’s cheek, his silver clawed ring pressed into her skin, black stone stark against the pale of it, and Amalie tried to move, but he swiped the ring up to her hairline.

Amalie clenched her teeth to hold back any sound. Blood trickled off her skin in a small thread of droplets, pooling at the white fabric still covering her mouth.

Vaasa knew better than to speak. Knew better than to beg for a life Dominik was more likely to take if he knew it mattered. Instead, she waited with bated breath to see what he would do next.

It was the most powerless she’d ever felt.

“You should have just let the magic kill you.” Dominik looked squarely at Vaasa. “You knew you would die regardless.”

In that moment, she had a hard time disagreeing.

“You despise Asterya, so you invite its emperor into your capital? Into your election ?” Vaasa asked Mathjin, falling back into Icrurian, watching as the duplicitous advisor kept a healthy distance from her brother, disgust painting his features. “He gave you one general, delivered on one promise, and that was worth betraying Reid?”

Amalie cried out, and Vaasa whipped her head to where her brother stood, ring dripping with Amalie’s blood. The cut was a twin to the first one, dragging down her cheek directly next to it. Dominik straightened. “Every time someone speaks in Icrurian, I cut her.”

Out of the side of his eye, Mathjin watched the guards. Faint questioning coursed over his features, as if he suddenly debated the deal he had made. “He’s agreed to leave peacefully if he’s allowed to take you with him,” Mathjin responded. “He and I will see each other on the battlefield, and there will be no deal between us then. So you will write this letter, and then you both will go, and whatever war he starts is a war he will lose.”

“You are a fool,” she spat. But it answered her question: Mathjin wouldn’t have let an entire army cross the border, even if he wanted war. There was no way they could’ve gotten past the scouts along the Settara—unless they’d donned the colors and sigil of Wrultho. Mathjin had made a fool’s bargain, so blinded by grief and revenge that he couldn’t see the danger he dealt with. The worst part was that he bargained with the wrong sibling; if he’d told Vaasa of the revenge he sought, she would have done everything in her power to bring him Ignac Kozár.

“I have his advisor. If he makes a move, I slaughter the old man.”

Vaasa wanted to laugh, but with her brother that close to Amalie, with her brother silent , she couldn’t. “You think he cares one moment for Ozik’s life?” There wasn’t a loyal bone in Dominik’s body. “You’ve gotten into bed with a viper, and you don’t know it yet, but you have already been bitten.”

“Write the fucking letter,” Mathjin growled.

“No.”

“I won’t kill her,” Dominik said from the side, knuckle delicately placed along Amalie’s throat. “Not at first. But for every moment you don’t write that letter, I will carve another slice into her lovely, delicate skin.”

And he did, just below her jawline, as if to make a mockery of the way this had all started for Vaasa. Amalie breathed in sharply through gritted teeth, but let out no sound, as if in defiance.

Mathjin must have told him every intimate detail.

Nausea rolled through her. It was her worst nightmare—for Dominik to know of any moment she’d smiled, of any moment she’d dared allowed herself close enough to these people for them to matter. For him to have a hold on the memories that had etched themselves into her skin and her heart. That vulnerability cut deeper than any blade she’d ever known.

Dominik waited one breath, then dragged a large cut along Amalie’s chest.

In exactly the same place Kosana had cut Vaasa.

Amusement glittered in his eyes.

“Stop. You don’t have to harm anyone else here,” Vaasa said.

Dominik slid his ring down Amalie’s inner arm, and this time, she choked out a sob.

“Stop!”

“Write the damn letter!” Mathjin screamed.

Amalie wouldn’t raise her eyes. Would never ask Vaasa to give in. She wouldn’t start a war, not even if the cost was her very life.

Dominik raised his knuckle back to Amalie’s other cheek.

“Stop,” Vaasa said. “I’ll write it. I’ll write the letter.”

Dominik cut Amalie anyway.

Amalie let out a whimper and then choked on the gag, holding back tears of terror, no doubt, and anger swelled in Vaasa.

“I told you I would write it!”

“Enough,” Mathjin said to Dominik, who raised a brow at the advisor’s audacity. On the edge of the catacomb, an Asteryan guard drew his sword.

But Dominik tapped his clawed ring on the crumbling stone and gestured for Mathjin to continue. The sword was lowered. Boredom painted the sharp, angular lines of Dominik’s face, which meant he was far more dangerous in that moment than he was whenever he showed emotion. He was thinking, probably about how he would take Mathjin’s life.

Looking up at her hands, Vaasa let her shoulders fall. “You’ll have to untie me.”

“One hand is all she needs,” Dominik warned Mathjin, who carefully approached.

Mathjin did not flinch as he touched the ropes at her wrists, the fibers woven within them having no effect on his nonmagical hands. One wrist was released, that of her dominant hand, and it fell like dead-weight to her side.

Lifting her knee, she slammed her foot into Mathjin’s groin.

He howled in pain and stumbled backward, fury in his eyes, and spat at her feet as he doubled over.

From behind him, Dominik chuckled.

Mathjin forced himself upright and moved forward, lifting his arm and slapping the back of his hand into Vaasa’s cheekbone. The echo of the strike reverberated through the room.Vaasa didn’t make a sound.

Cranking her head back forward, she curled her lip. “My face will be the last thing you see.”

“You won’t live long enough.”

“You’ve underestimated me.”

“No, I haven’t.” Mathjin limped back to retrieve the paper and pen on the ground. “I’ve rightfully estimated him.”

Dominik grinned, running the claw of his ring along Amalie’s cheek again. She flinched away from him, but he only stepped behind her, leaning to whisper something in her ear, his hands trailing along her throat.

Amalie went utterly still.

Fury swept through Vaasa, and her mind screamed for her to try something, anything, to get Dominik to let Amalie go. Yet she knew the outcome of asking her brother to stop, knew that Dominik would simply drag it out for longer, make it that much worse.

Keeping his distance, Mathjin slid the paper and pen across the bench directly next to her, gesturing harshly with his hand. “Write. And don’t forget, I’ve seen your letters. I know the way you speak. Write it well.”

Her arm stretched with the motion, the rope tightening on her wrist and causing her to wince as she reached for the pen. It was cold in her hand, but she took one small breath and began to scribble words that sounded like her own.

She accurately described the route they’d all agreed on, from the dips in the canyons to the curves in the Sanguine River. Mathjin would know if even a single detail was out of place. He was, after all, the one who’d come up with it.

Tears welled in her eyes as she wrote the final line.

Trying not to let out a shaky breath, she signed her name at the bottom of the parchment and dropped the pen.

Mathjin pounced, digging his knee into her stomach and shoving her back so she slammed into the wooden stake she’d been tied to. A yelp slipped through her lips, and her knee buckled. Her shoulder screamed. She caught herself with her free hand upon the bench, leaning against it to try and relieve the weight on her stretched shoulder. “ Fuck. You. ”

“Kill her soon, please,” was all Mathjin said as he folded the parchment and put it into his coat. He left her with one hand untied—probably to mock Dominik. “And then get the fuck out of my country.”

“A deal is a deal,” Dominik purred.

Without looking at her or Amalie, Mathjin disappeared into the shadows of the catacomb, the Asteryan guards parting for him to leave.

Dominik tapped his foot.

Vaasa lifted her eyes, meeting his through the slivers of light filtering through the cracks in the stone around them. She didn’t dare make a sound, didn’t dare beg for a quick death or for mercy. A part of her had always known the two of them would end up here. That they would someday be across from each other, her death imminent, his grin exactly like this.

It only grieved her that the last face she would ever see would be Dominik’s.

Reid, back in the theater with his easy gaze and casual grin, flashed behind her eyelids. And if she hadn’t already been on the floor, the thoughts would have brought her there. But in it all, there was a small thread of gratitude: she had this memory, the one of him last night and all the ones before it, too. Her chest ached with gratitude for knowing what it had felt like to have him, even for only a short time.

“Do you intend to die like that?” Dominik asked, looking at her shameful stance.

“Where I die makes no difference to me.”

“You know,” he drawled from behind Amalie. “There is a part of me that’s sorry it’s come to this between us.”

“No there isn’t.” She looked to the guards—he’d even brought witnesses. How had he possibly persuaded them all not to speak of what happened here?

“Believe what you will. But you do understand I have no choice in this, right? I thought through the alternatives, you know. I could have simply killed the foreman, but what if you were fool enough to marry again? Plus, this is a much better story: That useless foreman from Wrultho gets a hankering for power and Asterya’s heiress is killed in the crossfire? Our lords will march to war.”

For a moment, confusion overtook Vaasa’s heartache. She hadn’t thought the foreman capable—but he was planning something big, that much was clear. “Have you always talked so much?” she asked.

Dominik snorted, looking down at Amalie, who was still unmoving as she watched Vaasa. Dominik once again ran his ringed finger down her cheek to her neck, then along the neckline of Amalie’s shirt.

Amalie squeezed her eyes shut.

“Stop,” Vaasa begged. “Leave her alone. She’s done nothing to you.”

Dominik’s hand froze.

Then he swiped his ring over Amalie’s chest, one long cut that immediately bubbled with blood. This time, Amalie shook with muffled screams.

Vaasa lurched forward, but the rope caught her and she gritted her teeth, tears welling in her eyes.

Dominik stepped out from behind Amalie and crossed the platform in four steps, even the rays of light leaning away from him. The sharp planes of his face loomed closer with each step he took, but he stopped before getting close enough for Vaasa to strike. Her brother’s indigo eyes impeccably measured the distance. “Answer me this: How did you learn to manipulate the curse?”

A desperate laugh came from deep in her chest, a tear escaping with it and rolling down her cheek. “You want answers from me? Like this?”

“Answer the question.”

“You can die wondering. I hope it plagues you until your very last day.”

He stomped backward, loud footsteps echoing in the chamber until he stopped in front of Amalie. With one long strike, he backhanded her the way Mathjin had struck Vaasa.

Amalie yelped as tears and blood streamed down her face, Dominik’s ring now dripping with crimson.

“Answer the question,” Dominik snarled as he spun back.

It didn’t matter now if he knew—maybe she could at least make death quick and painless for Amalie. “It isn’t a curse,” Vaasa said in a low voice. “It’s magic our mother had in her all along.”

Dominik tapped his ring against the wood of Amalie’s chair. “Why did she arrange your marriage?”

“Is that why you killed her?” Vaasa countered. It didn’t matter what she revealed now, what parts of the puzzle she’d started to put together. She and Amalie were going to die.

“I didn’t kill our mother,” Dominik insisted, something new flashing in his eyes. It was the only time in her life she had seen it echo in the twin blue: hurt.

Had he… loved someone after all?

“Then who did? Who summoned the Miro’dag, who made the bargain with the Zetyr?” she asked.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

Was that sincerity in his tone, in the curl of his lip? She’d never known what it looked like on him.

He narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t the one asking the questions.”

It stunned her to see the flash of youth on his face. The impetuous, affronted nature of someone too young not to be susceptible to pain. She’d never looked at him this way, had never had the capacity to. Her shame was like a pinprick. He was still her younger brother. “What do you want, then? What more do you want?”

“I want to understand ,” he demanded. “To know why she gave you the one thing she knew would be a threat to me.”

“I don’t know, Dominik.”

“Oh, but you, sister, you know everything .” Dominik looked down to Amalie, then back to Vaasa. “You have always known everything. Father’s fucking favorite.”

“He gave you an empire. He gave me a death sentence.”

“ And she gave you a way out! ”

There it was again, the hatred. The same emotion that burned in her own eyes when she looked upon him. His cruelty and avarice always came out the moment he felt threatened, and he harmed people for it. He harmed them beyond forgiveness.

And for a moment, she pitied him. How sad to spend a lifetime always afraid.

The moment she thought the words, they struck her. As she gazed upon the paranoid glint in her brother’s eyes, she replayed each moment of fear that had coiled in her heart and stomach.

The serpent—the thing she’d thought was a curse. Because it looked like her father. Because it looked like Dominik. And when she’d learned the truth of the magic, she’d thought her brother was the curse. Thought he was the affliction that haunted her. The reason she could not love or hope or dream.

She lowered her eyes to the dust-covered ground.

She could no longer feel the snake now, but she knew that if she could, she would be able to hear the soft hum of what her heart had always wanted her to see. It was never the magic, and it was never her brother—her fear was the real curse she’d been born with, one that plagued them both equally. It was the greatest cycle of their lives. And she’d been given a way to break it.

But she hadn’t.

How sad to have spent a lifetime always afraid. To have looked upon love and kindness and feared it.

“Killing me is not going to set you free,” she whispered.

Dominik remained silent for a moment before his voice sounded along the stone. “What?”

“Father was right. You can never want anything without the chance that it will be taken from you.” She lifted her eyes to his, heart pounding. “You will never alleviate your fear, Dominik, because the key is not in taking what you want, but in wanting the right things. And you have never wanted the right things.”

Dominik’s lips parted, but Vaasa no longer looked at him.

She gazed at Amalie, who she knew understood every Asteryan word that had just come out of Vaasa’s mouth. And she boldly switched to Icrurian. “You showed me love, and because of that, I learned how to show it, too.”

Love. Gratitude.

Hope.

They were the only ways to break the curse. “Close your eyes,” she said to Amalie. “Don’t watch any of this.”

Tears gathered in Amalie’s eyes, and then they ran down her cheeks, mixing with the blood. She shook her head in defiance.

“When he kills me, I need you to fight like hell. Your strength is my strength,” Vaasa choked. It was perhaps the only kindness she had left to offer Amalie—final moments that were not shrouded in the gruesome image of Vaasa’s death, but rather in hope. “And tell Reid… that I would have stayed.”

Amalie still couldn’t speak, but after a moment of hesitation, she nodded. As if it was the promise of fulfilling Vaasa’s request—the promise of offering her this one last thing—that truly gave Amalie strength. Wetness shone in her doe-brown eyes, but Amalie swallowed her cries. She lifted her chin in bravery, in what Vaasa could have sworn was I love you, too . And the only relief Vaasa felt was when Amalie closed her eyes.

“Kill me, Dominik,” Vaasa said, returning her gaze upward. “Kill me and prove me right.”

Rage threaded in the coldness of his gaze, and he dragged the gleaming knife from his belt. As Vaasa watched him stalking forward, lip curling, she decided his would not be the last face she saw. Even though she would die here, she would not look at the fear any longer.

She looked to Amalie, and just then, her eyes flew open. Vaasa could have sworn they flashed white.

And then magic flooded the room, slamming into Dominik and cutting off every inch of light and sound.

And there was nothing.

Until the world hummed.

The darkness coating them dissipated in a snap, the sort of control only a trained Veragi witch could accomplish. Mist surrounded the platform. It snaked up the columns and crawled along the fractured ceiling. Through the black mist emerged a stalking cloaked figure, bathed in swirling black, shadows bowing with their steps.

Silvery blond hair lifting with the mist.

Amber eyes glowing in the dark.

Melisina.

Vaasa choked on a sob of relief and railed against the ropes that bound her. Her wrist burned, eyes immediately scanning for Dominik. She found him sprawled on the floor, blood trickling from his head, trying to pull himself up on his arms.

His knife had been dropped in front of him.

Closer to her.

Dominik snapped his head up, ocean eyes locking on hers as he threatened something Vaasa couldn’t hear. He sprang toward the blade.

Vaasa threw her body away from the wooden post, her bound arm holding her back, and kicked with every ounce of strength she could still muster. Bone cracked. Blood spurted from Dominik’s nose as he recoiled, hands gripping his face. His angry scream pierced the air, and he leapt for the weapon. Using her outstretched foot, she kicked the knife into her hands and could have howled in relief as the blade met her fingers. Quickly, she sawed at the rope tied around her other hand. Dominik began crawling across the floor toward her. Behind him, Melisina was taking on all six guards, black Veragi magic streaming down their throats and noses.

Dominik’s fingers wrapped around Vaasa’s wrist and slammed it against the wood. The knife clattered to the ground, and Vaasa tried to move her body, tried to kick and get out of his way, but Dominik caught her foot and tugged until she lost her balance. Grabbing the frayed rope above her, Vaasa took one large breath, and then let the weight of her body fall.

A tearing sensation lanced up her arm.

The fringed rope snapped.

Her bound arm fell, and she choked as blood flowed into her fingers, a tingling sensation burning all the way to the tips. She clawed at the tendril of rope still tied to her wrist. If she could get to her magic, if she could—

She rolled as Dominik swung the knife down, iron blade etching into the stone floor. She kicked his side again, causing him to lose his balance. Tossing her weight to the left, she rolled away from him as many times as she could. She hit the hard stone wall. Sharp pieces of granite littered the floor around her. Vaasa dragged one of those stones across the rope still tied to her wrist as she heard Dominik stand, his footsteps echoing on the floor.

She sawed despite the murder in his eyes, despite the blood now streaming down her wrist. Curled on the ground, she had moments before Dominik killed her.

Amalie let out a high-pitched wail. Her hair was strewn along the floor, the chair she’d been in shattered on the floor. The witch was curled on the marble screaming through the gag.

She’d never in her life wanted to picture Amalie broken.

And now Vaasa saw it, the way her friend’s entire being seemed to fracture at what had been done. Like a well refilling, like a fire sparking, rage poured into her.

No—not rage.

Magic.

Her nails cut through the last of the rope, and it fell to the floor as darkness shot out of Vaasa, slamming into Dominik and sending him flying backward. Coiled and angrier than it had ever been, the magic slithered in Vaasa’s belly and through her veins, rushing to her limbs and out of her fingertips. It swirled up her arms and neck, hissing, mist growing, as she got to her feet.

Dominik’s eyes went wide.

“Sister—”

“Don’t you dare beg.”

He started to shake.

Vaasa took a slow step forward, black mist coating the floor with her fury. Dominik’s eyes grew wider. The mist around her shifted. It no longer coiled around her limbs. It writhed on the ground toward him, a collection of serpents with forked tongues spewing, until they reared and piled in on themselves. They wrapped into something new, climbed up into a body and curled around to create four legs. As the creature prowled forward, the serpents that composed it hissed and slithered.

And then the magic inside her grew and shifted, the creature’s four limbs stretching, white eyes glowing. In a chorus of screaming shadows, it tipped its head to the sky.

She knew then what it was. Knew with perfect clarity what it had wanted to be this entire time, and what she had not let it. It howled with its loyalty and its outrage.

Her magic sparked, retribution in her blood, and the wolf took form.

It stalked forward with each step Vaasa took, teeth bared, edges of the magic licking the air. This creature of the void was everything inside of her: darkness, pain, fear, and power, too.

“You’ve spent a lifetime afraid of this moment.” She stepped in front of her brother. Looked directly at the horror on his pale face, the way the edges of her magic snapped like whips and bit, tearing at his wrists and clothes. “I have waited a lifetime to watch it. To see each speck of fear dance in your eyes as you come to terms with your greatest nightmare, for you have found every way to witness mine.”

Dominik’s head whipped back and forth, looking for a way out, in a last display of his cowardice.

“Do you realize that it is you who created your greatest threat?” she asked.

When Dominik laid his eyes upon the magic still swirling around Vaasa, he stopped. “He isn’t the wolf,” he said. “You are.”

The thought crossed her mind to let him live. But despite her unyielding shame, she knew that would never be an option. That he would never stop until the world beneath his feet burned.

The creature of the void struck.

The wolf consumed him, black Veragi mist cutting off every sense of his sight and sound and smell. It cut the air from his lungs and dragged him down into the wicked shadows. Into the void. It drowned him. His gurgling screams could barely be heard, but Vaasa could feel its teeth rip into his neck, taste the metallic blood as it poured, hear the stretching of limbs.

And then the wolf dissipated, snapping back into her with a force she had to brace herself against. Dominik was there, blood pooling on the floor. His head lay a foot away from the rest of his body.

Shock tumbled through Vaasa first. A resistance to what she saw, to what she had just done.

And then she screamed.

Agony shattered her like a broken window, tiny shards of glass piercing each of her organs and ripping out of her skin. Detonating. Black mist exploded around her. From her. Through her. It crashed against the columns and walls, and she wondered for a moment if she might bring down the entire colosseum. If she might shake so hard no foundation could stand a chance.

The last of her family. Dead.

And yet, she could not stop. Could not even slow. There were people still breathing, people who had wanted to take everything from her. People whose selfishness and greed had put her right here, poised her to either kill or be killed. People who right now wanted to witness the shattering of a nation.

It filled her to bursting fullness. Poured into her with the velocity of an explosion: rage.

Faintly she heard Melisina trying to calm Amalie. Trying to undo the knots. Vaasa heard Amalie screaming.

One knee at a time, Vaasa pulled herself from the floor, the void still beating around her and licking the air. She let the torn lower half of her skirt drag through Dominik’s blood. The mist scattered where she placed her feet.

Melisina asked, “What are you doing?”

Bending over, one hand gripping Dominik’s hair, Vaasa growled, “He wasn’t working alone.”