The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(84)
The door swings open and Carina pokes her head in. “We heard the shouting. Did you kill her? You weren’t supposed to kill her!” She waves her hand as I rush out of the room, wincing as the heat reaches her.
“Get Kauko up here to heal Thyra,” I bark, fear jittering along my spine. Thyra’s starving and weak already. What have I done? “Summon him now!” I stalk down the hall with no idea where I’m heading as Carina runs past me, on her way to find the elder. My entire body is burning with the magic—and with Thyra’s words. She’s reached inside me and poured out all my thoughts, scattering them to the wind, leaving me jumbled and spinning. I walk blind and stumbling, my vision blurred with hot and cold tears. I shiver and sweat. So badly, I want to hurl fire. I want to rage. I want to call to the magic and let it loose. But if I do, it could kill me. Bleeding or not, I’ve never felt less balanced than I do now.
A hand closes around my wrist as I reach the very bottom of the spiraling steps, and I’m yanked into an alcove. I slam my hand against a hard, sweat-slick chest—and my assailant lets out a hiss of pain as his back hits the wall, followed by a shaky laugh.
“Sig,” I say as he leans into the torchlight. “What are you doing?”
“No. More. Bleed,” he whispers, pressing his thumb to the wound in the crook of my elbow.
I stare up at him as the torch flares, and I’m not sure if he’s causing it—or if I am. “Why?”
He shakes his head. “No more,” he says again. He puts an imaginary cup to his lips and pretends to drink.
“Have you had too much mead?”
“Bleed? No,” he says. “No more.”
This is hopeless without Halina. “What are you doing outside your chamber?” I point down the corridor, where I know he’s being kept. Through the gloom, I can just make out two prone figures lying next to an open door.
When I try to step back from him, he holds my arm tight. “No,” he says. His mouth twists with frustration as he mutters something in Kupari. He points at my hand. “Teach you.”
“Yes. Kauko is teaching me. Not that it’s working.”
He seems to understand the frustration in my tone, if not the words. His grin is a bright, deadly thing. “I teach you.”
I peer at him through narrowed eyes. “Um . . .” I glance up the hall toward the guards, sincerely hoping he hasn’t killed them. At the same time, I can’t bring myself to call for help, or to fight him, because no matter what he’s done, and no matter how gentle Kauko has been with me, I have come to hate the way the elder treats his apprentice. I wish I could ask Sig what really happened, but without translation, we must remain strangers. But I am running out of time to learn how to control the magic, and at some point Nisse will give up on me. “All right. Tomorrow.”
His brow furrows. “Teach? Yes?”
I nod. “Yes.” I put a finger to my lips.
Sig lays his own finger over his smug grin. And then he releases me and heads up the hall. As he walks by a torch, I gasp at the horizontal stripes of blood that have bled through his shirt. He’s been whipped.
Sig enters his chamber and pulls the door shut without giving the felled warriors so much as a glance. To my relief, they start to stir. Whatever he did to them—perhaps making them faint in the heat just like I accidentally did to Thyra just now—the effect was temporary. But it only makes his power clear; he kept that heat in place while he crept down the hall and talked to me. I don’t understand how someone with that much control and power could allow anyone to whip them.
I lean against the wall, trying to sort things out. I don’t know who to trust. Nisse or Thyra, Kauko or Sig. Each of them has an agenda. I’m not naive enough to believe otherwise. But two kingdoms and a thousand warriors might depend on which way I jump. Only a few hours ago, I thought I had made my decision.
Now I realize I’m frozen midair, and I have no idea where I’m going to land.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As soon as my back collides with stone, I have my legs up. I jab my foot into Jaspar’s middle and roll before he can wrap his hands around my ankle. My head throbs with the jarring aftermath of the fall as I jump to my feet, but my blood sings.
Jaspar rubs his stomach and chuckles. “You’re even faster than you were.”
“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.