The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(81)

“How did you find me?” He found me. He found me.

“I went to Sig’s camp, but it was deserted, so I followed the trail to the city. I had just reached the square when the fire . . .” He pauses when he feels the tension in my grip.

“Sig did it,” I say in a choked voice. “But he was holding my hand. It was like this morning, with the ice. It was my fault, Oskar. And we killed someone I loved very much.” I double over, curling around the pain of it.

Oskar touches my back. “Who?”

As best I can, I explain about Mim, who she was to me, how she saved me, and what I believe happened after. Part of me wonders how Oskar will react to my admission of love for my handmaiden, but he stays silent, his cool hand laid across my spine.

“This wasn’t your fault, Elli,” he says when I finish. “I saw you across the square after it happened. I heard the desperation in your screams and read the horror in your eyes—” He lets out a breath. “I suppose both of us are responsible for hurting those around us, but I also believe neither of us would if we could avoid it.”

“Does that matter, if the result is the same?”

His hand falls away from my back. “I have to believe it does.”

I straighten, drawn up by the pain in his words. I understand the necessity of that belief, especially for Oskar. There’s no way I’m taking it from him. “Then it does,” I say quietly.

He starts forward again, at a sure and steady pace. “To be honest, even if it didn’t, there was no way I was letting you go.”

Up ahead the moon shines down on a wide expanse of marsh grass. We’re almost out of the woods. “Why?”

He lets out a hard, hollow bark of laughter. “Why did you leave?”

“Why are you answering my question with a question?”

He smirks as I repeat his challenge from our last argument, then pulls the string from his messy hair and reties it so it isn’t in his face. “You did it for us, didn’t you? You left because you thought you could keep the priests away. You were going to give yourself up to them.”

“It would have been selfish to stay.”

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “It was selfish of you to leave.”

“How can you say that?” I try to pull my hand from his, but his fingers are locked with mine.

He rounds on me, his dark shape blocking out the moonlight. “You let me believe you would come back, and then you walked away without a word.”

“You were in so much pain, and that was because of me too!”

“Really? You forced the elders and constables to attack us? Amazing.”

“You wouldn’t have been hurt if you hadn’t tried to protect me.”

He makes a growly, frustrated noise and grasps my shoulders. “Do you have any idea how I would have felt if they’d hurt you?” He gives me a little shake. “I told you I understood why you pushed me away after we kissed. And what’s so clear to me now is that you don’t understand.”

I look away from the intensity of his gaze, my hands braced against his chest to maintain the distance between us. “I don’t want to fight.” My voice is as shredded as my heart.

“Then we won’t fight. But you’re going to listen to me.”

He releases my arms and starts to walk again but holds my left hand tightly. His cold magic pulses into me, and I close my eyes and feel snowflakes melting on my cheeks. “I’m listening,” I murmur.

“Good.” But then he’s quiet for a long, long time, and I begin to wonder if he’s lost his words. We’re treading a path through the marsh grass, the frozen ground hard beneath our soles. To our right, the dunes glitter, and beyond them lies the Motherlake. The caverns are less than a mile away.

“You tie your boots wrong,” Oskar finally says, his voice low but startling as he breaks our silence. “I always wondered why. At first I thought maybe it was because of your fingers. Every time I saw you knotting the strings, I wanted to come over and tie them for you. I never did, though.”

I glance down at the toes of my boots, poking from beneath my skirt with every step. “Why?”

The pale light from above caresses his stubbly cheeks. “You always looked so focused and determined, and once you’d finished, your smile was as bright as a star. I didn’t want to take that from you.”

“Well, now I feel foolish.” I wonder if he hears the unsteadiness in each word.

He tugs my left hand, pulling me to his other side. His arm wraps around my waist, and he gently takes my mangled right hand in his.

He looks down at my open palm, stroking his thumb over the calluses on the fleshy pads beneath my remaining fingers. “In the first days you were with us, you had so many blisters, and I could tell they hurt.”

I stop breathing as he lifts my hand and kisses the center of my palm.

“I know each one, Elli,” he says softly. “This one’s from grinding corn—” He traces the firm callus beneath my middle finger. “These came from the loom—” He kisses my three fingertips, and I feel every brush of his mouth low in my belly. It’s the sweetest of tugs, almost lifting the weight of my sadness and grief. “This one from skinning pelts—” His lips skim over the flesh between my thumb and pointer finger. “Every time I saw a new one, I wanted to pull you aside and bandage you up.”