The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(92)

“But Sig told me all these things he could do, manifesting versus wielding, blade magic—do you know any of that?”

“If I told you I’ll learn quickly, would that help?”

“No,” I say in a choked voice.

His thumb strokes my shoulder blade. “Then I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry. I’ve been denying my magic for so long, but I can’t walk away from it or this battle any more than you can now.”

“But you want to.”

“No.”

“Because of me?”

He gives me a squeeze, and I sway, wanting to feel his fingertips slide along my neck, to lean back and feel his arms around me, to tilt my head up and let his scratchy stubble abrade my cheek.

“I think I was supposed to save you,” he says. “How could that have happened by accident? It seems like the stars fated us to meet. Even then, I was yours—your sword, your shield—as much as you’ve been mine. As for how I feel about you—” He places a cool kiss on the top of my head. “That feels . . . separate. I want to tuck it away and keep it for myself. It’s not the reason I won’t walk away. Now that I know what’s happening in the temple with those acolytes, I can’t. I want you to stop feeling guilty, Elli. I need to help them.”

I laugh, but it’s strangled by my tears. “Because no one else is there to do it,” I whisper, echoing his words from weeks ago—the reason he said he saved me. I want to tuck him away until everything is safe. “You know why I can’t ride with you. I’m scared to touch your skin now.” Though I want to. Stars, I want to.

His hand slides off my shoulder. “Fair enough. You won’t ride with me. But do you even know how to ride a horse?” he asks, his voice teasing.

I press my lips together. Honestly, I have no idea. “If I told you I’ll learn quickly, would that help?”

He lets out a bark of laughter as I mimic his words. “Knowing you, I don’t doubt that you would. But it would be a tragedy if you broke your neck before we even reached the city gates.”

“Elli will ride with me,” calls Raimo. “Oskar, your weight alone is enough to break that poor mare’s back.” And then comes that cackle, and this time, it makes me smile. I step around Oskar, but as I do, I close my fingers over his sleeve. His powerful muscles tense at my touch. It’s difficult to let go.

Raimo’s in the saddle of a black gelding that’s impatiently stamping its front hooves. Ismael comes over and offers me his knee. I take his calloused hand, which pulses with warmth, and let him boost me up behind the old man, whose musty smell wrinkles my nose.

“Elli,” Raimo whispers, “what did you do to Oskar?”

I glance over to see Oskar standing next to the roan, looking at me in a way I feel low in my belly like a long, slow pull. “You told me to stick close to him.”

“I never told you to take the boy’s heart—or to offer him yours.”

“It just happened,” I mumble. It happened so deeply and thoroughly that I’m having trouble thinking around my worry for him, even though he told me not to.

“You’ll regret this love,” Raimo warns, kicking lightly at the horse’s flank. “Best to smother it now, while it’s still kindling. Trust me on that.”

My hands tighten around his scrawny waist as the horse trots toward the trail to the marshlands. “Will you tell me why?”

He shakes his head, his tufts of white hair waving in the cold wind that gusts down the narrow path. Behind us come the clomps and clacks of hooves as the others follow. “Sometimes knowing the future is a curse.”

It feels like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I focus on breathing, on the trail ahead of us, winding through tufts of pale-brown marsh grass, once again frozen stiff and rustling by the merciless cold. Oskar must be chilled. He’s bundled in his furs, but I know how winter makes him ache.

I push the thought of him away, at least for now. I have to keep my mind on what we must do—and how we must do it. “How are we going to take the temple?”

“Let the Suurin use you to project their power. Together, with you to amplify their magic, they are as strong as a Valtia wearing the cuff of Astia.”

That’s what Sig said as well. “But they barely speak to each other.” I look over my shoulder to see them riding side by side, Sig with a light cloak thrown over his bare shoulders, his white-gold hair shining under the sun, and Oskar, dark, grim, and drawn-looking, his broad shoulders hunched against the chill. Neither of them acknowledges the other.

“They’ll work together when the time comes. Deep inside, they recognize that they need each other, and they know they share the same fate. Their bond isn’t an easy one to break, no matter how badly both might wish for it sometimes.”

It seems like a flimsy foundation on which to build a war. “How can the two of them work together that well, though? The Valtia is one person who controls both extremes.”

“The Astia is no different.”

My eyebrows shoot up. It sounds like what Oskar said, about letting me wield his magic as my own, about being my sword instead of me being his. And it makes no sense. “I couldn’t be more different! The Valtia wields her magic with absolute control, and me—” My frustration is choking me. “Other people wield me.”