The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(31)

Beyond the marsh, to my right, is a patch of trees, the northernmost tip of the woods that divide the east and west of our peninsula. The mud sucks at my ankles as I pause to stare at it. Now that the rain has stopped, a cold wind has taken its place. I’ll die of chill if I stay out here like this. I need shelter. But no one lives in the outlands, not really. The city takes up the entire northern quarter of the peninsula. The farmers have their homesteads along the shores. The miners descend into the craggy hills to the southeast. But the area in the center, all the way down to the border of the Loputon Forest, belongs to the thieves and beggars, the ones who’ve been banished.

I need to get off this road.

When I reach a hill that slopes over the marshland, I climb it with hands and feet and then trudge along its crest toward the woods. By the time I reach the shelter of the trees, I am staggering and senseless, yet stupidly defiant. I refuse to give Elder Aleksi the satisfaction of my death, especially since it would do no good—I’m a fraud. I’ve never been the real Saadella, and I could never be the Valtia. I should have been left with my parents to live a normal life.

I didn’t choose to be chosen, and I will not choose to die.

Brambles tear at my cloak and hands and cheeks. My skin is hot enough to singe. My feet are bricks of pain fastened to my ankles. My mouth is an ash pit. I press the edge of my hood between my lips and try to suck the rainwater from it, but it’s not nearly enough to satisfy. I manage to keep walking until I reach a small clearing with a little pond at its edge. Whimpering with thirst, I throw myself down and scoop the bitter water into my mouth. By the time I sit up, I feel sloshy and dizzy, but vaguely triumphant. I can take care of myself. Mim will be proud of me when I tell her about this, and her smile will make it all worthwhile. When I see the starlit shimmer of red at the base of a tree nearby, I can scarcely withhold my joy.

A pile of berries. I crawl forward. I have no idea why a pile of ripe berries would be sitting out in the open, but I barely care. There’s no one around to see me take them. I reach out to scoop them up.

Too late do I see the glint of something else—metal ridges, poking from the pine needles. I yank my hand back as the berries fly into the air and wicked bronze teeth slam shut with a shrieking clash. I land on my side, my whole body buzzing with alarm. Almost caught in a hunter’s trap. I let out a gasping chuckle and reach up to wipe pine needles from my cheek.

My palm is covered with blood.

My ears ring as sticky crimson streams down my wrist and into the sleeve of my dress. I stare at my hand. The shape is not right. My fingers . . .

A strangled cry falls from my lips, and the darkness claims me.





CHAPTER 8


Pain has taken me in its monstrous arms, laid me on its table, and now it’s eating me alive.

I feel the movements of its mouth. Every time its teeth close around me, the hot agony pulses from my shoulders to my toes. It’s rhythmic and steady and endless.

It grunts. “Stars, you’re heavy.”

My eyes snap open, but I’m surrounded by darkness. I’m curled into a ball, imprisoned in a cocoon of scratchy material that reeks of blood and animal musk. I squirm feebly against its stiff walls. My damp gown is bunched about my legs. My cloak is gone. My hair is tangled around my neck and face. My left side is mashed against something hard and cool and unyielding, and I’m held in place by a tight binding that presses against my hips and shoulders. I try to raise my head, but I’m completely enclosed. I try to tear at the fabric, but a grinding wave of searing heat scorches its way down my arm. I scream.

Pain stops chewing. And then he curses.

The binding around my hips loosens, followed by the release of the tension at my shoulders. The world spins and I’m falling, but my collision with the ground is surprisingly gentle. Something pokes at my head, and then the scratchy material is pulled away from my face. I wince as daylight jabs at my eyeballs. The blurry green-orange-yellow blobs around me slowly become trees. The wind gusts, and a few colorful leaves spiral down. The air is filled with a scent I can only describe as green. In the temple gardens, there were a few trees, but nothing like this.

Someone leans over me. I blink, trying to bring him into focus. A young man, perhaps a few years older than I am. Granite-gray eyes and dark-brown hair pulled back into a tail at the base of his neck. A few strands have worked their way loose and hang around his face. He has deeply tanned skin and some of the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen.

“Thirsty?” he asks, his voice deep but hushed.

What? My lips move, but no sound comes out. My captor loosens the top of my cocoon and pulls it wide. Horror wells up as my gaze rakes from his leather boots to the knives at his belt, one a straight blade, one curved with a sharp barb at its end.

When he reaches for me, I slap at his face with all my strength. But since I have almost none, he easily catches my flapping arms and holds me by the wrists. “Cut it out,” he snaps. “You’ll start bleeding again.”

“What—what—what—,” I stammer, my voice so dry and hoarse that it sounds more like the squawks of a crow.

“Relax,” he says, looking down at my right hand and frowning. “I’ll get you some water.”

I glance down at my hand as it throbs with hot, fresh pain. It’s tightly wrapped in crimson-stained wool. “No,” I moan. Because I remember.