The Impostor Queen by Sarah Fine Page A

fall in,” Aleksi says as my teeth begin to chatter. “Or you could grow an ice platform from the lake’s floor to lift you out of the water. Conversely, you could use fire to evaporate the water around you and hold it back. There are so many ways to use the magic, Valtia.”
    Kauko grips the bars. “Trust your instincts. Don’t force it. Just let it come to you.” He reaches into the cage as far as his arm will allow, and his fingertips brush my knee. I know I should grasp his hand, but I’m shaking too much to control my fingers. “We need your magic to survive. Please. We’ve been waiting so long for this. Remember who you are,” he says, his voice harsh with desperation.
    I almost laugh. I used to think I knew exactly who I was. Now? I have no idea.
    My breaths are ragged and fast as they swing my cage out over the Motherlake, dangling me like bait over her frigid waters. Leevi releases the chain, and my cage plunges into the water. The blast of cold shocks my vision white. I’m no longer on fire—now it’s the cold’s turn. Frozen blades of pain stab into every inch of my skin. An icy noose pulls tight around my neck.
    Fire, come to me.
    But this time, when it doesn’t come, I’m not even surprised. I claw for air, my arms extending through the top bars of my cage and waving just above the surface of the water. It’s so close. I jerk my face upward, colliding with bronze. I can see the dark shadows of the elders above me, their upheld torch, the moon that’s now visible through a hole in the clouds. The pain in my chest sparks and burns like smoldering charcoal, the hurt moving upward, consuming me. And yet the water stays cold, and so do I.
    I’m going to die.
    As soon as the thought comes, the rest of me rejects it with the force of a mighty storm. My body convulses, and I fight. Oh, stars, I fight so hard. I claw and kick and grasp and push and shake those bars with all my strength. I suck in a mouthful of water and my chest squeezes tight, my body twisting and writhing against the waters of the fearsome, relentless Motherlake.
    This was what it was like for the Soturi invaders. This is how they perished.

    â€œHave you ever killed someone?” I asked my Valtia. We were eating delicate sweet potato pastries, lying on her massive bed after a long day at the planting ceremony, watching our reflections in the hammered copper ceiling.
    â€œNot yet,” she said. “But I probably will, someday.”
    â€œYou sound awfully sure.” And awfully calm. I’d just turned thirteen and was amazed by her serene beauty, her smooth surface. Envy filled me.
    She took my hand, sending a pulse of ice along my palm. “I do what I need to, in service of the Kupari. Sometimes you are chosen, and sometimes you must choose. If I take a life, I won’t regret that choice. I’ll know it was to protect our people.” She turned her head and looked into my eyes. “And so will you, Elli, when the time comes. You’ll do what you need to do. Never doubt.”

    Never doubt.
    I rise from the water like a firebird from ash.
    But not by magic.
    As the elders swing me back over the deck, I vomit a bucketful of water onto their bald heads. Aleksi grunts with disgust. “That was hardly magical.”
    I hear him like I’m still underwater. I’m made of ice. I’m bleeding. All they need to do is set me on fire, and I’d be complete: Blood. Copper. Ice. Fire. It is life.
    And now I’ve learned it’s death, too.
    With contempt etched onto his fleshy face, Aleksi unlocks the clasp on my cage and swings the door open. Kauko and Leevi pull me out. I’m still convulsing and coughing, shivering so violently that they can barely hold on to me. They set me heavily on the deck. I barely feel it. I sink deep inside the empty, gaping space inside me, drowning again, this time in defeat.
    The elders talk quietly