Nisse looks delighted. “And we found them on the shore at the edge of the Kupari kingdom. The apprentice was as badly burned as you were, Ansa. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, but we could see they had magic. The apprentice was dying from his burns, and Kauko begged us to allow him to heal the boy.”
“So we let him do it, and then began our journey back,” Thyra says. “It seemed like they might be able to help you.” She narrows her eyes. “Or kill us all.”
Nisse laughs. “Always focused on the bad things, Niece. I feel so sad for you.”
Jaspar gives me a meaningful look. “Obviously he helped Ansa,” he says. “Looks like she fared better than that apprentice, at least.”
I think back to the silver swirls of scarring on Sig’s cheeks and the fire in his eyes, and can’t help but be curious. “I’m glad you brought them,” I say, smiling at Kauko. “I owe you my life.”
He grins when Halina translates my words, and then gestures at my hair and face. “He says you have lovely copper hair and ice-blue eyes,” Halina says.
“Er . . . thanks,” I say as Thyra stares at the round-bellied elder with distaste.
“So!” Nisse raises his hands. “I think the big question is—where is the true queen? Halina, ask him where she might be. Could she be dead?”
“That would be good,” says Jaspar. “Nothing stopping us from taking the kingdom, then.”
Halina asks Kauko the question, and he smiles, his eyes glinting with intrigue as he stares at my newly sprouted hair. I was burned and bald the first time he met me, but now he seems particularly fascinated by it. Halina frowns as she translates for him. “He says the Valtia has worn many different faces throughout the years, but some things are always the same, and those are the features they look for when they find the Saadella among the little girls of the kingdom.” She points at my head. “She always has copper-colored hair and pale blue eyes.”
Nisse’s eyebrows rise as he looks at me, and my heart pounds. You could be Saadella, Hulda said. “But surely those things aren’t that uncommon,” I say. “Hulda the Kupari slave had hair this same color.” I point at Thyra. “Thyra has eyes of the color he describes.”
Kauko listens to Halina translate and nods before replying, all the while eyeing me as if I were a succulent roast pig.
“He says there is one more feature that helps identify the Saadella, who becomes the Valtia when the current queen dies—when the magic leaves the dying queen and enters the body of the new one,” Halina says. “She has a—” She presses her lips together, her nostrils flaring.
“Speak, Halina,” Nisse says, his voice a warning.
She gives me a bright, scared look. “He—he says she always has a mark. A red mark. Sh-shaped like a flame.”
Nisse looks puzzled, but Thyra gasps. Like Halina, she has seen my bare legs on more than one occasion. “Ansa,” Nisse says, glancing at the two women with dawning realization. “You have such a mark?”
My entire body is shaking. “This cannot be true. It doesn’t make sense.” My skin has turned icy and my teeth chatter.
“Show it to us,” Nisse commands, rising from his chair as I shrink into mine.
There is no hiding this. There is no escaping it. All of them are staring. Jaspar’s green eyes are so wide and shocked that I have to look away from them. With shaking fingers, I push the edge of my boot down my calf. Kauko blinks and shuffles over, his mouth dropping open. For a long moment, he stares at it, and in that space I plead with the heavens—Let this be wrong. Let this be wrong.
He falls to his knees before me, trilling words exploding from his fat lips. His hands clamp over my knees and he looks up at me with tears in his eyes. “Valtia,” he whispers. “Valtia.”
“Oh, heaven,” whispers Thyra as her eyes meet mine. And in them, I see the truth.
I was not cursed by the witch queen that day on the Torden.
I became the witch queen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I stand up so suddenly that my chair overturns, and then I stumble over its legs and end up on the ground, frost spreading across the wooden floor. The torches in the room flare as the flames begin to grow.
“I’m . . . I’m not . . . ,” I stammer, backing away as Kauko comes toward me. I seek Nisse’s muted green eyes, because I can’t even look at Thyra now. “Please. I’m not . . .” I’m not the enemy.
Jaspar pulls his father away to the far side of the room, his jaw rigid as he watches the frost crawl across the planks toward them. “Ansa, stay calm. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Kauko is talking to me in that stupid, weak, trilling language that wrenches up memories faster than I can push them down. “Shut him up!” I shriek, covering my ears, but my hands are dripping fire, and I scream again as the flames lick my scalp. Tears turn to steam as they escape my eyes, then become flakes of frost that fall through the air around me.