The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(8)

I reach for Thyra’s outstretched hand, so grateful that she’s alive that I can’t find my words. She clutches my shaking, scalded fingers and drags me up, and Sander lays down his oar and helps her pull me onto the raft. I clamp my teeth together to keep from crying out. It feels like I’m about to shed my skin, and right now, I wish I could.

While Thyra leans over me, Sander says, “We can’t take on more weight. We’ll sink.”

She nods, then touches her forehead to mine, her palms on my cheeks. “Don’t you ever try to steal my rightful kill again,” she whispers harshly, but then she plants a hard kiss on the top of my head.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice as broken as the rest of me. “I failed you.”

She lets out a strained chuckle as she sits up and looks around. “We all failed.”

Wincing, I push myself up on one elbow. We’re floating in a sea of bodies and debris, beneath a rich blue sky and the sinking early autumn sun. A cool breeze ruffles my hair, but that’s not what sends the cruel chill down my back. Not a single ship survived. In the distance, I can see a few warriors on another section of splintered hull, pulling a limp body onto their platform. But even as they succeed, a section of it dips, and all of them slide into the lake. They let out feeble cries as they struggle to climb back to safety. “We have to try to make it over there,” Thyra says.

“Are you addled?” snaps Sander. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t meet the same fate.”

She glares at him. “There were thousands of us on these waters. And we have andeners at home waiting for word—and protection.”

Sander laughs. “Protection? Thyra, look around. We’re dead.”

“Not yet,” she says, and begins to paddle toward the other survivors, her eyes scanning the waters for others.

Next to me, Cyrill moans. I put a hand on his back. “Keep breathing. Keep fighting.”

“Blood and victory,” he says weakly.

My throat tightens. “Blood and victory.” But I know Sander’s right. We’re corpses with heartbeats. I peer at the horizon. Three tiny specks are receding into the deep blue. “There they are. The witch and her dark minions.”

Thyra pauses in her paddling, drawing her soaked arms up from the lake. The fading sunlight glints off her silvery kill marks. If her gaze were an arrow, it would strike true and lethal. “For a moment, I thought I had the target,” she murmurs.

It’s as good as an accusation. “And if you’d stood your ground long enough to throw the dagger, you would have ended up just like your father,” I say, coughing at the strain of so many words.

“And here I thought your dearest wish was to see me kill,” she whispers.

“How did you know the danger?” Sander asks. “You pulled her away just in time.”

“Instinct, I suppose. The witch had just struck Lars down the same way. I could see her looking at Thyra.”

“You could see her that clearly?”

I turn to Sander, annoyance burning at the back of my tongue. “So could Thyra. We were close.”

“If we’d had enough oarsmen, we might have been able to ram her,” he says bitterly.

Another accusation. “We never would have reached her. She wouldn’t have allowed it.”

He arches an eyebrow, pure suspicion. “If you really thought that, why did you swim for it? Or were you just jumping overboard to save yourself?”

My brow furrows, and I look to Thyra. “The ship came apart only a minute after you went over the side,” she says quietly.

Sander’s gripping the oar as if he’d like to hit me with it. “Did you know that by instinct too? We needed you on board!”

I rip one of my knives from the sheath at my wrist, but Thyra grabs my arm, which makes me hiss with pain. “Stop it now, both of you,” she barks. “If you knock us into the water, I’ll kill you before you have a chance to drown.”

“So many dire threats, Thyra,” drawls Sander. “You actually expect us to believe them?”

Thyra’s eyes go wide at his insolence. He’s never dared speak like this to her. No one has. But her father is dead now.

She strips my knife from my grip and has it pointed at Sander in an instant. “I said to stop it.” She stabs the blade into the wood of the hull, leaving its hilt bobbing only inches from Sander’s knee. “Though I choose not to shed blood often, it doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“I’m just wondering what Ansa was really doing while our entire crew was battling the storm.”

Thyra opens her mouth, probably to threaten him again, but it snaps shut as I murmur, “I made it all the way to her skiff.”

Cyrill stops his moaning and turns his head to look at me. My cheeks burn as I gaze after the three black specks on the horizon. “I nearly had her, but the water . . . somehow, they turned it hot.” I show them my raw, red arms and hands. “And one of her attendants had fire in his palm.”

Sander rolls his eyes. “You’re both addled.”

“Our world was just destroyed by a witch-brewed storm,” Thyra says in a flat voice. “What’s more addled than that?”

Sander leans forward. A drop of blood from his chin lands on Cyrill’s sodden tunic. “The fact that Ansa’s still breathing. If she got that close to the witch, how is she still alive?”