The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(49)
I believe Oskar would do it. I can tell by the sorrow in his voice. I press my forehead to his firm shoulder, inhaling the scent of wood smoke and sweat and something cold and astringent. “I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “Everything fell apart, and I can’t put it back together.”
Oskar’s heart kicks hard beneath my hand. I look up at him, but his face is tilted toward the tunnel’s ceiling. “I know what that’s like,” he murmurs.
His arm falls away from me, and I step back. “And what did you do?” I ask.
“I went on,” he says. “I kept living.” He offers his free hand, and when I take it, he looks down at me. “I’m sorry it hurts.”
It will always hurt. That’s what his eyes say.
But what can I do? Fall apart? Scream and cry? No. I am meant for something. I’m not ready to stop believing that yet.
I swipe my sleeve across my eyes and let out a long breath. “I suppose I’ll keep living, then,” I say, the words echoing down the tunnel.
Oskar squeezes my fingers. With my hand in his, he leads me back to the main cavern.
CHAPTER 12
As the days grow short and the darkness stretches long, I keep living. But Oskar seems to die a little every night. He stays up late and stares at the fire, but eventually he nods off and the ice begins his nightly torture. Though it’s painful to witness, I can’t leave him alone, even though he hasn’t spoken to me since that day in the tunnel. I don’t take it personally—he hasn’t spoken to anyone else, either. It’s as if his whole self is focused inward.
In the fortnight since Freya and Maarika put an end to my hiding, I’ve ventured out every day, eating lunch with the women around the community hearth, bringing Oskar tea as he plays cards by the big fire in the evenings. I meet people’s eyes. I smile. Our conversations are about now—the best ways to oil boots to keep the damp from seeping in, how to angle a knife to more efficiently scrape fur from flesh, how much water to add to the cornmeal to keep us satisfied while stretching what we have left.
But there’s a bigger now that won’t leave our minds. Every day we talk about whether the Saadella has been found, why her family hasn’t given her to the elders yet, how thick the ice on the Motherlake has become—and whether the Soturi would dare try to cross it on foot. I’m as hungry for answers as the rest, perhaps hungrier since I have so much to learn about this world and my place in it. But when the talk turns to the Valtia and why she’s abandoned us, I make my excuses and leave in desperate search of something else to do, my stomach churning with a bitter brew of failure and shame.
One day Maarika sends me off to mind Kukka while Senja bakes. The little girl delights in her magic, luring icicles from cracks in the rocks and making them grow like fragile twigs right before my eyes. “Mommy taught me,” she says, giggling, making me wonder what Kupari would be like if magic wielders lived like everyone else, had families like everyone else. If magic was taught as naturally as children learn to speak and behave—under the watchful eyes of their parents instead of in the temple, under the strict guidance of the priests. Would we be stronger as a people, or weaker? Would we have more magic among us, or less?
When Senja returns, I go back to the shelter and find Maarika building up the fire. “Oskar will be home soon,” she murmurs.
I squat next to her and begin to pile flat stones at the edge of the pit—when he comes in gray and shivering, he’ll be able to spread a cloak over them and have a warm place to sit. Maarika’s gaze takes in my movements, and she presses her lips together. “I always wonder if today will be the day he doesn’t make it home,” she says.
The stark admission makes me fumble one of the rocks, and it topples off the edge of the pit and lands just a hairbreadth from my toes. Maarika lets out a quiet breath of laughter and helps me pick it up again. “I think it every day, but I rarely say it.”
And now I’m thinking it, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel at all. “Oskar seems very strong.”
She shrugs. “I know. But people are lost in an instant in the outlands. It has always been that way.” She sits back to let me continue my work, a haunted, faraway look in her eyes.
“You’ve lost someone.” My voice is hushed—I’m afraid to scare away her words, because Maarika shares so few of them.
“My husband, many years ago.” Her eyes flick to mine and then away. “A hunting accident. And before that, my brother and his entire family. They lived on the shore, in the house where I was born, where my parents died.” She throws a bit of stray bark onto the flames. “We used to visit them often. My brother’s daughter, little Ansa . . .” She smiles and leans over quickly, her rough fingers stroking at the ends of my hair before falling away. “She had hair like yours, and it gleamed in the sunlight. She and Oskar used to race each other up and down the dunes, and she would always beat him.”
My brows rise as I start to chuckle. “Oskar’s legs are very long—she must have been fast.”
Maarika blinks several times and looks away. “Oh, yes. Very fast. She was a tiny fierce thing. Freya is a bit like her.”
I place another stone on the rim of the pit, waiting.
“It was the Soturi,” Maarika finally whispers. “They came up from the Motherlake one night. They stole everything of value and burned the place to the ground. One day my brother had the perfect life, a family, a beautiful daughter, and the next, all of them were gone. Ashes and cinders. It makes you wonder why we ever believe in tomorrow, why we assume we have the next minute, and the next, and the next.”