“Maybe for me. But I think you might have survived for a different reason.”
Everything in me goes still. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “The witch left her mark on you.”
“You’ve gone soft in the head.”
He scratches at the dark, short beard that has grown during our journey. “I don’t want to fight you. But I will if you’ve become our enemy.”
I close my eyes as the fire inside me rages, hungry and hot. I hold it tightly, but my control is slipping again. “If you spread lies, I will kill you.”
Sander’s footsteps crunch on pebbles as he backs away from me. “So you can add me to the list?”
My eyelids pop open, my eyeballs hot and aching. “Is that an accusation?”
“I don’t have proof yet, apart from the fact that you’ve just threatened to murder me.”
“I threaten to murder people all the time. How is that proof?”
“If my concerns are baseless, why would you want to silence me?”
“Do you have any idea what we’re walking into in Vasterut? Any rumor you spread will weaken us, no matter how unfounded. And you’re already doing exactly that—echoing stupid stories to frame Thyra and absolve Nisse, just to make it easier for him to take us over!”
“So I should stay quiet and let the witch’s poisoned dagger inch closer to the throne of Vasterut, and the home of all the remaining Krigere warriors? Does Thyra suspect that the witch has tainted you? Would she want you at her side if she did?”
“I would never hurt our people!” I shriek, cold tears brimming in my eyes as I realize I already have. First ice and now fire. The storm on the Torden was nothing compared to the gale raging inside my body. “Sander, you need to get away from me.”
“Why, Ansa? What will you do if I don’t?”
I sink into a squat and wrap my arms around my knees. “Nothing,” I whisper. The weight of death threatens to pull me straight into the ground. “Nothing. I just need to be by myself right now.”
Sander looks over his shoulder. “Too bad. Greetings, Chieftain,” he calls out, stepping toward the shore to reveal Thyra striding toward us, a torch upraised.
Thyra catches sight of me and begins to jog. “Ansa, are you hurt?”
Sander snorts. “She claims to have had a little mishap with her own dagger.”
Thyra’s eyes go wide. “By accident—or on purpose?”
Sander looks both surprised and troubled as he gazes down at me, and I bury my head in my knees to hide my burning cheeks. “I didn’t realize—” he begins.
“Sander, go back to camp,” Thyra says in a flat voice. “I’ll deal with Ansa.”
I raise my head to see her catch his arm as he walks by. “Think about your loyalties, Sander,” she says quietly. “Whatever happens now, please know that I love our tribe, and I will die before I allow harm to come to them. You and Ansa are my only first-wave warriors, and I will not succeed without your strength—and your discretion. My sister is waiting for you in the eternal fields. In her name and memory, if not in my father’s, stay with me.”
Sander swallows hard as Thyra raises the specter of his lost, beloved mate. “I hear you, Chieftain,” he says hoarsely, then sets off through the dark. Something tells me he needs some time by himself now too.
Thyra squats beside me as soon as his footsteps fade away. Her fingers slide into my hair, and my eyes fall shut as I treasure her touch. “What happened?”
I press my forehead to my knees again. “Nothing. I’m just tired.”
She puts her arm around me, gathering me to her. I feel her lips graze my temple. “I know you’ve had to work harder than all of us, and that your burden is great. But I also know you’re more than strong enough.”
My throat is so tight that I can’t breathe. “I’m trying.” It comes out of me broken and rasping.
She touches my elbow, near the shallow gash across my forearm, and I flinch. “Did you really slip on the rocks?”
“You doubt me?”
Her arms drop away. “I didn’t say that. But before we left the northern camp, you seemed intent on—”
Killing myself. “It was an accident, Thyra, I swear.”
She gives me a long, questioning look. “As you say. And Aksel?”
I shoot to my feet. “I lost track of him—he must have kept to the rocks. No footprints. Let’s go back to the camp.”
But Thyra doesn’t follow as I start to walk back the way she came. Instead, she looks up and down the beach . . . just as the wind shifts. The stink of burned flesh makes her grimace. “Ugh. What is that?”
My heart seizes. “Oh, probably from the camp—”
“No, it’s close by,” she says, taking a step toward the place where Aksel’s corpse lies.
I grab her arm. “But nothing we need to—”
She pulls herself from my grip. “Aksel might have been stupid enough to make a fire nearby,” she whispers, drawing her dagger and creeping toward the rocks.