The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(74)

“Ice, too,” Jaspar says, and Halina translates for the dark stranger, who nods. He smiles down at me and speaks again. His voice is gentle. Comforting.

“He says he’s going to heal you,” Halina says.

“Please,” I murmur. “It hurts.”

The stranger looks up at Thyra and Nisse and gestures for them to give us space. He asks a question. Halina turns to Nisse. “He wants to know if his apprentice has been provided for.”

“He’s been put into a bed chamber to rest,” says Nisse.

Once Halina conveys this to the stranger, he smiles and nods, then pokes his fingers at my body while babbling in his ridiculous language. “He wants to know what pains you most,” Halina translates.

My heart. But that doesn’t make sense. He can’t help me with that. “My face.”

“Then close your eyes,” Halina says as the stranger speaks. “He says it won’t hurt.”

I obey, and almost immediately thereafter I feel the strangest sensation across my cheeks—wisps of fire and ice, sinking into my skin, making it tingle. It feels like a million tiny needles poking me at once, and yet somehow it numbs me instead of causing more pain.

“Amazing,” Nisse murmurs.

“Oh, thank heaven,” Thyra says, her voice thick with tears.

I remain still, grasping any straw of hope, relieved that the horror has left their voices. I sink into the sensation as it moves across my scalp, and then into my throat, across my chest, down my torso, along each of my legs and then my arms. . . . I am turned over, and the tingling begins anew across my back.

The stranger asks Halina something. “Yes, the scars on her arms are over a month old.” She waits and listens to his reply, then says, “He says he can’t fix those. Only new wounds.”

“Then we’re grateful we got here when we did,” says Nisse. “She looks so much better.”

I open my eyes as I’m turned onto my back again. The pain is gone. I glance down at my body, my scarred arms, the rest untouched . . . and covered in soaked, blackened rags. I shiver, and Jaspar calls out, “A blanket, please!”

Sander strides over with a fresh wool blanket a moment later, and Thyra spreads it over me. I blink up at the people around me. One would think that after what has happened, I would have more on my mind than embarrassment, but it rises just the same. I don’t like that all of them are looking down at me with their eyes full of questions. I glance at Nisse. “I was trying to use the magic,” I say, my voice a ruin from all the screaming.

Nisse looks at the stranger. “So here, obviously, is the warrior I was telling you about.”

Once Halina translates, the stranger chuckles as if that were obvious.

“Who is he?” I ask. “What’s happening?”

“Oh, forgive us, Ansa. We are only just catching our breaths.” Nisse gestures at the stranger. “This is Kauko. He was an elder in the temple of Kupari.”

“He has quite a story to tell,” says Thyra, suspicion in her voice.

“And we’ll hear him out once Ansa has had a chance to rest,” Nisse says firmly, glaring at her.

“How did he heal me?” I ask as I look up at Kauko, who is wearing the same kind of black robe the witch queen’s minions wore.

Kauko smiles down at me and answers slowly, so Halina can translate. “He says he wields the same magic you do, little red.” Kauko leans forward as he continues to talk, setting his large hands on his thighs. Halina’s eyes go wide as she listens, then takes a breath before translating. “And he says if you let him, he can teach you how to use it too.”





CHAPTER TWENTY


I don’t know how long I sleep, but when I awake, my hair is a soft fuzz over the top of my head, already starting to grow back after being burned away by the hateful magic. Halina sits next to my bed, her face drawn, dark circles under her eyes. She’s probably been acting as translator in addition to being my attendant, and looks like she hasn’t slept for days.

I suddenly wonder if she’s seen her little boy. If he wonders where his mother has gone. If he cries for her at night.

“Evening, little red. Welcome back.”

I look up at the ceiling. I’m in the tiny stone chamber where I spent most of the last month. “Am I a prisoner again?”

She shakes her head. “But this room does not have a wooden floor or ceiling. It seemed safer. Come. Now I take you to old Nisse. He got himself a Kupari priest somehow.” She shudders. “And a ghost of an apprentice.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.” She gives me a tight smile. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

“Really?”

Her eyes narrow. “Mostly.”

She helps me get dressed and joins me in the hallway as the guards gather around us. Sander smiles when he sees me and runs his hand over my fuzzy head. I blink at him—he doesn’t usually touch me unless we’re sparring. He leans in and whispers, “I didn’t like watching you burn to death, all right?”

I smile. “Thank heaven for that.” Because if he and Jaspar hadn’t burst in and tried to help me, I might have been a pile of ash before the stubbly priest even reached me.

We march up to Nisse’s council room, and this time, Thyra is present, as is Jaspar. The elder sits at the painted table. Another man, this one young and pale, with black-brown eyes and a short fuzz of hair the color of winter sunlight, haunts the corner. Kauko sees me looking at him and smiles, speaking once again in the trilling Kupari language. “That’s his apprentice,” Halina says. “His name is Sig. Apparently he’s been through a terrible ordeal and you should forgive him.”