The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(9)
All of them stare at me again, and I fight a strange fluttering inside me at the memory of the witch queen’s face, the way she was looking at me before the end. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “I tried to strike, but then . . .” I swallow my next words, and they taste like shame. I dropped my weapon for no good reason. I had the chance and the strength. I might have been injured, but not severely. If I had lunged, I could have sunk that blade into her thigh. I was that close. But my heart went soft all of a sudden. And if I admit that, I might lose the thing that is most important to me in this world, more important than my own life.
Other warriors’ respect.
“A wave caught me and pulled me away,” I say quickly, realizing I have been silent for too many seconds.
“Why didn’t she bring a bolt from on high to cook you in the water?” Sander asks. “Since that seemed to be her strategy for eliminating threats.”
“Again, I don’t know.” Except . . . I don’t think she wanted to kill me. Her attendants seemed to want her to do exactly that. The one in her boat, with the fiery hands, was going to do it himself. Instead of striking, though, she summoned the wave that bore me away.
She saved me.
The thought turns my stomach, and I lean over and retch into the lake, giving it back some of the water I gulped down as I drowned. I press my forehead to the soggy hull and listen to Cyrill’s wheezing breaths, not wanting to raise my head and see how my three fellow warriors are looking at me. My skin is hot and cold at the same time, and hard shivers are making me tremble. A spot on my leg throbs, then sends icy bursts of sensation up my thigh. Startled, I shove the edge of my boot down my calf.
“Are you injured?” Thyra asks.
I stare down at my red birthmark, which is now pulsing hot, and shake my head as I pull my boot back up to cover it. “It’s nothing.”
Thyra curses. “They’ve disappeared.”
I slowly raise my head and look out on the watery battlefield. The only sound is of gulls crying above us. Some of them have descended on our dead. The warriors we saw slide off their own improvised raft are nowhere to be found. Sudden fury rushes through me, and I yank my knife from the hull. I reel back to throw it at one of those hateful birds and nearly pitch into the water, but Sander brings up his oar and slaps me hard between the shoulders, sending me down with a huff on top of Cyrill. “Cursed to survive with only three baby warriors as my allies,” he says with a moan.
“Quiet, Cyrill,” Thyra says, command in her voice. “Your eyes would be in a gull’s stomach if not for us.” But she squeezes his shoulder, and he offers a weary smile.
“What now?” asks Sander. “If there are others who made it through, they’ve drifted too far for us to find them.”
Thyra stares out at the gently rolling waves, which are indeed carrying our dead and the remnants of our invading force further out into the Torden. “We go home,” she says.
Sander laughs. “It took us nearly half-daylight to get here, and that was with the wind at our backs and twelve pairs of oars!”
He brandishes his broken oar, but Thyra rises on her knees with threat in her eyes. “And what would you prefer to do, Sander? Lie down like a weakling and let the Torden sing you to sleep?” She snatches the oar from his grip before he can think to stop her. “Take your spot next to Cyrill, then. Lie down and rest.”
“Hey, don’t cut me from the same cloth as this cub,” Cyrill rumbles. He tries to push himself from the planks, but then groans and sinks back down. “If I wasn’t so broken, I would help you row.”
She grimaces. “Stay where you are.” I hate the look in her eye, the worry and despair she’s trying to hide. The twist of her lips and the bright sheen on her eyes—this is how she looked as she stood over the fallen, weeping old man in that coastal village during the summer’s eve raid. When her hand shook, when she said in a broken whisper, I will risk my father’s wrath. This man has done nothing to warrant such a death, and when the sight of her hesitation and shame made me draw my own blade and plunge it into his side. Though it is forbidden, I gave her the kill mark—her father had told her not to come home without a new one.
Like then, I cannot help but save her. I grab a floating plank from the water and hold it like a paddle. As Thyra plunges her broken oar into the Torden, I do the same, and together we move the raft, the shattered hull of what used to be a great warship, a few feet closer to home. The wind pushes my hair off my forehead as I glance over to find her looking at me in a way that warms me from the inside.
Red-cheeked, Sander snags himself the blade of another broken oar and joins us. He’s at the “prow” of our unsteady little vessel, and so he sits on his knees and reaches forward, drawing the flat blade straight back toward the jagged edge before pulling it up again. The three of us paddle in silence as the sun dips at our backs and the sky turns dark once more, this time with night. Stars wink from the safety of the outerworld, mockingly cheerful as we slowly pull ourselves closer to our home shore in the northeast. The moon lights our way, showing us nothing but black waters all around.
Thyra is the first to notice that Cyrill’s spirit has departed for eternity. She stops midpaddle and presses her fingers to his neck, then bows her head. “Stop for a moment.”
Sander sits up and tosses his oar blade down next to him, rolling his shoulders and wincing. “What is it?”