The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(32)

“Two fingers. Clean off at the knuckles,” the young man says, pulling a water skin from his satchel, along with several strips of dried . . . something. “You were lucky you didn’t lose the whole hand.” He scoots back over to me. “Either you were stupid with hunger, or you’re just stupid. Elk stick?”

“Elk . . . stick?”

He holds up a shriveled stick of brownish-red meat. When I hesitate, he pokes my lips with it. “Come on. It’s pretty tasty. And obviously you make terrible decisions when you’re hungry.” He grins as I open my mouth and tear off a piece of the dried meat with my teeth. It’s salty and chewy and greasy, and stars, I could eat a mountain of it. He feeds me half the stick, bit by bit, and then tugs the last section away as I try to snap my jaws over it. “Slow down. I don’t want to make you sicker than you already are. Especially not while you’re in my game bag.”

Game bag? Fear prickles across my skin, cold and sharp.

He cups his hand behind the back of my head and lifts me a few inches, pouring a tiny splash of water between my parted lips. I swallow, and he lets out a low chuckle as he gives me a little more. “Was it your trap?” I ask in a gargly voice.

He scratches at the dark stubble along his jaw. “No. I never use that kind. More?” He holds up the water skin.

I shake my head. “Why am I in a game bag?”

“Because you’re too weak to escape it, I imagine,” he says, then takes a few long pulls from the water skin. He lowers it from his lips and wipes his mouth with the back of his worn woolen sleeve. I look again at the material around my destroyed hand and then back at him. There’s a large swath missing from the side of his tunic. I can see the hard ridges of his ribs and stomach through the hole. Three slashing, silver-pink scars mar his side. He sees me looking and tugs at the fraying fabric as if he’s embarrassed. “I had to stop the bleeding somehow.”

“Thank you,” I murmur, closing my eyes.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replies. “We’ve got a few miles to go.”

“Where are we going?” I whisper. I barely care if he cooks me over a fire and eats me for supper. The longer I’m awake, the more it hurts.

A rough fingertip nudges my cheek. “Hey. Hey. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t die. If I have to stop to bury you, I won’t make it home by sundown, and it gets cold out here at night.” He tugs the scratchy material over my shoulders, but when he tries to pull it over my head, I begin to thrash, and he pauses. “Your head was lolling around back there and I started to get scared I was going to break your neck on the uneven terrain. If you promise to stay awake, we can leave your head out of the bag.”

“I promise.” I’ll do anything not to be encased in that smelly material.

His smile softens the hard edge of his jaw and makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Good girl.”

“Who are you?”

His dark, slashing eyebrows rise. “Me? I’m nobody. But you can call me Oskar. You?”

I let out a wheezy, bitter laugh and tell the truth. “I’m nobody too. But you can call me Elli.”

His gray eyes roam my face. “Done. And now that we know each other well, it’s time to get going.” He takes me by the shoulders and pulls me up so I’m sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees. I must look ridiculous, a lumpy burlap bag with a head sticking out of the top. Oskar picks up a length of thick rope lying on the ground next to me. “This is going to hurt.”

“Everything hurts.”

He stares at the ground for a moment, then gazes into my eyes. “The wounds on your back bled through the bandages. And your dress. Also, your wrists . . .”

My cheeks blaze and I look away. My wrists are scabby and stinging from the wounds left by the shackles.

“It’s all right,” he says quietly. “No one out here’s had an easy time of it.”

Oskar sits with his back to me and slides the thick straps of the hunting bag over his muscular shoulders, snugging me up against his body. Then he grabs either end of the rope and pulls it tight against my hips. He loops it around his waist and ties it across his middle. He winds the second section of rope around my shoulders and knots it over his chest.

“Up we go.” He leans forward, and I grit my teeth as he rises to his feet with his satchel in his hand. He slings it over one shoulder. I breathe slowly, trying to wish the pain away, but it’s still there, doing its work. As he begins to walk, I notice how high off the ground I am and realize Oskar must be well over six feet tall. The motion of his body as he moves over the rough ground makes me feel dizzy again. I lean my head against his shoulder blade and close my eyes. His hair, pulled to the side so the straps don’t tug at it, tickles my cheek. He smells like wood smoke, thankfully, and not like the inside of his game bag, which counts as a definite improvement.

As he hikes, I listen to the sounds of the forest, the crunch of his boots over twigs and newly fallen leaves, the twittering of birds above our heads, the rustle and dash of small creatures bolting up trees or into burrows. It reminds me a little of the hours I used to spend in the enclosed garden that contained the temple menagerie and aviary. I loved to run my hands over the silken fur of the gray rabbits and to watch the ferrets and badgers running in circles around their pens. I would sit so still, my hand held out to offer seeds and crumbs, and some of the blue jays and black-capped chickadees would come down and peck at my palm. We also had a grumpy crow and one majestic, silent eagle that had a cage all to itself. So did old Nectarhand, the grizzly bear, who used to loll, lazy and fat, in the beams of sun that came at midday. I used to toss him berries dipped in honey and watch his thick pink tongue slide out to capture them. His massive claws were so long that he could barely walk.