The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(4)
Surprise, surprise, she never did.
I hope I can be there when Lars marches into her throne room, when she begs for his mercy. He won’t offer it. If you want to live, you must earn the privilege. I learned that lesson at a very young age.
I peek over my shoulder at Thyra again, and I blow out a long breath as I take another stroke of the oar. I want her to turn around and look at me, to punish me for provoking her. I want her to charge at me, take me down right here on the deck. Pin me. Dig her hip bones into mine. I want to feel her strength and know she’s willing to do whatever she needs to. I want to bring the violence out of her, even if it means bleeding at her hands. I’d paint it on her skin, swirls of red to harden her spine and awaken her thirst for violence. It has to be in her. Lars is the greatest warrior the Krigere have ever produced, and Thyra’s mother might have been an andener, a nonfighter, but she was a skilled iron smith who could fix any blade and would slice anyone who wasn’t willing to barter fairly for her services.
Thyra carries this ferocity somewhere inside her; I know she must. She’ll be a magnificent chieftain one day if she can summon it. My heart squeezes as she runs her hand along the hair at the back of her head. I cut it myself, just a few days ago, and she returned the favor. We’d let it grow a bit in the summer months, when the air grew too hot to ride out to raid, when we snuck away mornings and found a pretty spot among the dunes to tussle and eat the salted meat and biscuits we’d stolen from camp. In those moments, alone, no eyes on us, Thyra would touch me, just a hand on my back, or a brush of her fingertips to move my hair out of my eyes. Unnecessary, unbidden, but so, so wanted. She gave me hope. She made me wish.
Until I tried to make that wish reality.
I’m still trying to figure out if she pushed me away because she doesn’t feel the way I do, or if she simply wishes she didn’t. I think about it way too much, in fact. Especially because it’s pointless.
We can’t be together. We’re both warriors now, but we are not the same status. I was a raid prize three times over, passed from one victor to another. I have no idea where I came from, only the memory of flames and blood. My history is so violent that some say it explains the red mark on my right calf, shaped like a burst of flame. I don’t deny it. I usually add that it also explains how I survived—I am made of fire and blood myself, and it is why I fight so well. I have scrapped and killed for my place in this tribe, because without one, I have nothing. I am nothing.
Thyra, on the other hand . . . she is the daughter of a great chieftain, bred for war. She needs an andener as a mate, one who will keep her blades sharp, her fire stoked, her stomach full, her wounds bound, her bed warm.
One of us would have to lay down her weapons so the other could fight. It is forbidden and foolish to do otherwise—no warrior can survive without an andener to support him or her, and both of us must choose one soon to establish our own households now that we’ve reached our seventeenth year. Sander already did—a raid prize like me, taken from deep in the north. He was still able to win the heart of Thyra’s sister, Hilma. He hasn’t been the same since she died near the end of the winter season, taking their unborn son with her.
As for me, I’ve fought too hard for my status to give it up, but the thought of Thyra’s skin against mine, of taking care of her and having her take care of me, makes it tempting. My heart skips as I glance over my shoulder yet again to find her looking at me, as if she felt the stroke of my thoughts.
“Three more skiffs ahead!” shouts the lookout. “Coming this way!”
“Are you certain?” Chieftain Lars calls. “Coming toward us?”
“Moving quickly!”
Still rowing, I turn as far around as the motion of the oar will allow. The water is piercing blue beneath the clear sky and bright autumn sun, and it’s possible to make out a few specks on the horizon. I even think I can see the distant shadow of land several miles behind it.
“Closer now,” calls the lookout. “Definitely approaching fast.”
“Odd,” says Einar. “They’re coming against the wind.”
“Maybe it’s their navy,” Dorte suggests, drawing a laugh from the rest of us. I check to see if Thyra’s joining in, if for once she’ll shed her seriousness and just enjoy herself.
She flinches and wipes her face, then looks up at the sky.
“Did a bird get you?” I grin at her, hoping to ease the tension between us.
Her brow is furrowed as she turns toward me. “Raindrop.”
The oarsman in front of me tilts his head to the cloudless expanse above us. “Not sure how you came to that.”
I tense as I feel a drop on my cheek, and another on my arm. A shadow passes over the boat, like a hand closing around the sun.
“What is that?” the lookout says, his voice cracking with alarm.
“All oars rest!” shouts Lars. I turn around and face forward as he peers at the sky.
We halt our rowing, our ship still cutting through the waves, blown by a sudden, fierce gust of wind that fills our sail nearly to bursting. Behind and around us, I hear captains in other boats calling for their oarsmen to lift their oars from the water and wait. In the space of a few minutes, the sky has changed color, from blue to purple to a faint green, and now clouds are bursting from nothing, swirling with the wind around a dark center. “What’s happening?” I whisper.