The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(78)
Sig laughs, the sound molten and dangerous. “Stars, it’s not coming from her,” he says in an unsteady voice. “Can you feel it, Elli?”
All I feel is hatred for the elders. They’ve done something to Mim. They’ve hurt her. I know it. They’re putting on a show to impress the Soturi, but at the expense of the woman who nurtured me since we were both children—a woman I loved with all my heart. Her gaze is vacant yet somehow full of pain as she stands there, arms raised. A puppet, Sig had said. He was so, so right.
Sig steps forward as the fire twists above us, swirling into beautiful designs, making the people shriek with joy and the Soturi gape with shock. Sweat beading on his brow, he drags me past a few cheering men and women, and I grab his hand to pry it from my arm. He’s bringing us perilously close to the priests and elders, who may have other things on their mind at the moment, but who would be happy to recapture me if they realize I’m right in front of them. “Sig, wait.”
His head swivels in my direction, his brown eyes glowing, his handsome face alight with glee. “She’s an impostor,” he says with an unhinged laugh.
My fingers curl over the back of his hand just as his other jerks upward, his palm outstretched. The fire above us suddenly spirals high, forming a solid pillar of flame that nearly kisses the sky. Eljas and Aleksi’s eyes go wide as they lose control of it. Mim’s empty stare glows orange as her head tilts upward, following its path.
There’s a wrenching tug within my chest as Sig clenches his fist and drops it like a hammer.
The column of fire arches over the platform and slams down—right on top of Mim.
CHAPTER 20
I’m nearly blinded as the inferno engulfs the platform. The square becomes a writhing mass of panic. We’re shoved back and pushed to the ground. Sig is on top of me, his body drenched with sweat. I claw and kick, trying to rise, trying to see what’s happening. We’re going to be trampled.
Rough hands close around Sig’s shoulders and yank him up. Jouni’s hair is plastered to his cheeks, and his face is red. Sig leans against him, his eyes unfocused—just like Oskar’s were after we encased our enemies in a block of ice. A sharp pain stabs through my stomach as I look up at the platform. The scream tears its way from my throat, joining with thousands of others. The Valtia’s chair is a spiraling monster of flame and smoke as the elders on either side use their ice magic to suppress the fire. Aleksi looks untouched, but Eljas’s face and hands are red and blistered. Jouni tugs me and Sig backward just as I move forward. “Mim,” I cry in a choked voice.
“Come on, girl,” Jouni snaps. “We have to get out of this square!”
“He killed Mim!” I shriek, trying to rip myself away. My Mim, who loved me, who gave me a life. Sig destroyed her. . . .
Jouni grabs the neck of my cloak and hauls me backward. “Shut up, you idiot! Do you want to be caught?”
Sig’s magic wielders surround us, carrying us to the east, away from the holocaust on the platform. I catch glimpses and flashes, the blackened form on the throne, the crown lying discarded on the steps, the Saadella standing alone on her chair at the base of the platform, tears streaking through her white makeup, her pale-blue eyes wide with terror as she screams for her father. One of the acolytes grabs her and several others crowd around, shoving their way through panicked councilmen to get to the temple road.
The Soturi envoys are nowhere to be seen. They’ve probably fled, eager to report this catastrophe and marshal their invading force. I barely care. Right now my grief for Mim is too huge to allow fear for myself or our people a single thought. I struggle and cry as Jouni flings me over the back of a horse like a sack of grain. “The south road,” Sig says in a ragged voice as he slumps against Tuuli. “I know how to get out.”
Jouni mounts the horse, cramming his knees against my chest and thighs, pressing his hand against my back. I grab the edge of the saddle and try to kick at him, but when the horse begins to trot, it’s all I can do to breathe. Mud from the road spatters my face, and I’m buffeted by shoulders and waving arms as the magic wielders kick their horses’ flanks and flee the chaos. We’re a river of bodies, horses, carts, screeching women, and crying children. In all the panic, no one gives me, a girl slung like cargo over the back of a horse, a second look.
“The Valtia’s magic turned on her!” cries one man as he tries to push his way into a cottage, hopefully his own. “The stars have cursed us!”
The farther we ride, the more I hear this lament. The stars have cursed us. The Valtia is destroyed. The Soturi will come now. We have no protection.
Our path grows dark as Sig directs Tuuli down a series of alleys. Finally the road dead-ends at a crumbling, ancient gate, barred with green copper. A massive lock hangs from the latch. Sig slides clumsily from Tuuli’s horse and pulls two metal picks from his pocket.
A moment later Usko and Mikko shove the gate open, its worn wood scraping against a stone lip and then swinging over rotten leaves. The wielders guide their horses through and then push the gate closed again. We’re outside the city, within a dense copse of trees. “What in stars just happened, Sig?” Usko shouts. “You gave us no warning.”
Sig runs his hand through his blond hair. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—” His eyes narrow and he stares at me. “I only meant to wrest control from the elders. I could tell the girl on the throne wasn’t wielding the magic, and I wanted everyone to know it. And then I felt this insane rush of power inside me.”