As I wait to hear of my fate, I stare at the ceiling and try to keep my thoughts in line. It is exhausting. Before, I was holding back the curse. Now I am holding back the memories. They used to only inhabit my dreams, hazy and horrifying. But now they hover at the edges of my waking moments, circling predators waiting for the right moment to pounce.
I was born Kupari. It must be true. It’s why Hulda’s language was so familiar, why the sound of her words scraped at the armor laid over the raw memories of my childhood home. The home I had before it was ripped away from me.
By the Krigere.
I clench my muscles and push that away yet again. I am a warrior, and I am a Krigere. I am part of a strong people. I am part of a tribe. I fought and killed to become one of them, to have a home again.
You know what those Krigere call you? Witch.
Perhaps I am not part of a tribe after all. In saving Thyra, I doomed myself. And how did Thyra reward my service?
She pretended to love me and lured me close—she was the bait, and my heart was the snare.
And then she tried to kill me.
Halina comes back for me sometime later and tells me I’ve been summoned to the council room. My mouth is too dry to allow me to ask questions, and I’m not sure she could—or would—give me a straight answer if I did. But the way she watches me, her dark eyes glittering bright, her mouth curved but tight . . . it’s like she’s waiting for something.
I feel like a bundle of sticks stuffed inside a bag of skin as she helps me to sit up and unwraps my bandages. A lump rises in my throat as I see the swirls of scarring along my arms, red and silver and shiny and fragile. I have never given much thought to my appearance, save the number of kill marks on my arm, but suddenly I want to hide. I look like a monster.
Halina must see the shadow of shame cross my face, because she says, “Only your arms, little red. And it’s not as bad as it looks—been moving them every day, not letting them get stiff—you still have full use of them! Rest of you is pretty all right too. Except for that spot on your leg.”
I glance down at the red mark on my right calf, in the shape of a burst of flame, and let out a choked laugh. “That’s not a scar. It’s a birthmark.”
Halina leans back so that the light of the torch reaches my bare leg. “Is it now?” she asks quietly.
“I need boots,” I blurt out, eager to cover the mark, even though I’m dreading what comes after.
Halina fetches me my boots, along with a new, overlarge tunic. It hangs from my scrawny frame and makes me look like a child, and Halina is obviously trying not to laugh as she steps back and lets me tie the collar with stiff, sore fingers. The long sleeves hang to my fingertips, but I don’t mind that. For once, I want my arms covered.
I want a weapon, too, but it seems foolish to ask for one. As soon as I’m dressed, Halina yanks the door to the chamber open and leans out. “Got her ready,” she says in a flat voice, so different from the warm, round tone of a few moments ago. She turns back to me with eyes so full that I can’t sift through what’s within. Curiosity? Regret? Fear? Hope? All at once?
“Step into the hallway,” says a familiar voice.
“Sander?”
“Step into the hallway now, Ansa,” he says from the corridor.
My stomach is a ball of ice as I obey him. Apart from Sander, three other warriors are waiting for me, including Carina, the one with the long, dark braid. All of them have unsheathed daggers, and they surround me as I leave the relative safety of the stone chamber. Halina has shrunk back into the room, but watches from behind the door with her keen gaze as Sander presses his knife against my neck.
“If you try to burn us or freeze us, we’ll kill you.”
I grit my teeth, trying to hold in the stinging tears that are filling my eyes. “I wouldn’t.”
Carina lets out a disdainful laugh. “We all saw what you did, witch. Don’t pretend.”
I look up at Sander, remembering what Jaspar said about how Sander is supposedly grateful to me, how he respects me. But now all I see in his eyes is a flint-hard wariness. “I won’t hurt any of you,” I say.
I’m not even sure if I could, given how weak I feel, but I’m scared to even think of the ice or the fire, for fear they would rise unbidden. They no longer feel like something foreign inside me. Instead, all of me is shaky and unstable, like a storm ready to burst to life on a muggy summer day. We are one now, the magic and me. I have become my own enemy.
“Forgive us if we don’t take your word for it,” Carina says. She’s on my left, holding her dagger angled toward my belly, where a quick strike would send my guts spilling to the stone floor. The other two warriors are on my other side, knives poised.
Sander takes hold of my shoulder, but his grip is gentle. Perhaps Halina told him of the burn scars. He turns me around. “That way.” He keeps his blade at my throat as they march me up the hall. I want to turn back and see if Halina is following, or still watching, but I am afraid to move without the other warriors’ permission. There is no compassion in their eyes, nothing but suspicion and hatred.
They do not see me as one of them, and the knowledge nearly strangles me. My breath whistles from my throat, emerging in wisps of fear and sorrow. Although the memories of what happened are like shards of a shattered blade, fragmented and distorted, mixed with recollections of other fiery nights full of blood, I know I have done something terrible. Halina said I killed nine warriors. Nine. And all I recall is Thyra on her knees and my roaring desire for vengeance, strong enough to invite the curse to be my mate, to mesh itself with my bones and soul.
At the thought, I feel the heat caressing my spine, and I hold my breath until it passes. Sander’s grip on my shoulder tightens, and his blade slides closer to my throat. “Careful, Ansa.” The others press nearer, prepared to slice me neck to tail. The fear slides frigid and cruel along my spine.
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it harder for me.”
The tip of Carina’s blade pokes my side. “Harder for you to roast us? That’s rather the point.” She pokes me again.
“Stop it,” Sander snaps from behind me. “Back off, Carina.”
Carina gives him a resentful look but does as he says. We march up a set of stone stairs, the air getting warmer as we ascend in a spiral. Torchlight is reflected off the wet rock walls. I don’t know if it’s night or day until we finally reach a door that opens into another corridor, where sunlight streams through a window above.
“Had our first snow a few weeks ago. Now it’s thick on the ground,” Sander says.
“What happened to the andeners and warriors outside the city?”
“They found quarters within the walls at Nisse’s orders,” says Carina.
Displacing all those Vasterutians right when they needed shelter most, something that clearly disturbed Thyra greatly. I want to ask about her, but I am afraid to. Halina said she was alive and safe, but where is she? Sander is here, but the other warriors are Nisse’s. I don’t know how Preben and Bertel fared, or if they stayed by Thyra’s side. Halina said a lot had happened. I’ve awakened as an outsider in a strange land of unspoken rules and unknown allegiances.
Not for the first time. But this time, I’m not sure sheer ferocity will gain me a place among the Krigere once again.
I am guided up another, narrower set of stairs, to a narrow landing that ends in an open doorway. Sander pushes me forward. “In there.”
He keeps a firm grip on my shoulder as we enter a room full of bright, cold sunlight. We are a tangle of malice with me at the center, and my breath puffs from my mouth as I fight the rising panic.
“Give her space!” Nisse’s voice comes from my right. I’m scared to turn for fear of running into a knife blade, but at his loud command, my four guards all take a step away from me. Nisse approaches slowly, his long, graying blond hair arranged in a neat queue, his beard brushing the top of his fine leather vest. He has a dagger sheathed at his hip and another along his right calf, strapped to thick, fur-lined leather boots. He tilts his head and gives me a searching look. “Ansa. Are you going to use your fire to flay the skin from my bones?”
My heart is jolted by his words. “N-no.”
The corner of his mouth slides up. “Are you going to freeze my blood in my veins?”
“No, sir,” I whisper. Once, when I was a child, one of the warriors caged a wolf and brought it into our camp. It hunched, hackles up and teeth bared, while all us children gathered round, fear and curiosity drawing us close but jittery. The animal kept turning in circles, seeming to hate the idea of us creeping up on its back, but we surrounded it. This is how I feel now, wishing I could shrink into a corner. At least then I would know where the attack was coming from.
The other warriors look at me like I am that animal, but Nisse . . . There is something else in his eyes. Something bright and dangerous. “Leave us,” he says.
Carina’s mouth drops open. “That is not safe at all. You’re giving her exactly the opportunity she wants!”
“I don’t think so,” says another voice. Jaspar’s. He was standing so still in the shadows, behind the wall of sunlight flooding in from a large, high window, but now he strides into view. “She could have killed me that day, easily. And she chose not to.”
“See, Carina?” Nisse says, waving his large, scarred hand at me. “Ansa means no harm.” He chuckles. “At the moment, at least. Thyra is in no danger, so it’s likely we aren’t either. Right, Ansa?”
“Right,” I breathe. I glance around the room, hoping she might be haunting the shadows like Jaspar was. I need to talk to her. I want her to look in my eyes and tell me the truth. Has she rewarded my sacrifice with hatred? The uncertainty squirms along my bones, impossible to settle.
But she’s not here.
I wait until Sander, Carina, and the other two guards exit, and when Jaspar closes the door behind them, I can’t hold it back any longer. “Where is she?”
“Ah,” says Nisse, clapping his hands together. “We thought that might be the first thing you asked.”
“She’s fine, Ansa,” Jaspar says. “But after what happened, we thought it best to keep her guarded and protected, away from the other warriors.”
“So she’s a prisoner.”
Nisse holds up his hands. “Not at all. She dines with us every night, and she knows everything that’s happened. She is treated with the highest respect. But we wanted to make sure she was safe while you recovered and alive when you awoke.”
“So you got what you wanted,” I say. “You’ve united the tribe at her expense.”
Nisse’s brow furrows. “You think this is what I wanted? Nine of my best, destroyed before my eyes, and two others slaughtered by my niece in the moments before. Several others injured. Burns. Frostbite that’s taken fingers and toes and noses. And the survivors . . . ah. They crave vengeance as payment for their pain and grief. They want to stone the culprit in the fight circle—but they would be happy to stone the reason, too. And Thyra, my niece, my blood, is the reason.”
Bile rises in my throat. “This isn’t her fault. And I didn’t mean to hurt so many. I’ve been cursed—”
“We know,” Jaspar says, leaning back against a heavy wooden council table. The top has been painted with a map, a peninsula jutting into blue water. “I knew you were lying that day in the woods. But I had no idea you were that out of control.” He gives me a rueful smile. “Even by your usual standards.”
My cheeks blaze.
“The whole thing was unfortunate,” says Nisse. “I confess that I should have reined in my warriors. But their mistrust of Thyra had been brewing for seasons, Ansa. You must understand that.”
I glare at Jaspar. “I understand that both of you have a story to tell, and that the mistrust grew from seeds that you planted.”
“Wrong.” Nisse moves closer to me, looming, but not within strike range. It is almost as if he knows how near he can be without putting himself in danger. “You’ve been deceived, Ansa. All of Lars’s warriors were shackled by these lies.”
“Have you brought me here to tease me, or to tell me your truth?” I should not be so bold with this traitor, this false chieftain, especially since he is in control. But there is an earnest tension in his face that makes me believe he cares what I think.
“I will tell you the truth,” Nisse says. “But you must understand that the reason it was hidden was the lives it saved.”
I cast Jaspar a questioning look. “My father is being honest,” he tells me. “The truth might have sparked a war.”
“At the very least, it would have destroyed my brother,” says Nisse, staring mournfully through the window to the white sky above. “And that is the one thing I could never do.”
Confusion presses close around me, raising goose bumps. “But you’re telling me now? I’m just a warrior.”
Nisse pulls his gaze from the window. “Let’s drop that pretense, shall we?”
I bow my head. “A warrior is all I ever wanted to be,” I say in a choked voice.
“I remember,” he says quietly. “I remember the day you were brought to me and Lars because you had bitten an andener and scratched her little boy. You could have been killed for that offense, but it was so clear you were meant to be Krigere. And instead of executing you, we made you tribe. We gave you to Einar and Jes, of all people. There was no better place for a warrior child.”
“So why—”
“Because you are more, Ansa,” he says, his fingers spreading, powerful and vibrating with energy. “You are more. And that is why I’m going to tell you what really happened.”
I raise my head and meet his eyes. They are green like his son’s, a primal, deep color. “I’m listening.”
“I never would have hurt my brother,” he says simply. “I would have served him unto death. And at his death, his daughter would have become chieftain, and I would have served her, too.”
Jaspar folds his arms over his chest, but remains silent.
“But there was a problem,” Nisse continues. “Many of the warriors could sense that Thyra was not with us. She would argue with attack plans. She would question every decision her father made. And over time, it made the others question her.” He sighs. “Some of them began to whisper, wondering if perhaps I should be made chieftain when Lars passed into eternity.”
“Lars told us Thyra would make a strong chieftain,” I say. “He believed in her.”
Nisse gives me a sad smile. “He loved his daughter. She was his only offspring to live past childhood and to become a warrior. He adored Hilma, of course, but he saw glimmers of himself in Thyra, and he worked so hard to fan those sparks into a full flame. And it nearly killed him. Because he had created something else, without even knowing it.”
“What?”
“Maybe it was because she did not want to invade Kupari—Lars was making those plans even before I was banished! Or maybe it was that she was impatient to lead. Or maybe, just maybe, she was born with the spirit of a snake instead of that of a warrior. Perhaps she simply could not help herself.”
Something unsteady has awakened in my chest. “Are you saying . . . Thyra was somehow involved in the assassination plot?”
“She was going to poison her father, Ansa. She wanted him dead before the support around me could spread beyond the inner circle. She wanted him dead before he could change his mind about the succession.”
I shake my head. “Thyra would never scheme her way to power like a coward. That’s not what happened.”
“I was returning from hunting when I observed Thyra gathering the poison berries and leaves in the glen to the west of camp. You will recall Hilma was skilled in the art of crafting brews and poultices, and I knew she’d taught her sister a thing or two. Those berries—they have only one purpose,” Jaspar says. “But I tried to tell myself otherwise.” He frowns. “But then word came that very evening that Lars’s celebration goblet was missing. I realized Thyra was planning to do something terrible, and I brought those fears to my father immediately.”
Nisse grimaces. “It was agony deciding what to do. I knew of my brother’s heart for his daughter. I love her too! But her treachery . . .” He shakes his head. “She is more skilled at it than I could ever have imagined. Knowing that would have killed Lars even if the poison hadn’t—we all knew of his contempt for politics and scheming, and his own precious daughter had embraced it.”
“But the poison—and Lars’s celebration goblet—were found in your shelter.”
Nisse nods. “And there is only one way they could have gotten there. Thyra must have realized we knew of her scheming—and she decided to frame me.”
“Who do you think sent that slave to find the damning evidence?” Jaspar asks, his tone bitter. “It was well hidden—we had no idea it was there! But that slave somehow accidentally stumbled upon it while fetching a forgotten cloak?” He scoffs. “She laid her trap well.”
Nisse runs his hands over his face. “My own hesitation did me in. Perhaps I should have taken my information straight to Lars, but the consequences . . .”
“This is a lie.” I fold my ruined arms over my stomach.
“If I had poisoned my brother, succession still would have passed to Thyra.” Nisse’s voice has hardened like the ground in winter. There is no give there now, no softness. “With most of the warriors supporting her as his daughter. It would have been foolishness for me to try to assassinate him, even if I had wanted to. And think what you will of me—but I’m not addled.”
“If all you say is true, why didn’t you tell Lars everything when the poison was found in your tent?”
“She ran to him,” he says, clenching his teeth. “She took the slave, and the evidence, and she wove a web around him so tight that he couldn’t see any other possibilities. He ate the lies from her palm.”
“If the truth is so important to you, I would have thought you’d share it.”
“I wanted to,” says Jaspar, casting a frustrated look at his father. “I begged you to.”
“And there you reveal your youth, which protects you from all the worries an old man must carry,” Nisse says, suddenly weary. He trudges over to the table and settles his large body upon one of the benches. His palm strokes over the blue, flaking paint of the lake across the tabletop. “Lars’s heart could not have allowed him to believe that Thyra craved his death. If I had made a counter-accusation, he would have been forced to choose between us, and it would have ignited a war. I had enough warriors behind me to put up a fight, and fight they would have. To the death. My own niece had made me look like a cowardly schemer, and I faced a terrible choice. What was I to do? Let my warriors die for me just to defend my honor? Let them kill hundreds of Lars’s warriors in the process? That would have been a tragedy. Lars saw it as well. It’s why he didn’t have me executed, and why he let them leave with me.”
Jaspar leans forward, the frustration still sparking in his gaze. “I wanted to tell you, Ansa. I hated leaving without you knowing the truth. But you’re so loyal—and you honored Lars as your chieftain. I didn’t want to make things difficult for you.” He bites the inside of his cheek and turns away. “And I knew Thyra had her claws sunk deep in your heart. You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“And that was the way of it, with so many good warriors,” Nisse says. “Because she reached him first, and because her lies tasted sweet as truth, Lars believed I had tried to kill him. He wanted to save lives. So he demanded that all of us who knew the truth conceal it and never speak it aloud, to avoid bloodshed—and to stifle more scheming. So given the choice between war and secrecy, we left in the night, the truth smothered beneath a veil of silence.” He grunts. “Of course, the real story finds a way of pushing to the surface.” He eyes me with a curious look. “Much like magic does.”
A shiver passes through me at the word. “Your warriors call me a witch.”
Nisse scratches at his beard. “They’re afraid of you. As they should be.”
“Your guards swept you away to safety. Afraid I would kill you.” And I would have, if I’m honest.
“As chieftain, I had to allow them to protect me.”
I look at Jaspar, who did stay. “They look at me as if I am a monster.”
“It was monstrous,” Jaspar murmurs. “But it was also transcendent.”
“He’s right, Ansa,” Nisse says. “Such power. And a warrior must respect power wherever he finds it, in whatever form.”
“I didn’t want this.” I rub my hands along my arms and wince as they pass over the scars. A wave of heat crashes over me, and it feels like my spine is melting, pulling me to the ground. I sway, and Jaspar rushes to my side, guiding me to the bench while barely touching me. “I never asked to be cursed,” I say as I sink onto it. “I would do anything to rid myself of it.” Although now I am afraid it is too late. I let it become part of me.
“Well . . . perhaps we can find a way.” Nisse sweeps his arm over the painted map. “Here is where it originated, after all.”
Now I see—this is the Kupari peninsula. At its northern tip lies the city-state, and temple is scratched into a spot near the northeastern shore, black pigment rubbed into the letters. “Now that the snow has come, do you still plan to invade?”
“We still seek information as to who rules the Kupari. Some say the witch queen has perished, but I am told another is supposed to rise in her place. Yet this new ruler has not appeared in public. A day ago I sent an emissary.”
“An emissary?”
Nisse grins. “Diplomacy! The south brims with it, and who am I to violate their traditions?” His smile disappears. “But I only want to know one thing—if the witch is on her throne. If she is, we must be very careful. If she is not, I see no reason why we shouldn’t ride into her city and decimate it in payment for what she did to Lars and his warriors.” He lays his hand on my shoulder, gentle but heavy. “And if we do that, I would want you with us, Ansa. I would want you to show those Kupari your wrath. Show them what it is to have such magic turned against them.”
“You want me to use the curse?” A wave of sick sits bitter on the back of my tongue. “I don’t know. . . . It’s not under my control.”
“Nonsense! You craved Flemming’s death that day in the circle, and the flames wrapped around him like snakes, striking hard. It was thunderous and deadly and beautiful.”
“I murdered your warriors,” I whisper, the memories rising now, the opposite of beautiful.
Nisse leans close. “What if you could atone?” My eyes meet his, and he nods. “If you were to strike at the Kupari, at their queen, at their people, you would find forgiveness here. Deliver the warriors a victory, and you will be welcomed within this tribe.”
My final memory becomes stark and bright in my mind. Thyra, tears running down her face as she begged me to stop. Even if her love was a lie, her fear of the magic—of what I had become—rang with truth. “Does Thyra know you’re asking me to do this?”
“Given the nature of the truths I had to reveal, you can understand that she is not privy to all of it.”
Because he has told me that she is the traitor. I don’t know if I can believe it. I don’t know what to believe, and the confusion is taking me apart. My entire body shakes with it. “I need to talk to her.”
“Are you well, Ansa?” Nisse asks, his tone filling with concern. “You have become pale as the snow. Did that Vasterutian servant feed you adequately? Did she give you ointment for your wounds? Did she treat you with respect?”
“Halina did a good job,” I say, knowing my answer might mean the difference between life and death for her. “I would not be standing before you if she hadn’t.” Except I’m not standing now. I’m slumped on the bench, my head throbbing, my body weighed down by the sickness of the last month and all I have heard in the last several minutes.
“I thought I might never see your eyes open again,” Jaspar says. “Thyra hit you so hard we thought you might not ever wake up.”
Nisse looks at his son, and they share a moment. “Perhaps that was her intention.”
Jaspar gives him a curt nod. “It had occurred to me. I was trying to call off our archers and calm things down when Thyra hit Ansa.”
“Thyra wouldn’t . . .” The protest dies on my tongue as they echo my suspicions. “I saved her,” I say lamely.
Jaspar kneels in front of me, his blond hair glinting gold as he leans into a shaft of light. “And once again I must ask: How has she rewarded your loyalty?”
I close my eyes. “I need to rest. Please.”
They do not press me further. Nisse calls the guards but tells them to keep their weapons sheathed as they take me back to my chamber. Jaspar gives me a long, hard look before I go, wrapping his hand around my upper arm and stroking his thumb over the kill mark he gave me, as if he is drawn to it. “We’ll talk again soon, I promise,” he says.
I cannot meet his gaze. I let Sander and the others lead me back down into the earth, the stone behemoth swallowing me down until I find its stomach, the little windowless tomb where I am to be kept. Halina is waiting when we reach it. She bows her head meekly and nods as Sander tells her to get me dinner and make sure I am comfortable.
As soon as I sink onto my bed, though, she is pulling me up again. “Come with me, little red. Dinner is this way.” Her tone isn’t amused and joking as it was earlier, but nor is it meek and scared like it was in the hallway. Instead, it is urgent. Determined.
“Where? I can’t be around the other warriors right now. They all hate and fear me.” If I am to win my way back into the tribe, it will require me to loose fire and ice on Kupari. I glance at my arms, where the scars lie red and silver beneath my sleeves. The curse would have eaten me alive that day. If I unleash it again, will it kill me?
Halina has the door open and is peeking into the corridor. Evidently satisfied with what she sees, she comes back inside and pulls me by the wrist. “Stop your spinning mind and follow me,” she says. “You may find something that will nourish you.”
Fatigue gnaws on my bones, but the desire to see the sky again brings me to my feet, along with the need to be in the open, out from under all this rock. I have no idea where she’s taking me, but the question temporarily silences the blizzard of knowledge and questions raging in my head. Grateful for the relief of curiosity and purpose, I trail Halina out the door and into the corridor.