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.