The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(44)
“My father still speaks highly of Sander.” He pushes his long hair away from his brow. “I’ll tell him to hold his tongue if he comes to me again.” He gives me a rueful look. “And here I was sure I understood why you were looking so pale and miserable. Now I’m back to wondering what has happened between you and Thyra.”
“Nothing,” I mumble.
Slowly, as if he’s afraid I’ll flinch away, Jaspar reaches up to slide his fingertip along my hairline, smoothing my coppery short hair against my skin. “I stand by what I said. You deserve so much in return for your loyalty. You would be welcomed into any tribe.”
“Thyra is a good chieftain.” My voice falters as I think of the coldness in her eyes this morning. “I’m her wolf.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “You’re only illustrating my point, Ansa.” He gazes down at me, his green eyes full of so many feelings that I can’t read a single one. He leans in, slowly, until his mouth is only a few inches from mine. My heart beats frantically as I inhale the scent of sweat and leather and pine. “And now . . . ,” he whispers.
Part of me wants to beg him to kiss me, just to make me forget the taste of Thyra. And part of me knows that nothing could ever erase it. “Now?”
“It’s time to hunt.” He pulls his bow from his back, then grins at me. “What did you think I was going to propose?”
I let out a relieved chuckle and shake my head before happily following him across the clearing. As much as I’m grateful for Jaspar’s light heart and teasing manner, though, I refuse to let my guard down.
Something tells me that hunting is what he’s been doing all along.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My very first raid was on a settlement along the northwestern shore of the Torden. A large tribe of people who called themselves the Svalerne, recently migrated from the west, not realizing they’d entered our hunting territory and that they were our chosen prey. They had shelters like ours, mud and thatch. Apart from our own camp, which grew by the year as distant tribes united under Lars, it was the largest gathering of bodies I’d ever seen.
Until today.
The sun is setting as we reach the city wall of Vasterut. Made of stone and wood and mud, it is higher than three men standing on each other’s shoulders, and I cannot see the end of it once it comes into view. It blocks the sight of the shore and the lake. We stare in awe until Jaspar says, “There is no wall between the city and the lake.” He laughs as if he can’t believe it—they had no defenses against attack over water. “Kupari is the same, I hear. Only fishing vessels guard their harbor.”
“And a witch who controls the clouds,” Thyra reminds him.
Jaspar’s warriors grumble, but he simply smiles. “All challenges can be overcome with the right strategy.”
We reach a place where the trail meets another, this one wide enough so that several of us can walk shoulder to shoulder. “This is a road,” Jaspar says. “They are made for carts and horses, and the south has many—they connect their kingdoms this way, for trade.”
We all look up and down the wide path, which is rutted with the tracks of wooden wheels. “They provide us trails we can use for raiding?” Preben says, his voice full of amused skepticism. “I like this place already.” Our laughter reaches the sky.
I watch Thyra, who is wearing a small smile, but her brow is furrowed. “How different this place is,” she says softly to no one in particular.
Jaspar points up ahead to the gate, where a massive door hangs open like a giant mouth. “And here we are—welcome to Vasterut, warriors. The city lies at our feet.”
We march toward it, and my heart kicks in my chest like it wants to run. As we reach the gate, the smells overwhelm. Human and animal waste. Rotting vegetables and fish. Next to me, Sander curses in a thick voice, pressing his hand over his nose. “What is this hell?” he mutters.
“This is twelve thousand people living in close quarters like animals in a pen,” says Jaspar. “We don’t exactly trust the locals, so the door stays closed. No one but Krigere allowed in or out.”
We clear the gate, and my stomach lurches. It seems like all twelve thousand Vasterutians have gathered to watch our arrival. An eerie silence hangs heavy in the air, along with greasy smoke from the torches that line the city wall and the road. Shelters taller than any I’ve ever seen jut up from the ground on either side of us, and faces peer from windows, from the muddy spaces between buildings, from doorways. Many Vasterutians have darker skin like Bertel does, brown like turned earth instead of sandy pale, but among the crowd there are so many shades. Perhaps they are like the Krigere, then, accepting in their midst anyone who earns their way instead of relying on blood relation and sameness. Most of them have dark hair and dark eyes that stare with sharp wariness at our daggers and axes and spears and swords.
Jaspar has invited Thyra and her senior warriors to the front of the line, and I walk a step behind. She did not invite me close, but she did not tell me to stay with the andeners and the rear guard outside the city either. That would have required her speaking to me, though, something she hasn’t done since last night, when she told me to keep my mouth shut and hide my curse at any cost. Now I am like smoke, drifting along, not sure whether she sees me or not. Jaspar, though—he sees me. He catches my eye as he gestures at the Vasterutians. “Once their militia was destroyed and their king and his family executed in the square, they put up no resistance. You see they don’t mind us so much. We protect them from other raiders.”