“Or you’re slower.” I swipe my hand over my sweaty face, glad that for once the heat is only caused by exertion—not magic. It’s nestled in the pit of my stomach, quiet for now as I focus on the slam of body against body, on dodging blows and landing strikes. Or perhaps it burned itself out by torturing me last night. A flash of the dream jolts me—Thyra, her pale skin clammy and reddened with heat, her hand outstretched—you can only blame yourself. . . .
“And clearly your words hit just as hard.” Jaspar draws his shoulders up as a gust of wind makes him sway. We’re up at the top of the tower again, and the Torden blows us frigid and forceful kisses.
“Or your skin has thinned.” I say it quickly, clinging to the animal simplicity of this time with him, eager to chase away the haunting tremors in my bones, even as they swell into my consciousness once again. Please, control yourself, she whispered as her hair caught fire, as her skin wept and split. I can’t, I screamed as she died right in front of me, just as Aksel did.
“Are you all right, Ansa?” Jaspar asks, and I snap back to the moment, blinking in the daylight.
“Fine,” I say. “Though I didn’t sleep well.”
He sighs. “I thought it might be hard for you, after you’d spoken with Thyra.”
“Why?”
“She twists what should be straight,” he says. “Including you.”
“Do I seem so easy to manipulate?”
“Of course not.” He turns away, leaning on the low stone wall and gazing out over the squalid city. “But I knew that seeing her again would move you.” He gives me a sidelong glance. “I just didn’t know the direction.”
I can’t admit to him that I don’t know, either. I’m still angry at her—for what she’s doing to herself, for what she’s done to us, for how she said she loved me and for how badly I want to believe her. “Neither of us budged,” I say lightly.
“But not because your feelings for her have changed.”
No, because we are opposites, and we crash and crash and always end up in the same place. She peels away my armor and pokes what’s underneath. Part of me hates it. And the rest of me doesn’t want it to stop. “Do my feelings matter, Jaspar? She has her strange and lofty ideas to keep her warm.” I let out a bitter laugh. “And I have fire magic.”
He touches the back of my hand with his fingertip. “Is it getting any easier to control? You’ve been spending hours each day with Kauko. Every time I come looking for you, it seems you’re with the Kupari wielders.”
My fist clenches. “I’m doing my best. And I think I’m getting a little better at it.” How I wish that were true.
“Good. Because we need to leave here, Ansa. We’ve been within these walls too long.”
From here, it is possible to see the gate through which we walked six weeks ago, and the road and forest beyond. But between us and all that open space is nothing but mud and ice and thousands of suffering people. “You were here for three seasons before we arrived. If it was so terrible, why stay? And why bring us into it, crowding everyone even more?”
“We arrived here at the end of winter—nearly a year ago. We were so glad of warmth and shelter that our desperation made us fiercer, I think. We were a terrifying sight, I have no doubt. And in the spring and summer and fall, we rode out to hunt and spar in the fields, slowly regaining health and strength. So we could at least leave the city. But now, with the snow drifting high, we’ve all been stuck in this stinking warren for nearly two months. I never imagined how it would feel. I doubt any of us did.”
“Then I suppose no one is content within these walls. And the Vasterutians will be glad to have their kingdom back when we’re done with it, I’m sure.” I wonder if that is why Halina made that suggestion to Nisse, to venture out to find the refugee wielders—perhaps she is eager to see us defeat Kupari and to be more quickly rid of us, especially since her hope that our rebel warriors would join a Vasterutian resistance force to take back the city has been dashed.
“Oh, we’re not giving Vasterut back,” Jaspar says. “My father will leave ten squads behind to hold the city, and the andeners will remain here. Many of them are with child, anyway. They shouldn’t be marching.”
The news sits like a stone inside me. Thyra had told me to ask about how the widowed andeners were being treated, and I recall that Nisse was going to bind them to his warriors, even though the men already had mates. “Have you heard word of Gry?”
“Cyrill’s andener? She was claimed by Kresten. I believe I heard she’s to be blessed with a child.”
My stomach turns. “She wasn’t even given a month to grieve her mate. She can’t have entered that bond willingly.”
Jaspar shrugs. “She was willing enough as the winter descended.”
Meaning she made the choice to save her children from the cold, and now she is to have another. “So a new generation of Krigere will grow up within a city wall?”
“They’ll grow up as rulers,” Jaspar says. “They will know their place on this earth.”