The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(15)
“Tribe, then,” I shout. “You were born to lead this tribe. Born to keep us strong. And if you don’t—” I clamp my lips shut and turn away. “Give us our pride back. Build us up. Remind us who we are. Plan our revenge on Kupari. But don’t let us become prey.” Please. I wrap my arms around myself as the memory of blood and fire and my parents’ empty eyes makes me feel so small, so small, like anything could snatch me up and take me away from everything I love.
“Ansa.” Thyra touches my arm. “Ansa.”
“Do whatever you have to do,” I say in a choked voice.
“I always have.” Her blue eyes are wide and unfocused as she stares at the lake. “But . . .” She blinks and tosses me a quick, sad smile. “Never mind.”
“You will triumph. I know it,” I whisper, reaching up to touch her hollow cheek. Perhaps, if she feels my faith in her, she’ll find the strength she needs to fight, to keep us whole.
A tired smile pulls at her lips. “Your hands are so warm. As if you brought the fire with you.”
That’s what you do to me, I want to say. But I don’t want her to push me away. “If I did, I’m glad. At least I can say I did something for you tonight.”
She bows her head, but presses her palm over my hand, holding it to her cheek. “In the last day I have watched nearly everyone I love die,” she says quietly. “And I suspected that what I had to say tonight might make the rest walk away from me, yet it was a risk I had to take. But I couldn’t bear . . .” She looks at me through eyelashes sparkling with mist and firelight. “If you looked at me with disappointment, if you walked away . . .” Her voice is so soft that I have to move close to capture her words, my gaze focused on her mouth.
I’m your wolf. Your fire. Your knife, your blanket. If only you ask. “All I see when I look at you is my chieftain.”
“Is that really all you see?”
“You want all my honesty?”
“Yes,” she murmurs, and then slowly, so slowly, she turns her head and kisses my palm. A tiny but potent pang of ecstasy streaks along my arm and straight to the center of me like a ray of sunlight focused through a crystal drop of dew—one that awakens a wildfire inside.
My heart pounds, sending heat pulsing along my limbs. Caught in a storm of hope and searing need, I rise onto my tiptoes.
Thyra gasps and steps away from me, her hand clamped over her cheek, leaving mine suspended between us, reaching. She lets out a surprised laugh. “Are you feverish?”
I tuck my hand into the folds of my cloak. “What? No. Why would you think that?”
“I think you burned me.” She pokes at her cheek, wearing a bemused smile. There’s a reddish outline on that side of her face, her pale skin blotchy with heat. I blink at it, telling myself it’s just a shadow as she begins to walk up the narrow path to the settlement. “I’m going to help get things calmed down. You coming?”
I nod, but as she turns her back, I stare down at my hand. At my fingers.
And at the tendrils of flame swirling merrily in the center of my palm.
CHAPTER FIVE
Now I understand why the witch let me live. It is the only thing that makes sense. And as the truth sinks in, it drives my hate for her deep into my bones.
She cursed me. Instead of giving me an honorable death, she filled me with her poison and sent me back to our people. She killed all our warriors, but it wasn’t enough for her. I had thought the warm wind, which rose from nowhere to blow our scrap of hull back to our home shore, was a gift from heaven.
It was just a part of her plan to kill us all. She means to use me as a sword against my own, but I won’t let her.
I crouch against the dune and stare across the water. The knife slips in my sweaty palm. My head is buzzing with lack of sleep—I haven’t allowed myself to do more than doze since the second fire.
One burned shelter is an accident. But two makes people wonder. A third will make them sure. Witchcraft, they will whisper. Witch, they will think when they look at me. In the five days since we were crushed, superstition has sprouted like mushrooms from the soil of an empty burial ground—haunted by warriors who will never be properly laid to rest. Thyra has been working with the widows of our most senior warriors to plan a ceremony of farewell to soothe our uneasiness and grief. We will not get to share our blood with our lost brothers and sisters one last time, nor can we arm them for eternal battle, but Thyra says our spirits and memories will be the wind that carries them to their final victory.
She cannot silence the whispers, though, nor can she quell the fear. The wolves of heaven no longer guard us. We are prey now. We have been cursed.
And we are all looking for a place to lay blame.
A low sob bursts from my mouth. I could not bear it if they knew that I am the cursed one, but I am; I know it. Fire drips from my fingers if I do not focus on suppressing it. Just as bad, frost creeps along my arms and bitter cold whirls around me at the worst moments. So far, they all draw their cloaks around their shoulders and blame it on the coming winter, but soon they’ll realize it comes from me. I feel the ice inside. It’s a blade on a stone, growing sharper by the day, destroying me.
I pull the collar of my tunic wide and hold the knife angled downward, the point touching the soft skin at the base of my throat. One solid thrust, and it will pierce my heart. I know how hard to push. I’ve felt flesh give way, the strike vibrating through a hilt to my palm, up my arm. I’ve felt the shield of bone, the resistance of gristle, the slide of viscera. I know to twist, to leave nothing untouched in my wake, to shred and tear and leave no possibility of recovery. I’m going to earn one more kill mark today, though I won’t be alive to ask for it.