I sprint for the water, unsheathing a blade as I flee, the cursed red mark on my leg pulsing with icy fire. Each step reminds me what the witch has done, how she has taken the one thing I’ve always fought for—my family, my tribe. As I run, the fiery memory rises as if the witch herself summoned it—my mother’s outstretched hand, the monsters all around her, their blades glinting in the flames. I am helpless as I watch her die.
I never wanted to be helpless again. I refuse to be helpless. I won’t let the witch win.
Thyra hits me so hard that the dagger flies from my fist, and then we’re on the ground, skidding through the loose stone near the shore. I claw my way toward the weapon, but Thyra grabs my wrists, pressing me to cool earth. “Have you lost your mind?” she says in my ear.
The sound of her voice only sharpens the pain. I slam my forehead into the stone. “Get off me before I hurt you.”
She lets out a tight burst of laughter. “Try.”
I buck, sudden and brutal, and my shoulder hits her chest. She slides off, and I lunge forward, spinning around to face her. I crouch, feral and panting, as she gets to her feet, rubbing a spot above her breast. The wary look on her face makes bile rise in my throat. “Walk away from me, Thyra.”
“Not until you tell me what’s happening to you.”
“I have no idea!”
“You said she cursed you. How do you know?”
I sink forward onto my hands and knees, my exhaustion catching up and making my limbs heavy. “There’s no other explanation. Fire bursts from my hands no matter how I try to hold it back, and I saw one of her black-robed minions do the same thing on the Torden. The cold rolls off me like a winter gale, and I can’t control any of it! But I swear, Thyra, I’m not doing witchcraft on purpose. It just . . . happens.”
“So that’s what it was,” she whispers. My head jerks up, and she raises her hands as if to calm me. “I saw it happen, Ansa. That bolt of light arced over the lake from the south, not straight down from the sky so much as something hurled from across the water. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
My breath fogs from my mouth, chilled with confusion and betrayal. Thyra’s eyes widen as she stares. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “You said it was lightning!”
“Sander said that, and I had no idea what else it could be. I was just glad you were still alive.” She takes a cautious step toward me.
“Sander knows there’s something wrong with me.”
“I know. He came to me this evening. He told me about your escape from the shelter fires—I hadn’t realized you were so close to the flames. And I saw his throat. He said he felt his blood turning cold when you attacked him. I didn’t want to believe him.” She rolls her eyes. “His instability after the battle made it easy for me to dismiss him, no matter how solid he has been since.”
I draw my hand through my hair. “What was his theory?”
“He was at a loss. But he thought it might have been the arcing light that hit you as well. He didn’t seem to think you were doing it intentionally.”
“If he tells anyone, I’m dead anyway, Thyra. You’ve heard the talk around camp. They’ll happily stone me just to make themselves feel a little safer.” Our eyes meet. “Maybe I should let them.”
“Stop that. Sander hasn’t told anyone. I ordered him to stay silent, or I would kill him for telling lies.”
“He wouldn’t be lying.” I inch backward, glancing around for my dagger. It was my sharpest.
“Looking for this?” She slides it out of the folds of her cloak.
“Sometimes I hate you.”
The corner of her mouth lifts. “No, you don’t.”
My gaze drops to her lips and then away, because the sight weakens my resolve. “I can’t stay, Thyra. I’m dangerous.”
“You’ve always been dangerous.” Her voice is heavy and makes me shiver.
“I can’t control this.” I wave in the direction of camp, toward the burned shells of the two shelters I razed with fiery dreaming. “It’s a wonder I haven’t killed someone yet. I think that’s what she wanted.” I get to my feet, drawing a dull dagger from my boot as I do. “It’s why she let me live. She sent me back here to hurt our people. But I won’t let her use me.”
Thyra sheathes the dagger I dropped, tucking it under the rope belt that holds her breeches up. She watches me cautiously, a look I recognize from the fight circle. She’s waiting for me to move. “Is there a chance it will go away? Wear off?”
I think of the way my red birthmark throbs as the cursed ice and fire rush through me. “It’s inside me, Thyra. Like a fever.”
“It’s possible to overcome a fever.”
I let out a bitter chuckle. “Like the one that killed your mother and Hilma?”
“But left me and my father alive. Many others as well. Those who were strong enough.”
I take a step back. “There are some things that can’t be borne or survived, no matter how strong the warrior. Some wounds are fatal.”
She frowns. “Is it making you sick? You do look dead on your feet.”
“This will be my fourth night without sleep,” I say quietly.
“You can’t expect to be strong and well if you don’t rest.”
“When I rest, things catch fire. When I’m scared, things freeze. When I wish for wind, it rises from nowhere and gusts hard over the camp.” I swirl my dagger in the air, hot frustration coursing through me. “That happens even when I don’t wish for it!”
As if to mock me, a burst of warm wind whirls around Thyra, blowing her short hair. She blinks as it makes her cloak flap. “I don’t know what to make of this,” she says unsteadily. “Did you really do that?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Can you control it at all?”
I bite my lip and turn away. “As you have pointed out many times, control is not my strong suit.”
“But maybe if you . . . try? You made the flames settle down in the shelter just now.”
“I didn’t make them do anything! I just looked at them!”
“Have you truly made an effort?” She takes a few slow steps closer to me, and I can’t bring myself to retreat. “You’re so strong, Ansa. Maybe you can keep it imprisoned inside?”
Tears burn my eyes. “I’m trying.”
Her eyes crinkle with what looks like pity, and she closes the distance between us. She catches my wrist, her fingers sliding down to mine where I clutch my dagger tight. “Don’t make me take another weapon from you tonight.”
“You have to let me go,” I whisper, even as I ache to lay my head on her shoulder.
Her fingertips smooth the hair off my brow, and as I did not do with Jaspar, I let her. “Your skin is so warm,” she murmurs. “It always has been.”
“Only when you touch it,” I breathe, barely giving sound to the thought.
“I won’t let you go this easily, Ansa. I can’t.”
I look up at her face, lit by moonlight. “Your leadership is being tested at every turn. How can you—”
“That’s why I can’t.” Her forehead touches mine, and my fingers go slack, dropping the dull blade. “You’re the only person I trust in this entire camp.”
I can’t breathe. I’m too shaky inside, working hard to keep the ice and fire in a cage.
“If you abandon me, I don’t think I’ll make it,” she whispers.
My eyes fall shut, and my throat tightens as she swipes hot tears from my cheeks. I grab her hands and pull them from my face. Warriors do not behave like snotty-nosed babes, and I am embarrassing myself. In front of my chieftain. “I’m sorry,” I say hoarsely.
“We survived the witch queen’s storm. We survived the journey back.” She takes me by the shoulders, refusing to let me turn away. “We will survive this. We’ll show the witch queen that her curse is not strong enough to destroy the Krigere.”
“You make it sound so easy.” I choke on a sob and wrench myself away, feeling the ice creeping along my bones, pushing through my skin and crystallizing like frost on marsh grass.
Her eyes flash with anger. “You make it sound like she’s already beaten you. Have you surrendered before fighting to your last breath?”
I rub the cold sweat from my arms. “This is not an enemy with a blade.”
“What does it matter? It’s an enemy nonetheless. And you’re a warrior.”
I look down at the dagger at my feet.
“Do you remember the day you earned that title?” she asks.
“Of course I do.”
“Truly, it seems as if you’ve forgotten.”
I snatch the dull blade from the ground.
“Sander left you in a heap, bleeding in the dirt. They all thought you’d lost.”
I remember the cheers as he walked away from me, and then Thyra shouting my name, cutting through the haze of defeat. “He turned his back because he thought I wouldn’t get up.”
She smiles. “The sight of you leaping onto his back, the sound that came out of his mouth when you bit him . . .” Her laugh melts the rest of the frost on my skin. “I may have been the only one who wasn’t surprised.”
“That was different.”
“It’s not different at all. This curse has bloodied you, Ansa, but you’re not dead yet.” She ducks her head until I’m looking at her again. “And until you are, you have no right to surrender if you wish to call yourself a warrior.”
My shoulders slump. “If I were to hurt our people . . .”
“I won’t let you.” She pries the dagger from my grip and sheathes it at my wrist before slipping her hand into mine. “We’ll find a way to suppress it. If there’s a way to lift this curse, we’ll puzzle it out.”
“We have no idea what we’re dealing with.” Even as I say it, I remember—Cyrill had a Kupari slave. If I can find her and question her, perhaps she can tell me more about the witch queen’s magic. Cyrill’s shelter is a bit of a hike, but maybe—
“Come back to my shelter,” Thyra says. “We need to rest before we leave tomorrow.”
When I hesitate, she tugs my hand. “We’ll sleep in shifts. I’ll watch over you, then you watch over me.” Her smile is uncertain but so sweet that I want to taste it. “I’ll wake you if anything starts to smoke.”
“I’ll come, but you must promise you’ll let me go if . . .”
She squeezes my hand. “If it comes to that, you’ll talk to your chieftain.” She raises her eyebrows, and the laugh bursts from me unbidden. Then she leads me back to her shelter. I can practically feel the glares of Jaspar’s guards as we trudge past their post, but I don’t look up. The weight of relief and gratitude is so heavy on me that I can barely lift my feet. Thyra guides me onto her own blanket and wraps it over me. “You’ll be better able to rid yourself of this curse if you aren’t half dead from exhaustion. Rest, Ansa. I’m depending on you.”
If I trusted myself, I would touch her face. But I am afraid I would burn her. “I’m sorry for asking this,” I say quietly. “What is your plan?”
I hold my breath as she cups my cheek in her palm. “It’s a worthy question, and you don’t need to be sorry.” She sighs. “My father would never have wanted us to be led by a traitor. But not only that—I don’t trust Nisse to do right by our widows. He put forth some very backward ideas when he was still a member of our tribe, and I don’t want that to infect us now, especially when they are so vulnerable. We have a commitment to honor with our andeners—and to the memory of our fallen brothers and sisters—and I am responsible for seeing it through.”
Now I understand why she was discussing sowing crops in the spring. How else could we keep thousands of bellies full, with so few warriors to journey out to raid and hunt? “I don’t suppose we could send a contingent of warriors while the rest of us remain here.”
She shakes her head. “Jaspar was very clear. Our andeners are valuable, and Nisse requires their presence in Vasterut.”
“Is it possible his intentions are good?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . hope he will be willing to move on from the past.”
She shakes her head, as if she were casting off something heavy, and not for the first time, I wonder what really happened last winter, and why she won’t talk about it. “Go to sleep,” she says, turning her face away. “I mean it.”
I should be guarding her while she rests, but I can’t fight my own exhaustion anymore. Tomorrow, yes. I will search for a way to lift this curse, and the Kupari slave will be the first step. Tomorrow, I’ll rise and fight again.
But for now . . . the ice-fire throb of my red mark subsides to a faint pulse. I fall asleep feeling the sweet slide of Thyra’s palm over my hair, and my dreams are black as the deep waters of the Torden.
* * *
We rise with the sun, and our fire bursts to life the moment I shiver with the morning chill. Thyra glances with alarm at the pit—there’s no fuel there to burn. With a shudder, I walk away, and I feel the moment the heat fades to nothing, leaving only the stain of humiliation on my cheeks. She’s counting on me to control this, to get rid of it, and to keep it secret in the meantime. It will all fall on her if I am revealed as some sort of witch. I’ll be dead, my brains bashed out and my bones shattered—and she might be next.
For a moment, I think of that kind of death. The most awful thing about it wouldn’t be the pain. It would be the looks on their faces as they hurled their stones. It would be the bite of their hatred, the despair of knowing my tribe was no longer mine.
If I’m honest, I’m not just fighting to keep Thyra safe. I cannot think of a worse agony than that of being abandoned. And with that realization, another memory creeps up like a snake—me clawing at the monster as he carried me to the boat. I stare at the glow at the top of the hill, knowing my parents can’t reach me. That they won’t save me. That I am truly alone.
I stomp at the ground, savagely crushing the past beneath the heel of my boot.
The mood in and around the sprawling camp is hard to read. People load horses and their own backs with all the things they own, all the things we’ve plundered and captured in our raids over the years. Some of the andeners have fled with their families—several shelters are empty, the fires cold. They must have snuck along the shore, avoiding the well-worn paths Jaspar and his warriors were guarding. They were willing to risk the bite of the north to avoid what awaits us in Vasterut, and I have a feeling Jaspar will be furious. Thyra will feel the loss too—those who left might have supported her over Nisse. Though our andeners may not be fighters, all of them have valuable skills—weapon forging and repair, food preparation and storage, breeding and child rearing, weaving and mending, wound stitching and healing. They know what warriors need, and how to keep us battle ready. We protect them and provide for them, and in return they keep us whole.
Now we are shattered. A broken people facing many choices with no good options. Our only chance lies with Thyra.
I thread my way past some of the older warriors who were meant to lead our second wave, those who called Edvin their commander. My stomach drops as I pass Aksel in hushed conversation with Preben, whose long beard is the color of wet iron, and Bertel, whose hair has gone white over the last few years, in contrast with his dark brown skin. Neither of the older men notices me, but Aksel tosses me a look as cold as the Torden in new spring, and I look away. I have no time for conversation or confrontation—once we leave, we’ll be stretched over at least a mile along the perimeter of the lake, hiking leagues to get to the southern shore. I might not have another chance to get the information I want.
When I reach Cyrill’s shelter, I find his andener, Gry, bundling her children into as many layers as they can possibly wear—she means them to carry all their clothing on their backs. Her thin blond hair hangs in a lank braid as she kneels in front of her youngest, a rosy-cheeked boy named Ebbe who Cyrill used to carry around camp on his broad shoulders. She glances over as I lean against the door frame. “No, you can’t have any of Cyrill’s blades,” she says sharply. “Heard you were taking them from the shelters of the dead yesterday.”
“I have all I need.”
“Good. Because we don’t.” Her face crumples and she turns away.
There’s a heavy cold in my chest that isn’t caused by my curse. “Cyrill was a great warrior, Gry. I’m sorry he was lost.”
She sniffles and shoos Ebbe off to play with his older sister, who is killing time with a game of jackstraws using sharpened twigs. “Not as sorry as I am,” she says in a choked voice.
“We will make sure your family is provided for.”
“I know. And I believe in Chieftain Thyra, no matter what the others say. But”—she gives me a pained look—“I miss Cyrill’s laugh. I miss how he made me laugh.”
I rub my chest. “He made me laugh even as he lay wounded. He was in good spirits until the end, Gry.”
“You were with him?” She swipes the sleeve of her gown across her face.
“He cursed the fact that he was stuck with a bunch of baby warriors.”
Her chuckle is raspy with grief. “Thank you for that.”
I glance around. “Where is your slave?”
“Hulda? I sent her to gather kindling. Why?”
I shrug. “Just hoping she hadn’t run away. Many have.” I take a step backward, already knowing where I’m headed next. “If you or your children need anything on this journey, find me. All right?”
She gives me a flickering smile. “Thank you, Ansa.” She looks away. “Cyrill always spoke highly of you. Said you were among the fiercest he’d trained.”
My throat hurts as I say, “I will live up to that; I promise.”
I jog to the other side of camp, the edge of the great forest. It used to lean right over the shore, but over the years as we built our longships, it shrank back and back and back, leaving only a muddy field of stumps. A few andeners, slaves, and children pick their way along, hunting twigs and leaves to stoke morning fires for the meal before we depart. I spot Hulda by herself at the far edge of the field, right at the forest’s new edge, dropping handfuls of short twigs and splintered wood into a cloth bag. Her weathered brow furrows as she sees me approaching, and she backtracks into the woods as I draw near. “Cyrill’s!” she says in a shrill voice.
She’s afraid I’m going to claim her as plunder.
I put my hands up. “No. I don’t want you.”
Her eyes narrow. She’s healthy and stout, with hair the same color as mine. The same as the witch queen’s. “I need to ask you something. About the witch.” I wish I could take back the word as she scowls. “I mean, the . . . Valtera?”
She gives me a quizzical look.
I try again. “The Valia?”
“Valtia?” she asks, leaning forward to look into my eyes.
I nod. “I need to know about her power.”
From the scrunched-up look on her face, I can tell she’s trying to translate my words. “Ice,” she says. “Fire. She has the two, the same.” Her accent is . . . round. And trilling. Even the Kupari language is soft and weak. I push down a swell of contempt even as I recall the witch’s black-robed minion grinding out those trilling words—just before he prepared to hurl fire at me.
“Ice and fire,” I say. “She controls both?”
“Both. Together and”—she spreads her hands—“apart. Many ways she has magic.”
“And she curses people.”
Hulda tilts her head. “Curse?”
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “She sticks this ice and fire inside people.” I mimic the arc of the witch-made lightning that struck me six nights ago. “How might one break such a curse?”
Hulda blinks at me. “Curse?” she asks again. “Valtia has ice and fire, together and apart—”
“Yes, I know.” My frustration is already making me sweat, and I remind myself to stay calm. “But how do people get rid of it?”
She looks utterly baffled. “Get rid . . . of magic?”
“Sure, if that’s what you all call it. How do they do that, once she curses them with it?” An idea occurs to me. “If she were to be killed—”
Hulda tilts her head. “Some born with ice and fire, some not. But Valtia . . . her power comes from other Valtia.”
“You mean there’s two of them?” Thyra will need to know immediately.
“No, not two.”
My hands rise in irritation. “Then what in heaven are you talking about?”
The woman looks me over with curiosity, then touches her own coppery hair and points to mine. “First, Valtia is a Saadella,” she says, though I’ve never heard that word in my life. “Her hair is this color. Kupari.”
“My hair is not Kupari.”
“Copper,” she says slowly. Then she points to my eyes. “And her eyes is that color.” She lets out an amused grunt. “You could be Saadella.”
“What did you just call me?”
Hulda steps back in alarm as a frigid gust of wind swirls around us. Her gray eyes go round as the breeze whips her coppery hair from its braid, and her teeth chatter as she says, “Nothing! I said nothing!” She stumbles and falls backward, landing hard on her backside. Her eyes are bright with tears. “Please! Please!”
Her cries will draw attention to us, the last thing I want. Cold hatred for this stupid, cowardly slave rushes through me, especially when she screams again. She’s staring at the ground and inching back, pure horror etched into the lines of her face. I look down to see what on earth could be frightening her.
Thick, silver-white frost is creeping along the ground around me, edging closer to the hem of Hulda’s skirt, advancing like an army of ants. I gasp and clench my fists, trying to push the curse down, but when the ice keeps advancing, I rush forward, frantically shushing her. If she doesn’t shut up, the entire camp will come running, and then they’ll see the frost. They’ll know I’m cursed, and I’ll be stoned in the fight circle.
Hulda’s fingers are gray with cold, and she’s shivering violently as she points at me. She shrieks one word in her awful language over and over again, one that sounds like the hiss of a snake. The sound slithers into my ears, relentless and maddening, filling my head with memories of lullabies and fire and blood.
I drop to my knees and clamp my hand over her mouth.