The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(88)
Sig starts to pace, his fingers straying to his back, rubbing at the scars. His face is contorted with disgust. “I wasn’t imagining it,” he mutters, his voice tight, almost like he’s about to cry. “It really happened.” He grimaces and scrapes at his shoulder blades. The air gets hotter, and Maarika grabs Freya by the shoulders and leads her away. Aira and Ismael sink to the floor, wilting in the heat.
“Sig,” Raimo says. “Calm yourself.”
“He drank my blood!” Sig roars, his eyes orange with rage. “When I was chained and bleeding from the lash, that elder licked it straight from my skin!”
Oskar curses quietly. Waves of cold roll from him, counteracting the heat that’s making sweat slide in shining drops down Sig’s body.
“Now you understand the evil,” Raimo says, staring at Oskar. “You see why you have to fight. Thousands of acolytes have been slaughtered, just to keep a few old men alive and in power long past their time.”
“But what about you?” I ask. “If you knew this was happening, why didn’t you try to stop it?”
The old man sags, his shoulders hunching. “With every drop of blood, they got stronger. The more powerful the wielder, the more powerful the blood, so no one was safe. The priests began to turn on one another. It was impossible to tell who was an ally and who wanted to drink your blood with his dinner.” Raimo cackles again, but it’s pure bitterness. “And a few rose above the rest. They couldn’t be stopped—because they were willing to do what no one else was.” His eyes snap to mine. “Why do you think the Valtias rarely live past three decades, when the first Valtia ruled for nearly a century?”
The memory of Sofia’s bandaged arms looms in my mind. “The elders drink from her.” I want to scream with rage.
“Not constantly, but even a little of her blood is enough to give them the advantage. You see how they control things,” Raimo says. “How they control her. How, as she comes into her own, as she starts to question what she’s been taught, as she realizes she has it within her to be a true ruler, maybe to change things for the better, they weaken her enough to take her down.”
I lower my hands to my sides, fighting the urge to sob. Sofia. She was meant to live a long, glorious life. All the Valtias were. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Raimo’s bushy white eyebrows rise. “What makes you think I didn’t? I tried to stir the few priests who had not corrupted themselves. I tried to build a coalition that could challenge the elders. But one by one, my allies were converted or killed. And the elders bribed the city council and the citizens until they were so soft and full and happy that they had no reason to question what was happening in the temple. I even went to the Valtia herself.” He rubs at his nose. “She listened. She was horrified. I thought she would help me.” He raises his head. “But then she sickened and died within the week, and the new Valtia trusted in the elders completely.”
“You could have fought them,” barks Sig. “You could have tried.”
“Do you have any idea how strong they are?” Raimo scoffs. “It wasn’t my power that had kept me alive to that point. I had to rely on my wits. So instead of committing noble, idiotic suicide by challenging them, I stole the knowledge they needed to take control forever, and I tucked it—and myself—away until the cosmos sent me the allies who could help me save Kupari.” He lifts the parchment from the box. “After all, it was my fault this knowledge existed, seeing as I’m the one who made the prophecy in the first place.”
“What did it say, exactly?” Oskar asks.
Raimo smiles, his entire face crinkling. “Ah, this is the interesting part. It depends on how you interpret it.” He runs his narrow fingertips over the runes on the parchment. “The Kupari used to read the stars. We used to believe. They used to guide us—not the elders, and not a naive belief that the Valtia was in charge. Our faith in the stars is in our very language—what do you pray to? What do you say when you’re surprised or frustrated? But which of you knows the first thing about them?”
Ismael combs his fingers through his beard. “My grandfather told me a few stories. About the celestial bear that moves the sun through the sky. About a great pack of wolves, commanded by the queen of the night and the king of the stars, that comes from on high to protect us from our enemies.”
Just like the carvings in the temple. Except I was told they symbolized the magic of the Valtia.
Aira looks over at Ismael. “You never told me those stories.”
Raimo nods. “And that’s how we forgot who we were, generation by generation. That’s how we came to worship our queen and our own power instead of the cosmos. But I knew how to read the stars. I put all my faith in them.” He flips over the parchment, revealing a portion of a star chart, concentric circles dotted with the inhabitants of the sky and all sorts of scribbled calculations. His fingertips tremble as he slides them over the dots. “Karhu, the bear, the creature who lives a thousand lives, the one who brings wisdom and balance,” he says, tapping one star before moving to another. “And Susi, the wolf, the implacable warrior. Together, they symbolize a mighty Valtia. They were aligned with the ringed planet, Mahtava—the portent of war. And right here”—he traces an invisible line to a cluster of dots—“is Vaaden, the steed. The myths say he aids the divine in their quests for magical artifacts. See how his spine creates this sharp angle with the alignment?”