The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(101)

I will not play a part in her death.

I have a will. And I’m not Sig’s weapon to wield.

I stop resisting his pull. With a desperate lunge, I round on him. My left hand remains clamped in his right, but I wrap the three fingers of my right hand over the cuff of Astia on his left arm. We become a circle of flesh and bone.

Right as the magic erupts.

Sig arches as his own fiery power loops through me—and back into him. My mind fills with roaring light. The world goes silent and golden, and the pain singes along every inch of me. The magic moves like lightning, circling through the Fire Suurin and back into me, over and over, heightening, winding tight, until finally it explodes. I’m thrown backward as Sig is torn from my grasp. My back slams into cold rock.

I’m blind. The only thing I can see is white.

“Lahja!” I shriek, clawing at the air as pebbles pelt my belly and face. Is she hurt? Did we kill her?

A muscular arm loops around my waist. I clutch at fur-covered shoulders and feel the vibrations of a broad chest pressed to mine—he’s shouting. “Ever,” comes his distant voice.

“Lahja!” I scream as I’m lifted from the ground. I can’t tell which way is up, which way is out. All I know is that the world is collapsing. I blink frantically.

“Ever!” It’s Oskar. I’m in his arms, and the sky is raining rock.

“No, we have to get her!” My vision is coming back, blurry and indistinct. His broad form wavers in front of me, like we’re underwater. I kick and struggle. “Lahja!”

Oskar’s face appears right in front of mine. His gray eyes are fierce. His lips move, exaggerating each movement. “I. Have. Her.” His hand clutches mine in an unforgiving grasp. My ears fill with the sound of crumbling, cracking rocks.

He lets me go for the briefest moment—and then presses a squirming form against my body. My arms coil around her as she cries. Tears stream from my eyes as I lean my cheek against her curls, which are coated with gritty stone dust. “Oh, my darling,” I hear myself say. “I have you. I have you.”

Oskar grips my hand again. “I need you,” he says from between clenched teeth. “Please, Elli, work with me. I can’t do it without your help.”

I hold Lahja in my arms and let Oskar haul me along a brutally cold path. He’s pulling on me as hard as Sig did, but instead of resisting, I offer him all I have, letting it flow from me and into him. We’re surrounded by blackness as his magic pours from him, pushing along in front of us. There’s ice beneath my bare feet. “Oskar?”

“It’s caving in. I’m using the ice to hold it up so we can get through.”

Together we stagger toward a flickering light, Lahja holding tight, her arms around my neck, her legs clamped around my waist. Behind us, there’s the dull roar of rocks falling, and I turn to look behind me, but Oskar yanks me forward. I nearly fall as we start to run.

We dive into the torch-lit chamber just as the tunnel to the docks caves in completely.

Oskar falls to his knees and braces his palm against the stones, his broken arm tucked to his body. Panting, he looks at the wall of crumbled stone behind him. Sweat beads his brow and his teeth are chattering. His eyes meet mine. “We should get up to the surface. I don’t know how stable these catacombs are.”

I stroke Lahja’s hair, my body made of instinct. She’s shivering, her face pressed against my neck. “Kauko let her go,” I murmur.

Oskar shakes his head and slowly gets to his feet. “Elli—”

“I had to do it, Oskar.” Though I’m not entirely sure what I did. “I couldn’t let Sig hurt her. Vengeance was more important to him than her life.”

Oskar’s granite eyes are shadowed with an emotion I don’t understand. “It happened so fast. The two of you became a blinding light, but then you exploded apart.” He inclines his head toward Lahja. “She was thrown free, but Kauko—”

“Is he dead?”

Oskar stares at the caved-in tunnel. “I don’t know. When Lahja landed, I grabbed her, and then I grabbed you.” He turns to me and runs a gentle hand down Lahja’s back. “The tunnel was collapsing, and it was all I could do to get the two of you out.”

Dread burbles in my stomach. “I didn’t mean to hurt Sig.”

“You made a choice,” Oskar says softly, putting his arm around me and guiding us out of the chamber. “And so did I.” He lets me go and plucks a torch from a sconce, then holds it in front of him as he leads us up the tunnel.

I made a choice. And because of that choice, Sig is probably dead. It feels wrong. Not because I didn’t make the right decision, but because I shouldn’t have had to choose in the first place. If my will had been strong enough, couldn’t I have stopped his magic, tugged it right out of his grasp? I swear, if the stars give me more days than this, I will learn how to control this gift better.

But right now I have something else to attend to. I press my face into Lahja’s hair, which smells of warm honey and cold rock. She whimpers and hugs me tighter. “You’re safe,” I whisper to her. “And I’m going to take care of you.”

We reach the steps leading up to the domed chamber. Oskar walks in front of us. I sense his icy power pulsing from him. We don’t know what’s waiting for us at the top.