The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(36)

I search for malice in his eyes, but I see nothing except ice. Cold, but not evil. I hope. “On my leg.”

He wrenches the hem of my skirt up. I know the moment he sees it, because he curses. “It’s certainly hard to miss. Oskar—has he seen this?”

“No.”

“Does anyone outside the temple know who you are?”

I think of Mim, but I refuse to expose her to more danger. “No.”

“Good. No one can know. Stars, I’ve been waiting so long for this.” He moves back up to my head and takes my face in his gnarled hands. “You were born the day Karhu and Susi aligned, yes? Do you know?”

“No . . .” But Kauko said the stars predicted my birth—was this what he was talking about?

Raimo’s chin trembles as he smiles. “You might have secrets, but you’re terrible at keeping them. You’ve been a princess all these years, haven’t you?”

My skin burns with shame, and I close my eyes.

“You’re the one who was found,” he says. “They thought you were her. But you’re not.”

A low sob escapes from my throat as he flays me with the truth. “How can you possibly know this?”

He lets out a bark of laugher. “Because I am very good at keeping secrets. So—what happened when you didn’t inherit the magic? Did you run away, or did they cast you out?”

“I ran. They . . . were going to kill me.”

He grins as if I’ve given him wonderful news. “Ah, they never figured it out!” He claps his hands over his thighs, which are covered in a black robe very much like the ones the priests wear. “Well, you’ve complicated my evening. Try to keep breathing while I prepare a few poultices.”

I frown. “But you were healing me with magic.”

The shadows nest in the hollows under his eyes and make his face look like a skull. “I was trying. But as it turns out, that won’t work.”

“Why not?”

Something akin to delight deepens the rows of wrinkles on his gaunt cheeks. “Because you, my dear, are completely immune to magic. It won’t help you.” He raises his eyebrows. “But it can’t hurt you either.”

I blink at him in confusion. “What are you saying?”

“There are more magic wielders in this land than you could possibly know.” His gaze strays down to my leg, where my blood-flame mark lies stark and red on my exposed calf. “And to every one of them, you could be either their most powerful asset—or their worst enemy.”





CHAPTER 9


I draw my dry tongue across my chapped lips. “You’re saying I definitely have no magic?”

“Not an ounce. Not a jot. Not a drop.” Raimo has moved from my side and is hunched over a wooden board, chopping herbs that fill the room with a fresh, astringent scent. “Not even a tiny little splinter of it. Not even a—”

“I get it,” I snap, then cough with the effort. “Then why would anyone think I was dangerous?”

“All people have some amount of fire and ice inside them. Even if it’s just enough to make them hot-tempered or easygoing. Even if it only makes them fit for ice-fishing or blacksmithing. Even in people not from Kupari, where the copper flows through our veins and enhances those elements in a few, causing it to manifest as magic.”

“Copper . . . they locked me up in a box of copper. . . .”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course they did. But you understand—copper is the source. It’s the reason the Kupari have magic when no one else does.” He snorts. “And the Kupari people love their magic—so long as the wielders are shut away tight within the temple walls. But never before has one such as you walked among us, completely devoid of fire and ice.”

Shame fills me again. “Was I always like this?”

He shrugs. “Before the Valtia died, you had no ice or fire, but you probably weren’t immune to its effects. You weren’t the vessel you are now, just like the Valtia is an ordinary girl until the magic awakens inside of her.”

Perhaps his words explain the vast, shapeless void that’s opened inside me, the hollow thump of my heart. The numbness that radiates from my blood-flame mark. “How does that make me anything but useless? I’m a mistake.”

“You shouldn’t even exist,” he comments as he picks up a wooden-handled pitcher from near the fire and waddles over to me again.

I close my eyes. “Then let me die.”

“Not a chance.” Warm water pours over my back, and he begins to peel away the bandages Mim wrapped tightly around me. “Nothing like you has ever existed, Elli. I was starting to believe I’d been wrong all along. But your arrival marks the beginning of a new era for the Kupari. You’re going to change everything, for better or worse.” He makes a sound of disgust as he tosses a bloody strip of cloth away. “Assuming you live out the night, that is.”

“How could it be anything but worse?” I croak. “The Kupari need a Valtia.”

“Oh, she’s out there.” He pulls away the final strip of gauze. The cool air of the cave bites at my broken skin, but then he spreads something sticky over the lash wounds. It smells like sage and onion, honey and slippery elm. “In fact,” he says as he works, “she’ll be immeasurably powerful.”