The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(93)

“I must,” he says. “To keep the balance.”

He and Sig each wrestle one of my wrists into the manacles, still using their magic to subdue mine. Between the two of them, there’s too much for me to fight, and the pain from my injuries is so intense that I can barely think past it. They chain my ankles, too, tight to the wall, making it impossible to kick. “No fighting,” says Kauko, stroking my arm as I fight in vain to pull away. “I will help you.”

Sig looks away, and it’s the last betrayal I can take. “I thought you were helping me,” I say in a choked voice. “I thought you were on my side.”

Kauko chuckles. “Sig is a naughty boy. He needs very much discipline.”

Sig lets out a shaky breath that warps the air with its heat.

“Sig,” Kauko says as he rolls my sleeves to my upper arms, revealing what I already knew was there—skin so damaged and broken that it’s a wonder it’s still holding together. Then he says the Kupari word that I know means “blade.”

Sig kneels over the stone bowl and the knife, his back to us. He’s moving slowly enough that Kauko gets impatient. He gives Sig a little kick in the rear and snaps at him in Kupari. In response, Sig turns toward us with the knife and the stone bowl, the latter of which he hands to the elder. Kauko takes it and then pokes at the crook of my elbow, still chattering at his apprentice, whose blond hair is so pale it almost glows in the dark as he moves closer. He clutches the knife tightly.

Kauko is telling him to cut me. I try to twist my arm away, but Sig’s clammy palm presses the limb to the cold stone. “Shhh,” he murmurs. His thumb strokes gently over the tender skin on the inside of my forearm.

“You told me not to let him bleed me,” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes to hiss in his ear. “You said not to let him.”

Kauko chuckles. “So naughty, Sig. Make it deep.”

Sig nods. His brown eyes meet mine, just briefly. But in them I see flames. I grit my teeth as the blade cuts into my flesh and fight the urge to be sick as I listen to the pat-pat-pat of my blood flowing into the bowl, which Kauko holds just beneath my elbow to catch every drop. Sig stays close, holding me to the wall as I bleed. I glare up at him, and he stares down at me, letting me see the fire. The flames are entrancing, the way they undulate within the bottomless black-brown pools of his eyes. Why, I want to sob. Why are you doing this?

Why am I surprised, though? Thyra pushed me away. Halina turned on me. Sander has joined Nisse. And Sig is serving his master, perhaps to avoid more whipping or whatever torture the elder has forced him to endure.

And why am I angry? The realization descends on me like a massive wave on the Torden. I’ve given none of them any good reason to stand by me. I’ve been a crumbling wall, a stalk of wheat, a puddle of cloudy water. I’ve stood for nothing. I never jumped, not really.

I was so hungry for acceptance that I played every side. I served Thyra. Nisse. Kauko. Jaspar. Halina. Sig. Anyone who would give me kindness, I swayed in their direction. While each of them stood firm, held to their positions by principle or greed or hunger for power, I swirled like a flame in the breeze. I deserve every betrayal—after all, I betrayed all of them first.

I close my eyes and bump my head against the stone. These thoughts are shredding my mind, pulling me even farther from the one thing that could save me—a focus on what I’m willing to give, and on what I truly want. If I don’t figure that out, I deserve to die.

Kauko presses a cloth to my wound just as my lips begin to tingle. I glance down to see the bowl full to the brim with my blood, black in the dimly lit, dank chamber. He takes a step back, eyes only for the contents of the bowl. It’s as if I’ve ceased to exist—or he only cared about my blood in the first place.

The image rises in my mind as Kauko licks his thick lips. Sig, the night he told me not to let Kauko bleed me, pretending to drink from a cup. I’d thought he was saying something about drinking too much mead, but as Kauko lifts the bowl, understanding dawns.

And as Kauko begins to drink, revulsion makes my stomach clench, and I have to fight to keep that porridge I ate for breakfast from spewing from my mouth. I glance at Sig, expecting to find him just as disgusted, but instead he is watching Kauko with his head tilted, his expression blank.

Kauko lifts his head and shudders, his lips covered in my blood. He looks at me and smiles. “So much power,” he says in a low, shaky voice before lowering his head to drink again. The wet slurping sounds make bile rise in my throat. He drinks like a man dying of thirst.

“The magic—is it in my blood?” I ask.

Sig looks at me from the corner of his eye and nods. “Blood is magic.” He rolls up his own tunic sleeve and reveals a scar in the same spot as my wound, confirming my suspicions. Now I understand his pallor, the circles under his eyes, the way his scarred flesh stretches over his skull like thin fabric over a frame of twigs. I wonder how powerful he would be if he hadn’t lost this much blood—powerful enough to escape?

Horror flows like ice through my heart, turning it cold. Kauko has magic of his own, but he’s used it to dominate Sig and now me, just so he could have more. “Did you do this to the Valtia, too?”

The question springs from me without thought, as does the memory of the witch queen’s face. I’ve barely allowed myself to think of her since the day it was revealed I was her true heir, that her magic had entered me upon her death instead of entering the girl the elders chose as the Saadella—the girl who now sits on the throne of Kupari, trying to make people believe she’s the real queen.