Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

Every councilor must have gaped, but Vaasa saw nothing past her own misery and rage.

Past Reid, staring at her like she was an omen.

She stared right at Mathjin, and the wolf at her side growled.

Mathjin, sword in hand, flicked his eyes to Reid. Vaasa bared her teeth. Darkness burst from her. Tendrils of magic whipped along the platform, and Mathjin grabbed Reid and spun. Koen moved from the left and dove, slamming into Mathjin, and the two went tumbling to the floor, Reid thrown off balance and rolling on the platform.

Mathjin’s body clapped against the stone pavement and he struck down with his blade, but Koen had drawn his sword and deflected the movement. Steel clashed against steel, and the garden erupted.

Men in Wrultho green flooded from all sides, swinging swords burying into bodies, heads tipping back and screaming, and Ton made a move for the platform. He slaughtered a guard on his way, eyes glued to where Kier balked, likely realizing he was the target.

“It’s a coup!” someone yelled, just as another man lunged at Vaasa.

Esoti and Kosana were suddenly there. Kosana moved to cover Vaasa’s back while Esoti leapt in front of her, stumbling back from the wolf that collided with the oncoming enemy. His screams filled the air, and magic lurched from Vaasa, more powerful than she’d felt it before, as if this new manifestation of her magic had unlocked something in her. Esoti slid a knife into the empty sheath at Vaasa’s thigh. With a stern nod, Esoti released her and wrapped her forearm around Kosana’s.

The two locked gazes, and then Kosana plunged into the madness.

“Go—” Vaasa said.

“I will not let you out of my sight again,” Esoti said, then grabbed her arm. “Now let’s go take off someone else’s head.”

Darkness ripped forth from Vaasa, and she barreled forward with Dominik’s knife still in her hand, just as Reid turned around and struck his sword against Ton’s. Kier covered Elijah, pushing his husband off the platform and into the waiting mass of their own trusted guards. The men fled with the high consort, and Kier turned, wicked anger gnarling his features.

Vaasa’s wolf plunged forward. It struck Ton, teeth bared, and Vaasa tasted the metallic blood, the screams echoing in her ears as she leapt onto the platform.

Reid didn’t waste a single breath, burying his sword in Ton’s gut and slicing down to his groin. Gore splattered as Ton’s large body sank to the ground, no life left in him, and his face cracked on the stone platform. Red bloomed in a pool beneath him.

Vaasa turned as the gardens shook.

The edges of the courtyard were blacked out with mist. Melisina and Amalie stood at the back fighting against the inpouring of soldiers in Wrultho green, their magic creating a circular boundary around the gardens. Kier bellowed orders, the other councilors following suit, instructing the guards to fight Ton’s men. Soldiers charged through the void of Veragi magic without sight or sound or smell. Kosana covered both witches, barking orders at her own corps, striking down a man in green as he broke through. Scanning the enormous border, Vaasa saw Romana, Mariana, and Suma, who formed a triangle behind the platform, mist pouring from their hands to enclose the other half of the gardens. It mingled with Melisina’s and Amalie’s magic, completing a circle enclosing them all. The mist hissed and swirled. Reid barked at Kier’s men to defend the witches, leaving the soldiers a choice: side with him, and therefore Icruria, or hesitate and be marked a traitor. Vaasa recognized the faces of the witches of Una, whose light flashed to blind those in green who poured through the magical boundary, and with their display of loyalty, the Icrurian soldiers rallied behind the Veragi coven, too.

But the courtyard was enormous, big enough for five hundred people at least, and there was no way they could stop each person who came out of the mist. Those in Icrurian silver and gold descended upon the interlopers, the screams of runners and fighters echoing off the vines and glass walls of concealed patios like the one Vaasa had slept beneath.

Vaasa spun again, finding herself facing Reid. He reached for the bruise on her cheek, but she knew if she felt anything else, she would crumble. So she gently pushed his hand away, searching once more for her next victim and finding Mathjin still fighting with Koen.

And she moved.

Reid called after her as she stalked forward, the shadow of her wolf whipping at her feet. Mathjin looked up. Terror resided in the blue of his eyes, and she realized that even if she hated herself for it, that terror sustained her. She fed on it. Perhaps she was more like her brother than she’d thought.

Koen landed a blow to Mathjin’s side, slicing through his clothing and summoning a line of red. Mathjin stumbled, and Vaasa snapped her head to the foreman, causing Koen to sink backward and lower his sword.

Mathjin dropped the hand gripping his side, his hands tightening around the hilt of his sword, leveling himself in preparation.

“You estimated wrong,” Vaasa said. The magic inside her coiled tightly. Only months ago, the tug of her power had been unbearable, but now the sensation was familiar, working with her instead of against her.

Mathjin raised his sword.

The wolf struck.

Vaasa felt each of its movements as if they were her own. Like it was her feet that pounded on the blood-soaked pavement, her teeth that bared, her muscles that coiled. Mathjin swung his sword at the void and the magic flickered, losing some shape as it slammed into the advisor and dragged him backward.

“Vaasa!” Reid yelled as he grabbed her forearm and pulled. She cursed and fought against him, her wolf dissolving and releasing Mathjin.

“He made a deal with Dominik!” she yelled back, spinning and tearing her arm from Reid’s hand.

Reid froze. “What?”

“Tell him!” Vaasa screamed as she turned back to Mathjin. Her magic detonated again, lashing out with her fury. It surrounded them in the same way Melisina had surrounded the gardens, a circle that swirled around them all, the void threatening to squeeze tighter. It covered them the way it had covered her that night next to the Settara, except this time, it let her breathe. It let her speak. It expanded around them to a perfect dome, blocking out even the sunlight.

“Tell him what you did to Amalie. How you watched as Dominik tortured her.”

Mathjin’s eyes blinked furiously as he tried to adjust to the sudden dark.

“Tell him!” Vaasa screamed again, and Mathjin whipped his head forward. “Tell him everything. How you wrote to Dominik in secret. Tell him what you did for Ton and the east.”

“Reid—” Mathjin said.

“Is this true?” Reid murmured. The battle raged outside, but in that corner of the garden, in the eye of the storm of her magic, Reid only sauntered to the space next to Vaasa.

“Tell him how you kidnapped me and strung me up. How you forced me to write that letter. How you left me there to die,” Vaasa attested.

Mathjin took a step back, desperately searching for a break in the whirling mist.

There was none.

Carefully, he looked to Reid. Their eyes met. “You may not understand now, but you will,” the advisor swore.

Reid’s composure broke.

Stalking forward like the wolf they’d named him after, not a trace of mercy anywhere on his corded body, Reid descended upon Mathjin with the ruthless ire reserved only for those who touched the ones he loved. It was as if he chose every step, and what he’d said to her that day in his office rang true. He knew when not to fight, and that made his choice all the more frightening.

Reid yelled as he kicked his advisor square in the stomach, sending him flying to the ground and sliding back upon the stone, crashing into one of the many statues that lined the center garden. It cracked and swayed, body splitting, a marble arm sliding and shattering on the ground. Around them, the magic grew wider and darker and louder. It raged with the violence thrumming through Vaasa.

“How dare you,” Reid said to Mathjin. Never before had she heard that inflection in his tone—a mix of rage and heartbreak that could only be brought on by the deepest of betrayals.

“How dare you ,” Mathjin yelled back, his body shaking as he stood. “That you would ruin your family’s legacy, ruin everything your father worked—”

Reid slammed the hilt of his sword into Mathjin’s cheek, sending him back to the ground. The advisor yelped in pain, and blood trickled from his head where it had hit the statue.

Vaasa plunged a knife into his leg.

Mathjin wailed, leg twitching violently and then going slack.

Betrayal seared across Reid’s features. Insecurity, too. And then a whisper of resolution as his jaw went taut.

Tears streamed down Mathjin’s face, a plea falling from his cowardly lips.

Vaasa watched the stiffness of Reid’s motions, the way his arm couldn’t lift. Softly, she placed her hand upon his shoulder. He turned to look at her, and silently she absolved him.

She would do this—he did not need to.

But Reid shook his head. Stepping forward, he placed the tip of the sword just beneath Mathjin’s chin. Maintaining that same honor she had known of him from the first time she witnessed his protection. It would be he who doled out this punishment—he who carried the weight. “For my wife, and for my father. For failing his only son.”

With one long slice, Reid slit Mathjin’s throat.

The traitorous advisor gurgled on his own blood, and his head hung forward, concealing the wicked slash that poured crimson onto the man’s dust-coated purple coat.

Reid shook.

The magic rose higher and squeezed tighter, the whorls of it picking up tendrils of Vaasa’s hair. Quietly, she whispered to Mathjin’s lifeless body, “I told you mine would be the last face you saw.”

And then the magic hissed to the ground, breaking into a cloud of mist that crept along the bloodied stone.

Reid’s body covered hers for the briefest of moments. A single thread of shared rage and sorrow. He brushed his lips against hers, whispering, “ We are not done here ,” and left, plunging back into the echoing screams and clash of steel. She thought to follow him, to give him some words of solace, but there were none.

Faintly, she heard the cracking of magic upon the stone, and Vaasa ran with what energy she had left to Melisina and Amalie. To run was all she could do. To fight. Esoti appeared behind her, the two of them coming upon a small cluster of men who’d broken through the shield of mist. Vaasa ducked under the raised arm of one and spun, plunging the dagger into his back at the same moment Esoti sliced the man’s throat. Ripping the dagger free, Vaasa whirled and slid the blade into the stomach of another, whose falling sword was blocked by the long blade Esoti wielded.

With each life she took, the well of darkness in her grew deeper, her rage running hotter.

In front of her, the councilor from Hazut gaped and flipped his head around, seeking his candidate. The foreman of Hazut was nowhere to be found. The coward was unfit to have led Icruria anyhow, then.

Vaasa didn’t have the time to deliver the righteous remark she felt entitled to about this. Esoti tugged her one way and thrust a blade through the eye of a man wearing Wrultho’s sigil. Using his body like a battering ram, she slammed into two more soldiers. Vaasa leapt over a mess of tangled limbs upon the ground and plunged Dominik’s dagger into a soldier’s thigh. Esoti swiftly executed the other, and they sprinted across the gardens.

By the time she reached Melisina through the swarm of gold-and-silver-clad soldiers, the witch had started to falter. Exhaustion coated Melisina’s face as she pushed the limits of her magic. Vaasa gripped Melisina’s shoulder, pulling long gulps of air. “You’ve done enough. You need to rest.”

“Not until it’s over,” she said through gritted teeth.

“It’s over,” Vaasa assured her. “The tides have turned.”

Melisina looked over her shoulder to Vaasa, then past her. Her eyes went wide. Her horrified scream pierced the air and Vaasa spun, ready to sprint. The gardens shook as a familiar awful, nightmarish wail emanated through the grounds.

The Miro’dag broke through the mist. Upon the platform. Directly behind Reid.

Shrieks of fear echoed around the gardens, and people fled, plunging into the void of mist and senselessness, taking their chances in the magic instead of here.

Vaasa did not think. She only ran.

Wings shimmering with dark gray and bloodred, the creature slammed into the statue of Una upon the platform and the marble crumbled, crashing against the stone ground. And then those wings collided with Reid. His knees cracked against the marble. A claw pushed through his shoulder blade and Reid’s entire body arched, his bellow of pain echoing off every leaf and vine.

The pound of Vaasa’s boots reverberated with each desperate step forward. A scream tore from her throat. But then a figure broke through the mist near the Miro’dag, cloaked in black, and something rippled through the air.

Wind struck her stomach and sent her flying back, skidding across the stone floor, skin tearing on the stone. Vaasa tumbled backward over herself, landing facedown and forcing her palms against the hot ground, head whipping up as she dragged her knees beneath her.

White hair billowing behind him, a sharp-toothed smile on his face, Ozik stood upon the platform, a dark stain against vibrant green and pearly white. Magic roared around him in glossy ripples, the energy translucent yet unmistakable. He clapped and the gardens shook, his mocking applause silencing everything and everyone. Those left jumped into Melisina’s shroud of magic, which trembled as she tried to stand.

The ringing sounds of palm against palm echoed off the crumbling stone and washed over Vaasa as dread overtook her. Her father’s oldest advisor stepped forward with the Miro’dag, which pinned down a bleeding Reid, at his back.

“A severed head, Vaasalisa?” Ozik said in Asteryan, careless of anyone who was left or whether they could understand. “And I thought I was the one who would make a dramatic entrance.”

Vaasa’s muscles screamed as she hauled herself to her feet and started forward. She didn’t feel the soreness for long; it was swiftly replaced by the coursing adrenaline and magic. Everyone else fled. Soldiers and diplomats alike plunged into the void of Veragi magic to escape the might of the demon. To stand a chance at living.

All Vaasa saw was Reid.

All she felt was the tug to go forward, even as the garden emptied and the witches stood ready, no one daring to strike for fear of Reid’s life. The mist around them shivered and hissed. The rest of the coven would fall. Ozik had waited until the end—until they were exhausted from the battle.

He flicked his wrist, and a gleaming thread of power rippled through the air. It pressed against Vaasa’s chest until she was forced to a stop by some invisible wall. Yet it trembled as she pushed, and the air was thick, as if Ozik struggled to maintain it. Her eyes locked on Reid, on the Miro’dag that held him down, and she didn’t dare move.

Golden eyes inspected her, staring out of an ancient face that strained against its own bones. Ozik did not look polished and smooth, as he was in her memories; no, he was ragged and torn at the edges. She wasn’t the only one who was tired.

“What are you doing?” Vaasa dared ask.

“Start by dropping that pesky little knife.” Ozik gestured with his head toward Dominik’s severed one, which hadn’t been buried beneath other bodies yet. His lifeless eyes faced the platform, raven hair still sticky with blood that now shimmered in a way it hadn’t before. “I don’t trust what you might do with it. The blade at your thigh, too.”

Esoti growled from behind her, and Reid tried to speak, but his stifled cry was enough to fracture Vaasa once more. The Miro’dag dripped oily blood onto his shoulder. First Amalie. Now him. On the verge of breaking, Vaasa dropped her knives, which clanged as they hit the ground, one by one, Ozik watching each blade as it fell to Vaasa’s feet.

“Kick them away.”

Using the tip of her blood-soaked boot, she kicked the weapons to the left.

Ozik merely chuckled. Adjusting his stance, he moved to the edge of the platform, his black cloak dragging behind him and through the blood of those fallen. He kicked a body over the edge of the stage. “Your brother and I made a deal, you see. A bargain . But now he is dead, and I am left with an empty promise.”

Of course. She had never even considered it. “You’re the Zetyr,” Vaasa croaked. Had Dominik even known who he bargained with? The power he had summoned?

Ozik leapt off the platform and walked forward. Boredom threaded each of his wary features and he stopped a healthy distance away. The hem of his cloak swept the ground. “Yes. Very good.”

The maniacal gleam of his eye told her he had suspected Dominik would never have walked out of their altercation alive. She realized Ozik had been pulling strings for far longer than her brother had drawn breath.

But she had never once suspected him.

An oversight on her part, blinded by her own pure hatred of Dominik. Her overestimation of his mind. With Mathjin and Ton, Ozik had also been privy to every discussion, to every letter, to each move on the chessboard between her brother and her, yet she had never questioned if Ozik could actually be the one making the moves. The callous advisor who had stood at her father’s side and helped him win an empire. Who had overseen her tutelage, always demanding more of her, always on the inside of everyone’s secrets.

“How many bargains have you made, Ozik?”

“Vaasa—” Reid gasped in warning, but Ozik lifted his hand and the Miro’dag pushed its long, pointed claw further into Reid’s shoulder. Through the tattoo she’d memorized. Reid gasped in pain and Vaasa started forward again, faster now, though Ozik jumped between her and the platform.

“How many bargains?” she demanded, refusing to slow.

“How much time do you think we have?” He raised his hand, directing her to stop where she was.

She paused, Esoti still a pace behind her, cautiously following.

“It is best if your guard backs up,” he instructed.

Esoti bared her teeth.

Vaasa could feel the shadows and the mist dancing up her wrists. Could see the brutality in Ozik’s eyes as he turned toward Reid once again, and the Miro’dag coiled to strike. “Step back,” she commanded over her shoulder.

The warrior cursed but listened.

Ozik smiled and tilted his head. “Should I start at the beginning, or just with the little trade your mother made me? Your father’s life, to finally have her all to myself. To sit upon the throne with the only other witch I knew and be done with your father’s foolish reign. To finally have one of our own. No one ever suspected more than a flu.”

Vaasa’s breathing faltered. Ozik had loved her mother? Had they been having an affair?

He’d killed her father for his throne and his wife.

“I should have listened more closely when your father droned on about how love is useless. Your mother left for that one pesky summer. Came here of all places, and I suspect that’s when she put her little plan in motion. Persuade me to kill her husband. Give her son the throne. Send her daughter to a stronghold of Veragi magic, one that would protect you against me, against your brother, against the rest of the world.” He shook his head. “Well, can you guess what happens to a bargain broken with a Zetyr witch?”

As the oil dripped upon Reid’s drape, his eyes stayed locked to hers. Then the sequence of events and motivations all fell into place. The pieces of the puzzle finally seemed to settle, finding their curves and edges and resting neatly upon the table in front of her.

“Death,” Vaasa said. Zetyr magic was an exchange—that much she had gleaned from reading about the god himself. That was the caveat, the reason it was either the most powerful force in existence or the least accessible. It was based on a bargain, subject to someone else’s desires. And so the consequence made sense; if the source went back on their end of the deal, they forfeited their life.

Vaasa’s mother knew she would die. And yet she did not cede the throne to Ozik. In a way, she had given each of her children their birthright—Dominik a throne, Vaasa a coven.

Vaasa took a strangled breath, fighting against the fresh grief that poured into her. “You killed my parents. You pitted me and Dominik against each other. All to clear your way to the Asteryan throne.”

Ozik gave an amused chuckle, then furrowed his brow at the body nearest him. Ton of Wrultho. He snorted, kicking him aside with the toe of his boot. “Useless. Though he did plan this little coup d’état all on his own. So messy, these eastern Icrurians.”

“ Enough . What do you want?” she pleaded.

Ozik flicked his wrist, and the Miro’dag struck. Its webbed wings opening on a howl, the beast ripped its claw from Reid’s shoulder.

And plunged it directly through his back, lifting him into the air and piercing his heart.

Melisina’s scream could be heard from the other side of the gardens, and the Veragi mist fell to the stone floor, dissipating on the wind. The curved claw ripped from Reid’s tendons and cracked through his shoulder blade, dripping blood as the Miro’dag yowled and Reid’s body fell to the platform.

“No!”

Vaasa’s scream was bloodcurdling as she ran to Reid. Her magic hissed against the ground, and Ozik barked a warning at her. She leapt onto the platform, the Miro’dag lingering above them, oil leaking onto the white marble around his body, mixing with the mist and the snakes and her cries. She could smell it, the rot. The death. The same scent that had haunted her all these months.

The Miro’dag’s bony spine curved as it retreated backward, crimson eyes animated and glowing. It didn’t strike again, didn’t drain the life from Reid. It only watched.

Waited.

And all Vaasa had was the smell. The unwanted images. Amalie, covered in blood. Dominik’s head, inches from his body. Mathjin’s slit throat.

Blood poured from the wound and Reid’s breaths came shallow, ragged, and Vaasa didn’t care if the Miro’dag took her, too. Didn’t care if she had survived Dominik only to die here, on her knees, at Reid’s side. But the bleeding was too much. It pooled around them, and her hands shook, barely touching his body, his eyes no longer moving.

“Reid!” she shouted. She watched with horror as the skin around his mouth paled.

As his rigid jaw went slack.

As the life dimmed from his expressive golden eyes.

And she felt it.

Felt his breathing cease.

Felt him leave this life.

Felt her insides crack.

A piercing wail broke from her chest, and she hauled his heavy head into her lap, tears streaming down her face as her magic whipped around her. “No,” she breathed. “No, you can’t go. You can’t go!” Her forehead fell to his. Her fingers ran through his disheveled hair, through the strands that had broken from his leather tie. She searched for signs of life, for a pulse, for something, and found nothing but the slick of his blood and the shattering of her heart.

Melisina’s cries broke through stillness of the garden. The most miserable keening rang around them.

A lifetime flashed before her eyes—Mireh, and the villa, and the places he would show her in stunning oranges and yellows and blues. The way his body would curl against hers at night. How they would be sleepless and tired in the morning, no regrets about how they’d lost themselves in each other.

The laughter of children; the patter of their feet.

She secretly hoped they would have her eyes.

That he would teach them his kindness.

She saw his hair turning gray and his beard threading with it, too. How time would wrinkle the skin of his hands. And how they would sit upon the veranda, and he’d place his forehead against hers, whispering of the life they had lived and how the world was not made of mountains and adventurous horizons, but of living room floors and the quiet flicker of candlelight.

The future haunted her more than any memory, than any ghost. The heart-wrenching realization not of what they had, but of what they never would.

She should have told him sooner. Should have begged him to keep her.

All that time she had wasted.

“It isn’t enough.” Her clawed whisper floated around them, his still-warm skin against hers. “It isn’t enough.”

And through the elegy of her own heart, she heard Ozik’s voice in the haze. “Are you ready to make a deal?”

Slowly, she lifted her head. Her magic jostled her insides and snapped from her, the wolf coming back to life, looming next to her as if prepared to strike.

Ozik remained still. “Kill me and he stays dead.”

The wolf paused.

Fingers shaking, she looked down at Reid’s lifeless body and realized exactly what Ozik had planned. The extent of what Zetyr magic could do when called upon.

He wanted a bargain. And he’d found the one way to make her desperate enough to give him anything he asked for.

“Bring him back,” she stammered. “Whatever you want, it’s yours. Just bring him back.”

They were supposed to have time. She had killed her brother. She had survived . But it didn’t matter what she lost, what the world demanded of her now. The only thing that mattered was that Reid’s lungs pulled breath, that goodness like his still lived.

Ozik stepped onto the platform and approached slowly, inspecting the places she touched Reid. For only a moment, Ozik eyed the wolf, but with Reid dead in her arms, assurance played upon his smile. Vaasa wouldn’t strike—not when he held the one thing she wanted most in his hands. “ Surrender your magic ,” he growled.

A warning coiled within her, deep and low, a small whisper of possession that might have found a voice if Ozik hadn’t cut her off at the knees. There was no debate, no question she had to ask herself. “It’s yours.”

“Tell me you surrender your magic to me. Do that, and in exchange, I will renew his life.”

“Fine.”

“Say it.”

Her heart leapt into her throat, but she choked down the magic and the rage and the fear. “I surrender my magic to you. In exchange , you must renew his life .”

Ozik took a large breath, the air around them stirring with something wicked, and then the muscles inside Vaasa’s abdomen went taut. Like a well run dry, she felt her power—that new, powerful wolf—being pulled from her very bones. It clung to her insides on its way out. Clawed at her throat. The force rebelled against their parting, teeth sinking into her so brutally she screamed, but then it was ripped from the tissue it had burrowed into, like the roots of a tree yanked violently from the ground. Something broke within her. Vaasa heard the howl of the wolf as it disintegrated, saw the glittering black ashes of what once was hers floating around Ozik. She had earned that magic. Conquered that darkness. The emptiness she had once craved became a hollow pit. Cold. And though her fingers itched to reach back out and reclaim what was hers, they remained on the lifeless body beneath them.

Ozik rolled his head from side to side, eyes closed with the kind of relief that only came when a deep, dark pain abated. When he opened them, he nodded, then knelt next to her, pale hand falling to the wound on Reid’s chest. Black veins ran along the back of his hand and dipped beneath his cloak. After a few moments, Reid’s wound began to mend. The air around them fizzed with raw, startling magic unlike anything Vaasa had ever seen. It was as if Ozik had been born a Zuheia witch with the ultimate power of healing and could direct it to fulfill any command he wanted. As if with her words he had unlocked a potential greater than she could even begin to fathom.

Vaasa screamed in agony, her stomach twisting, the empty pit now full of fire. Flames licked the caverns of where her power had been. They rose and burned and—

Just as quickly as it came, it disappeared.

Color bloomed on Reid’s face.

And then he gasped.

Vaasa sobbed, strength abandoning her, and she slumped. She dropped her head to his chest. There, her cheek pressed to him in both duty and powerlessness, she heard a quickening rhythm.

A heartbeat.

Another sob burst from her lips. She didn’t care what she’d given up, didn’t care that Asterya would fall to the hands of a madman or that the continent would be ravaged. All she cared was that Reid filled his lungs.

A hand landed at the base of her hair and pulled, causing Vaasa to cry out as she was dragged away from Reid. His body slipped from her arms. In the cold absence, she registered the rough scrape of rope against her throat. Vaasa stopped breathing.

Her hands flew to the rope, fingers scraping to get beneath it. She kicked her legs and flung her body to the side, finding the hard press of an unfamiliar chest as her arm was pulled behind her back. Then the other. Soldiers she did not know, all dressed in Wrultho green, dragged her across the platform, someone still tugging her hair. Rope circled her wrists and pulled tight before Vaasa had the opportunity to fight. Instinctively, she reached for her magic—but there was no answer. She choked on her sobs.

“Let her go!” Vaasa heard Esoti’s desperate call, then heard her grunt. She flung her head to the side to see Esoti plunge her knife into the abdomen of the man who attacked her. All around, men dressed in the old uniforms of Wrultho descended into the courtyard, forcing the witches back into a fight. Asteryans, all here and prepared to murder, who had been hiding in plain sight.

The world reoriented as the soldiers threw Vaasa forward, the hand in her hair not letting go as her knees cracked against the platform. Ozik stood in front of her. They craned her neck so she had no option but to look at him. His face was gnarled with magic, the black veins she’d seen on his hands suddenly gone. The tiredness disappeared. Then he looked like a new man: youthful and endlessly wicked. “Walk, or I’ll kill every single person in this courtyard,” he whispered in her ear.

Vaasa didn’t need to calculate her odds; with their lives, she would no longer gamble. She stood as she’d been instructed, and the hand in her hair released.

She walked.

Soldiers flanked all sides of her, one holding firmly to the rope tied like a noose around her neck, the others preventing her from being able to turn around. She tried. They blocked her view—of the courtyard, of the witches, of Reid.

Of the pounding footsteps she swore echoed behind them.

She saw nothing. No one. Not as they led her off the platform and dove straight through the circle of Veragi mist that rose like a border around the bloodshed. For a moment the familiarity of it brushed her, but then it staggered, angry and betrayed.

Something covered her mouth and nose, and inhaling the acrid scent of poison, Vaasa fell into nothing.