Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

When Vaasa arrived back at the villa alone, she crawled into the bed and immediately fell asleep, despite the sunlight that filtered through the windows. She didn’t know the last time she’d slept in the middle of the day.

Curled on her side, she wasn’t drawn from her slumber until the door creaked open. Reid’s heavy footsteps padded across the floor. Their harsh words and silent mornings pulsed between her eyes in a headache. Vaasa rolled and watched as Reid shuffled through his dresser, his accent floating between them when he said, “Oh, now you want the bed.”

She turned and let her hair slide over her face before he could see her, hoping he would just think her asleep and leave.

He didn’t.

Instead, she heard his purposefully quieter footsteps on the wooden floor as he approached the bed, fingers carefully adjusting the blankets so she would be warm.

She kept her eyes closed.

He paused then, gingerly sweeping a piece of her hair back from her face. And she could feel his eyes inspecting her.

“Vaasa.” He touched her shoulder to wake her, urgency riding his tone. “Wake up.”

She knew he’d seen the bruises.

“Wake up,” he said again, shaking her shoulder.

It made her wince.

Silence.

Then, low and dark, Reid demanded, “What happened?”

Vaasa pulled the blanket higher and hid her bruised face, wincing at the cut beneath her jaw. The ones along her arm and chest didn’t hurt nearly as bad as that one. “Training accident. It’ll clear up in a few days.”

“That is no accident.”

“It was.”

Suddenly, his hand was on her shoulder, and he tugged the blankets back.

Vaasa cried out at the stretch of skin as he stumbled, eyes going wide at the bandages on her chest and arm that Romana had carefully placed. “What the fuck happened?”

“Leave it alone, Reid,” she snapped at him, pulling the blankets back. Luckily, the bandages covered up most of the damage. They’d left the cut under her jaw exposed, knowing a bandage would only prevent her from moving. But if Reid saw that wound, the twin to the one she’d given him, he’d know damn well who had cut her.

“Like hell.” Suddenly he was looming above her, both knees dipping into the bed as he invaded her space. “Sit up.”

“Stop.”

“Sit up.”

Sighing in frustration, Vaasa sucked down air before lifting on the exhale. Her first instinct told her to tuck her chin, to keep that wound to herself for as long as she could manage it. The others she had been complicit in.

All of them she deserved.

His eyes went wide, dipping to her split lip and the black and blue along her cheekbone.

Reid scooted closer, his massive body shadowing out all the early evening sun. Amber and salt wafted under her nose and Vaasa tucked her chin a little more, letting her hair fall in her face. “I can handle myself.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Reid said as he continued to inspect her. His eyes locked on the bandage wrapped around her arm and then trailed past her shoulder to the space below her collarbone. Tentative hands reached forward, and Vaasa winced as he peeled back the gauze on her chest and exposed the smooth red slice.

His hand froze. “Tell me who did this to you.”

He knew this wasn’t an accident—she’d been fooling herself to think she could convince him otherwise. The slices were every bit as intentional as the wound on her cheek.

But that didn’t mean she hadn’t earned them.

“Mistakes happen during training,” Vaasa said, shooing his hands away as she scooted back. “Just leave it alone. It’ll heal.”

“Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“ Look at me.”

She raised her eyes, and Reid scanned her face. He was too close for it ever to be acceptable, but something about the intensity of his gaze made her keep that thought to herself. And then, his gaze dropped a little. He extended a hand forward and brushed back the hair at her neck, his fingers light on her jawline as he tried to get a better look at the bruising on her cheek, but then his eyes flicked down—

He gritted his teeth.

He’d seen the cut beneath her jaw.

“Reid—”

Shooting up from the bed, he burst through the door.

“Reid!” Vaasa yelled as she winced and forced herself up. “Where are you going?”

“Kosana!” Reid bellowed out for his commander as he slammed down the breezeway. Everything in Vaasa’s stomach dropped.

For Kosana’s safety, she hoped the commander had chosen to be somewhere else this afternoon.

Vaasa tugged on boots and followed him through the breezeway into the main part of the house, cursing under her breath at the effort. Had she not done enough today? Every muscle ached, the cuts throbbing right along with her swollen cheek.

Reid barreled into the back gardens and Vaasa called for him, her voice coming out more like a choke when she launched herself onto the stone pathway leading to the Settara. He turned, anger and panic swirling on his face and watched as she struggled to catch up.

“Don’t!” Vaasa exclaimed. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“How could it be worse than this?”

“I could have killed them. We were in one of those training rings, and I almost lost control of the mag—”

“This happened in a trial combat?”

Vaasa paused. “Yes.”

“Did you concede?”

Breath caught in her throat. “No. I pushed her. I—”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

Stalking forward and meeting her gaze, Reid firmly stated, “If you had killed a single soul, the blood would have been on her hands.”

“Reid—”

He spotted Kosana at the same time Vaasa did, down next to the lake with a group of her corps. He didn’t even bother to use a regular path. Less like a mountain cat and more like an angry bear, he leapt over the wall and trudged through the yellow grass, smashing wildflowers under his feet.

Vaasa cursed and darted down the pathway he created. Dry grass rubbed at her leggings and foxtails stuck to the fabric, but the downhill momentum propelled her forward, so her thigh muscles didn’t have to. Her calves, however, screamed.

Almost as loud as the indiscernible raised voices that echoed below.

At the bottom of the hill, Vaasa stumbled onto the sand and adrenaline spiked as she watched Reid pounce on and drag Kosana to the ground. The two tumbled, and when Vaasa finally arrived, Kosana yelped, pinned beneath Reid and effectively trapped. It had taken Reid mere moments. Vaasa had never heard such a sound come out of Kosana.

“You were explicitly instructed not to put her in a fucking combat ring,” Reid snarled as he pushed Kosana into the sand. What? As Vaasa looked around, the six or seven members of Reid’s corps avoided her gaze. Vaasa had been beneath Kosana’s grip, so she knew the strength of that woman; if Reid held her so effortlessly, then the world’s frightened assessment of him held truth.

“I know,” Kosana admitted, dragging Vaasa’s attention back to her and Reid.

“Did she concede?”

Kosana sucked down air and looked for a moment at Vaasa, who barely caught her breath. “Yes.” Kosana squarely faced Reid. “I dealt one wound after.”

“Which one?”

“The one on her neck.”

Reid dug her into the sand harder. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do to you exactly what you did to her.”

“Reid, stop—” Vaasa tried.

“You should,” Kosana said.

Vaasa snapped her lips shut and held her breath. He wouldn’t do that, would he? She was nothing in comparison to Kosana, a small scratch mark in his life compared to the commander’s presence.

Reid turned over his shoulder to peer at her, and Vaasa pleaded silently. His eyes locked on her black-and-blue cheek, the split of her lip, then dragged to the cut at her jaw.

“Don’t,” Vaasa begged.

But it was too late. Grabbing one of the three blades at his hip, he cut beneath Kosana’s jawline in one shallow, two-inch drag.

The commander did not utter a single sound.

“Stand,” Reid commanded as he released Kosana and straightened his back.

No one around them said a word. None of them moved to intervene. In the corner of the group was the raven-haired warrior, who gazed upon the scene as if this was exactly what she expected. Most mirrored her expression.

Vaasa didn’t know what to feel—to be angry at either of them, or if she had a right to feel anything at all.

Kosana did as she was instructed, coming to her full height and forcing her eyes up to meet Reid’s. Trickles of blood ran down her neck. The two held their stares and Reid said, “What is the punishment for a member of your corps who disrespects our trial combat rules?”

Kosana’s body shook, but she refused to divert her gaze or escape his wrath. It took Vaasa a moment to realize it wasn’t pride on Kosana’s face, it was accountability. “Demotion,” she said.

Vaasa’s stomach dropped. Things between the two of them were about to get significantly worse.

“And what is the punishment for a member of your corps who harms your foreman or consort?”

Everyone froze—except Kosana. As if she had already considered this, she said, “Dismissal.”

Reid’s jaw tightened again, but he nodded through his visible upset. “So be it.”

Vaasa lurched forward. “Reid—”

“Do not interfere,” Kosana warned.

Vaasa balled her fists as she faced the commander. Magic roared to life, sensitive in her exhaustion, and grew on her hands and up her elbows. As the black mist swirled around Vaasa, everyone else took a step back.

“ You should not interfere,” Vaasa insisted.

Irritable. The snake felt irritable and easily flustered, like the smallest of nudges would set it off.

The realization that she was slipping into exactly the same position she’d been in earlier skittered across her mind. It would be easy to respond in anger, to let the magic make a mess of them all.

That wasn’t what she wanted from this situation.

Vaasa beat down the serpent in her belly and thought of water once more. Churning and cool, following the rhythm of the tides. Grounding , Vaasa reminded herself. Focus on what you feel around you—the way the wind sweeps across your skin. How the air smells dry in the back of your throat. Your toes in your boots.

Cold water replaced the angry swirling of before.

The magic extinguished.

Kosana’s eyes went wide as she took another step back and others in the group did, too.

“Do you see what you could have done?” Reid warned Kosana, stepping closer to Vaasa, something unfamiliar in his stature as he loomed next to her. “You put yourself and every person here in danger.”

That was why he’d told Kosana not to put her in the training ring—he knew she couldn’t control the magic.

That she was a liability.

Humiliation threaded through Vaasa. It wasn’t Kosana’s responsibility to manage her magic, or her inability to manage it herself. Vaasa had asked to be put in that fight. So she squared her shoulders through her soreness. “I started this, Reid. Don’t punish her. Just assign someone else to teach me.”

Reid turned to look at her, one thick brow raising.

Through it all, the loyalty that pulsed in Kosana’s veins was something Vaasa recognized; it was the way the coven had looked at her today. She had no intention of smothering it. Besides, it was unwise to isolate his commander in the middle of an election.

She turned squarely to the warrior. The two locked eyes and Vaasa gazed over the hard set of Kosana’s mouth. “I know we aren’t even, but are we done here?”

Kosana let out a breath.

Reid rubbed at his jaw. “Vaasalisa—”

“I asked you a question, Kosana.”

The commander dragged her tongue over her teeth, but Vaasa could have sworn a small spark of respect flittered across her face. “We’re done here.”

She wondered for a moment if Reid would undermine her. If this would be the moment he went back on the image he wanted them to display. She looked up at him and dared him to do so.

Reid turned to the crowd and observed their hard stares—to the six other warriors standing behind Kosana with a mix of wonder and fear in their observant looks.

“She is my wife,” Reid said suddenly, and everyone at once seemed to turn to him. Still, his attention sat plainly upon Kosana, the cords of anger and friendship vibrating between them. As if he no longer spoke to her as a foreman, or anything but a friend. “That inevitability is not subject to your judgment or your approval. It is simply what she is.”

Something cracked on Kosana’s face. And for the second time, Vaasa questioned her understanding of the woman. It was not longing or grief there. Vaasa could only describe the downcast set of Kosana’s eyes as guilt.

She didn’t think she’d ever had a friend like Kosana.

“You walked away alive,” Reid said as he returned to his previous stature and position, tone dropping to that of the foreman. “You should be grateful she has learned enough self-control to leash the magic. If you ever forget who we are, what this corps stands for again, I won’t hesitate to remove you.”

Kosana forced her ashamed eyes to meet his, her throat bobbing, but she nodded.

“Since you are taking the lead on this, Vaasalisa, please choose her replacement.”

Once again, Vaasa froze. How was she to know who best to choose? All eyes fell on her as she turned to the small group, and Vaasa met the gaze of the raven-haired warrior. “You,” Vaasa asserted, remembering how the woman had pulled Kosana off her. How she’d moved with more agility than just about anyone Vaasa had ever seen spar. If Vaasa learned to fight like that, she’d be better off.

Kosana’s face twisted and she looked at Reid.

“Esoti,” he said, and the warrior stepped forward. Anger still burned in his eyes, especially when he said to Kosana, “You intervened in my marriage, why shouldn’t we intervene in yours?”

What? Oh no .

Esoti—presumably Kosana’s wife—nodded at Reid sternly before turning her full attention to Vaasa. Meeting her eyes with the strength of mountains, the warrior nodded once more.

It was only a small sign of mutual respect, or perhaps it meant nothing at all, but Vaasa decided to take it that way. She nodded back.

“I will see you in a week’s time, Consort. Until then, it is best you rest,” the woman said before turning to Reid and Kosana. “Foreman, Commander .”

Vaasa wanted to hide as a few members of the small group stifled chuckles before turning to follow Vaasa’s new teacher back down the beach.

Reid and Kosana exchanged quiet words before he cut her off and ended the discussion. Silently, the commander tried to hold her head up as she walked down the edge of the Settara.

Vaasa slumped forward a little, and then gazed around at their suddenly empty surroundings.

That wasn’t a victory. She may have destroyed any ground she gained by choosing Kosana’s wife to take her place. However would she navigate that?

Vaasa turned to gaze up the steep slopes of the treacherous hill. Of all the frustrations and thoughts in her head, the biggest one was walking back up. She’d have to climb it or walk all the way around.

Every inch of her hurt.

Letting out a frustrated breath, she started through the dry grass.

“Are we going to discuss your newfound control?” Reid asked from behind her.

“Your mother is a better teacher than Kosana,” Vaasa said over her shoulder as she plunged into the wildflowers.

“Vaasalisa—”

“I am not like my brother,” she said suddenly, turning back to face him. He stopped just short of the flowers, the breeze blowing through his hair and the anger draining from his face.

“I know,” he said in the softest tone she’d yet heard from him. “I shouldn’t have said—”

“You should have,” she asserted. “You don’t know me, not really. And I don’t expect you to trust me. I am the eldest daughter of the most ruthless man on the continent. A man who is now dead, along with my mother. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

Reid watched her closely for the moment she remained facing him, and it was as if for the first time he considered there might be more than anger inside of her.

“But I am not like my brother,” she repeated.

Dominik had looked upon the world and decided it was his, and Vaasa knew nothing belonged to her at all.

She spun on her heel and trudged up the hill. Aching muscles forced her forward, if only to be done with the task and finally able to sleep. Her breath came in hot pants as she made it halfway, but she stumbled over her own feet and let out a small cry at the pain of using her hands to catch herself in the flowers. Something seared along the inside of her arm, and she knew she’d reopened the wound.

After everything today, a pathetic sadness burst forward in the form of stinging tears. They bit at her eyes, which she closed and wiped quickly. Would Reid see her like this? He couldn’t. A strange and hypocritical grief overcame her, one she didn’t believe she would ever put words to, and she didn’t want him and all his prying tendencies to ask. She forced herself up and started forward again. With each step, she felt her energy drain further.

She was not like Dominik.

Suddenly, her feet lifted off the ground and she landed against a hard chest— Reid’s hard chest—as he curled his arms beneath her legs and back. Without a word, he trudged up the hill. She started to fight him, but he whispered, “Will you just stop?”

Her muscles went slack, and she didn’t know why the words mattered, but they did. She clung to him. He carried her all the way to the villa and didn’t let go, maneuvering the door open and then waltzing through the breezeway as if she weighed nothing at all.

Once inside his bedroom, he set her down on the bed and made for the bathing chamber, leaving her to curl her legs up to her chest as she leaned against the headboard.

He appeared once more with supplies in his hands—bandages, gauze, a wound-cleaning solution, and ointment. The bed sank with his weight, and he reached for the sodden bandages beneath her shoulder.

As she recoiled, his hands paused in the air, as if asking permission.

She leaned forward. His touch was warm from the sun as he carefully peeled back the bandage on the inside of her arm. Wincing, her breath came in short bursts as he meticulously cleaned the wound. It stung with each press of his bloody rag, but soon enough he moved on to the cut beneath her collarbone. Watching him work was both fascinating and strange. It reeked of vulnerability, and she was too tired to pretend to be anything but.

Once that wound was clean, he said, “Lift your chin.”

Vaasa bared her neck, and he inched forward and pressed the solution to the cut, causing Vaasa to grit her teeth. Reid paused again for a moment. Deliberating, perhaps.

Before he could speak, she whispered, “I once heard someone say that you eat human hearts.”

A small snort escaped his lips, and when she opened her eyes, that smug amusement returned to his mouth. “That’s vile.”

“Despite what Asteryans choose to say, I believe you scare them.”

He pressed the solution to her neck again and she closed her eyes once more, trying not to wince too overtly.

“Do I scare you ?” he asked.

What a question. “There are many stories told about Icruria, about the Wolf of Mireh, but I can’t say which are rooted in truth and which are rooted in fear.”

He paused. Pressed the rag once more. “Perhaps you should find out for yourself.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing.”

His touch disappeared and she didn’t open her eyes, but she could hear him fumbling with a bandage. Without warning, he asked, “Do your allegiances lie with your brother, Vaasalisa?”

No. They could never. When she thought of Dominik, she thought of everything she had lost. Everything she would never have. A face flashed behind her eyes, soft-eyed and kind, the face of a soldier she’d managed to keep secret from even her father. Roman Katayev, with his brown eyes and easy smile, and how when he was near, the harshness of the world had disappeared for her. Just a soldier, but one who’d taught her to hold a knife and how to touch in the dark.

Until Dominik had found them together.

It didn’t matter that she’d promised not to marry. It didn’t matter that she swore she’d never see him again.

Roman was sent to his death on Asterya’s northern border, the one it shared with Icruria.

Love is a useless thing , her father had said.

Dominik had watched. He had rejoiced in her heartbreak, because he knew that for her to love would always be a threat to him, and he reveled in her misery. The thought of Roman was a knife to her core, but she had learned to live with this grief years ago. Had buried it as deeply as she buried everything else.

“No, my allegiances do not lie with him,” she whispered. A once-unutterable truth. “And if he ever knew I said that, he’d put my head on a pike.”

Her neck was bared, her cheeks tearstained. What was one more piece of her soul?

“Look at me,” he said again, just as he had earlier in the day.

Vaasa opened her eyes. Met the severity of his.

He let out a long breath. “I am not foolish enough to believe myself safe from your brother’s ambitions. He wants to conquer the continent, and if it does not happen immediately, everything he does is a stepping-stone toward it.”

Vaasa conceded with a nod.

“But are you one of those stepping-stones?” he asked.

Such a simple question. So direct. Reid held her with his gaze, and for the first time, he seemed more cunning than she’d ever given him credit for—as though he could drag truths out of people with the same ferocity that she could spin lies.

We are well matched, Wild One. Not until this moment had she believed him.

She wondered how Melisina had taught him goodness. How she had shown him to balance trust with his loyalty to himself and his country. She understood without a doubt why these people had elected him, and it hadn’t been for brutality or cunning.

But there were things she could never show him. Truths she could never tell him about the dangers Dominik presented, or the opportunities Reid had gained because Dominik had been foolish enough to bargain Vaasa off into a marriage.

Reid wanted a headmanship, but what if he saw an opportunity for an empire? Who would he become then?

She would never give another person the opportunity to steal her chance at freedom.

So she told him the truths that mattered. “My brother believes this magic is a curse. He assumed I would die in a matter of months, and so I suspect he was hoping to wage war. If I die here, it will give him the leverage he needs to escalate further with Wrultho. To escalate with you directly. I do not believe Dominik’s intentions are good, and I urge you not to bargain any longer with him.”

Reid’s brow furrowed, confusion tumbling once again over his hard features. “Your mother made this arrangement, Vaasalisa, not your brother. She spoke directly with my own mother. While I made the formal request of our councilors, it wasn’t your brother’s idea, or mine.”

Vaasa’s gut twisted and her throat closed. Her mother had chosen this? Had bargained for it, with Melisina?

Everything she thought she knew about her mother flipped in Vaasa’s stomach. The cold, aloof woman who’d doted on Dominik and shunned Vaasa suddenly looked different in Vaasa’s eyes. It wasn’t so much cold as it was calculating.

Did her mother send her into this marriage to keep her safe, or to put her directly in harm’s way?

“I don’t understand,” Vaasa whispered.

“When your mother died, Dominik made an obvious effort to sever our agreement. I refused his efforts at my mother’s instructions.”

She hadn’t a clue what any of that truly meant, or if it meant anything at all. Maybe her mother was simply sick of her, or she thought it would be funny to watch her children hunt each other down. But Dominik assumed she would die, which was probably why he didn’t waste his time arguing. He’d seen an opening and he’d taken it.

Reid leaned back, settling his hands in his lap. “Do you want his throne, Vaasalisa? Is that your ultimate goal?”

“No,” she answered immediately.

“Then what do you want?”

She spoke six languages, had memorized and studied cultures to communicate with the ambassadors and visitors from surrounding nations. So she could twist words in their slang when they believed her facade of familiarity. Her father was a master of conquest—of making nations dependent on him in some way, and then turning around and burning them to the ground.

But she had never seen those nations, not as she had seen Icruria. Mireh. She had always longed to, and she thought if she just behaved long enough, she would.

And now she thought everything the witches said was true—it was possible to choose a different outcome. To pave the road to a life she crafted for herself.

“I want to live, Reid. I want to live long enough to see more of the world before Dominik erases all the color from it.” Her body unfolded just a bit. She owed him more than that answer. More than only acknowledging what she wanted. “I never should have spoken to you the way I did. You have done more than enough. And I will never threaten Icruria. I will never do anything to harm you or Mireh. I will do whatever I can to get you elected, and in three years, I will go.”

She meant what she said—if it was in her control, she would give him the three years she promised.

Lips pursed, he offered a strong nod. A nod that seemed to mean something more—something like trust. Reid of Mireh confused her, and yet he might have been the most transparent person she’d ever known.

“I know you’re tired, too,” she said. “But can I please have the bed tonight?”

It stung to feel as though she was begging, but she needed to sleep. She needed to know she wouldn’t roll off in the middle of the night and reopen all of these wounds. And he’d offered his home to her, bargain or not.

She’d done an awful job of treating him well.

“Of course, Vaasalisa. Of course.” He stood from the bed and padded toward the door, his hand landing on the handle. “I know this is my fault. I’m sorry I forced you into something you didn’t want to do. I know I told you I wasn’t going to do that.”

Something in her chest squeezed at the sheer affability of those words, at the willingness to bear the burden of something he was truly only on the perimeter of. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I did egg her on.”

“Oh, I believe that.”

She grinned a little.

He looked at the upturn of her lips for a second longer than was acceptable, but she didn’t say anything. Not as he turned the handle and disappeared into the breezeway.

He returned less than a minute later with another blanket in his hands.

Vaasa’s jaw dropped. “You had that the whole time?”

It earned her a small shrug as he set the blanket down on the couch and then went back to the door. “Can you eat?” he asked. “Do you feel well enough for that?”

“Yeah.” She leaned back against the headboard, curling her legs to her chest again. “I could eat.”

Hesitating, Reid dropped his hand from the door and leaned against it. She met his eyes, where the amusement was replaced by a calm that made her skin itch. “Your father underestimated the weapon he built. And through his cruelty, he forced you to play for yourself and yourself alone. But I will play for you, if you will play for me, too.”

She stared at him silently. Who was this man standing before her now? The one who cleaned her wounds and had been willing to dismiss his oldest friend out of a respect for an honor she had never seen in another’s actions?

He had proven himself arrogant yet steadfast. Proven himself heavy-handed yet gentle.

“There is much I don’t know about you, isn’t there?” she asked.

He shook his head. Opened the door. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. All you need to do is ask.”

And then he disappeared into the breezeway to find them food, leaving her alone to contend with the discomfort of such transparency.