His fist arcs forward and catches Sig in the jaw, sending the Fire Suurin to the ground, his head lolling and his eyes unfocused. Oskar leans over Sig, his knuckles bleeding, menace oozing from every inch of him.
“Understand, though,” he says quietly. “Throw as much fire at me as you want. I don’t care. But if you ever harm someone I love again, you and I will be enemies forever. And I promise—you will die with ice in your veins.”
CHAPTER 23
Oskar stares down at Sig for a few long moments, then offers his hand. The entire cave goes still. No one breathes. The wielders look poised to defend themselves if Sig retaliates, their hands hovering flexed at their sides. Sig blinks a few times and moves his jaw from side to side, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His dark eyes focus on Oskar’s face, and he lets out a pained chuckle. “Fair enough.” He accepts Oskar’s help in getting to his feet, and all of us let out a sigh of relief.
Oskar turns to Raimo. “What’s our plan?”
Raimo smirks. “We take back the Temple on the Rock and separate the elders from the source of their power—blood and copper. We save the Saadella and liberate the acolytes. But I’d feel more reassured if you’d been preparing for this for the past few years.”
Oskar’s nostrils flare as he draws in a breath. “Perhaps I would have, if you’d actually told me anything.”
“Amazing. I agree with Oskar,” says Sig, his voice molten, blood smeared on his chin and the back of his hand. “All these years, you kept this from us.”
“And what would you have done, eh?” Raimo lurches to his feet and pokes Sig’s sweaty chest. “Hot-tempered idiot. You’d have blundered straight into the elders’ clutches, and they would have drained you dry. You might be powerful, but you were both boys, and without the Astia, you’re not strong enough to face Tahvo and the others.”
My brow furrows. “Tahvo? There’s no elder by that name.”
Raimo rubs his grizzled cheek. “Crown. That’s what it means. Ironic, no? It’s possible he’s taken another name over the years.”
A jowly, thin-lipped face floats dark in my mind. “Aleksi. He’s the worst of them. He was always trying to tell the Valtia what to do. He seemed eager for my death.” I glance at Sig. “Would he have tried to drink my blood too?”
Raimo’s fingers twist in his long, stringy beard. “The blood of the Astia. Now there’s an interesting thought. He didn’t know what you are, so he might not have. But if he had . . . ? Hmm. I don’t know what would happen.” For a moment he looks like he’d like to find out. Would it steal the elder’s powers, or would it make him stronger, magnifying his own magic to untold levels?
The idea of Aleksi’s thin lips covered in my blood makes me shudder.
Oskar reaches for my hand, but I pull it away before his fingers close over mine. I won’t let him touch me now. He frowns as his arm falls to his side. “Do you really think Elder Aleksi is the same person?”
Raimo shrugs. “Dark? Round-bellied?”
“That describes the elder who . . .” Sig looks away, rubbing at his back again.
I grimace as I remember Aleksi’s hard smile while I suffered. “Is he really hundreds of years old?”
“If you have relatively balanced fire and ice,” says Raimo, “along with knowledge of how they work, you can find a way.”
I don’t miss the hollow looks Sig and Oskar exchange. They are the opposite of balance, uniquely powerful—and vulnerable. “Are all the elders that old and strong?” Sig asks.
“The one with copper hair was easy enough to kill,” Oskar says.
“That was Leevi,” I say. “I remember when he became an elder. He was the newest of the three.”
“Probably the weakest, too.” Raimo plants his walking stick in a crack in the stone and leans on it. He’s always been scrawny, but he looks shakier than he did when I first knew him. Leevi and the other priests caused the thaw that awakened him two months too soon—but just in time to help us. I only hope he’s strong enough to do it.
“The priests are a deceptive, dangerous group,” he says. “Not one of them trusts the others. And I haven’t been in the temple in centuries, so I don’t know the players. But I have no doubt that Tahvo is still there. By the time I fled, he was by far the most skilled and powerful of them. He was probably waiting for the ascension of this foretold Valtia—if he had her blood, he might be able to equal her in power. That’s why he’d be willing to kill the Saadella. He wouldn’t think he needs her, and he wouldn’t want anyone to rise to challenge him. With the cuff of Astia, he could rule Kupari.”
“For all we know, the cuff of Astia is a melted mess of copper right now,” I say. Sig and I tell Raimo what happened in the city, how he brought the fire down on poor Mim, who was wearing the crown and the cuff as the flames devoured her.