The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(13)
Aksel’s fists clench, but he relaxes again as he takes in my sweat-sheened face. “I don’t like it any better than you do, but some are already talking about taking their andeners and striking out on their own. Such a big settlement, with so few warriors to guard it . . . They think it might be safer if they head to the northwest. Or the south.”
“Toward Vasterut?”
“Chieftain Nisse might take us in.”
“Or he might skin us alive and turn our hides into saddles.” I scoff. “He’s a snake, and a poisonous one at that! We may have suffered losses, but we are not defeated. Why should we crawl to him as if we were?”
Sander clenches his jaw and tosses a stone into the fire, sending sparks into the air. “Because we might not survive the winter if we don’t!” He gestures angrily outside, where a group of andeners, nearly all women, are beating their breasts and howling at the sky, while their rag-footed children watch with solemn eyes from inside the shelters. “We have herds of horses but no riders! We have thousands of mouths to feed but no raiders to plunder!”
Aksel stares out the shelter door. “Thyra thinks we should stay put, use our cached supplies for the winter, and plant in the spring. Like a bunch of farmers! She sounded like an andener. Several warriors walked out of the meeting.”
“Including the two of you.” Now I understand why they’re here, why Thyra isn’t.
Sander nods. “We couldn’t stomach it.”
“You must have misunderstood what she was suggesting,” I say. “We’re Krigere, and she knows that.” We don’t root ourselves in the earth—we rule it, taking what we want when we want.
Aksel shakes his head, pushing tangled locks off his brow. “She wants to be a sheep, not a wolf.”
Sander’s eyes narrow. “You know this, Ansa. You just don’t want to see it.”
He’s pulling on the tiny voice of doubt inside me, and I hate him for it. “Are you just lashing out because we witnessed your despair and pathetic weakness after the battle?”
Sander gives Aksel an uneasy sidelong glance. “My weakness was momentary. Thyra’s is part of who she is. She has no thirst for blood. The others see it. You would have walked out too, if you’d heard what she was suggesting. Whatever you are, Ansa, you’re not a sheep.”
I bare my teeth. “The first intelligent thing you’ve said since coming in here. But Thyra has my loyalty and my blades.” My cheeks heat. “As soon as I earn myself some new ones,” I mutter.
“You won’t have to earn them,” Aksel says, his broad face sagging with sadness. “We’ve lost nineteen out of twenty warriors, and many of them will have left weapons behind.”
The thought of all those blades, made for vital, ferocious men and women who died scared and helpless, feels like a ball of ice in my gut. I hunch over it, my eyes stinging.
Aksel curses. “My teeth are going to chatter right out of my skull. I’m going to get more wood for the fire.” I listen to the shuffle of his feet as he heads out.
“It would be warmer if we were in here with all our brothers and sisters,” Sander says to nobody in particular. “The least we can do is honor their memories instead of pissing on them.”
“Now honoring the dead is important to you?” The crackling roar of the fire matches the rush of irritation through my veins. I jerk my head up. “One more nasty little insinuation about Thyra and I’ll tear your throat out.” The fire is burning so high that it’s blackening the thatch above our heads, but it wanes as I slump, as if it somehow knows my mood. “I won’t believe a thing you’ve said until I speak with Thyra myself,” I say, suddenly tired.
“Fair enough.” Sander eyes the fire, then glances at me. “You don’t look well, Ansa.”
I lay my blanket along the edge of the fire and sink onto it. “I’m fine. Just tired. Aren’t you?”
“I am. But . . .” Our eyes meet. “I wasn’t struck by lightning.”
“Obviously I survived. So obviously it wasn’t lightning.”
“Your eyes glowed like lanterns. Your body arched up like it was about to snap in half. The light was so bright I was nearly blinded.” He makes an impatient noise as he lies down on the other side of the fire. “If it wasn’t lightning, what was it?”
I am so sleepy that I barely hear him. “Doesn’t matter now,” I mumble. I had wanted to stay awake until Thyra returned, but I can’t. Exhaustion is pulling me under its waves. I sink into blackness, happy for the temporary respite from the memories of shattered ships and thrashing limbs and Lars’s burning body lost in the fire.
Fire.
A spark, really. In the dark pit of my rest, it flares to life, orange and bright. I stare, fascinated, as it burns without fuel, growing slowly, licking the air around me with its serpent tongue. I have never seen the sun burn in the night, but I imagine this is what it looks like. The heat slides over my face. It’s such a relief after all my cold despair, but as sweat beads my brow, I wish I could scoot away from it. It’s growing by the second, expanding into my space. I cringe back, whimpering, as it nips at my toes, the tip of my nose, my eyelashes and hair.
I cry out as it licks my stomach and chest, as it presses against me, setting me aflame, boiling my blood, cooking my eyeballs. The shrill sound of my own scream pierces the roar and crackle, but the flames jump down my throat, and then they’re inside me, filling me up.