Page 110 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

I turned my wrist over and looked closer. Sure enough, the tiny cut was closed, the edges already knitting together.

I beamed. That was the kind of magic I could really get excited about. It would make me impervious to most wounds and even more illnesses. And best of all, it couldn't harm anyone if I ended up being shit at self-control. "That's handy," I said.

Io had that look on his face that made me think he was proud of me. I loved that look, because with it came the knowledge that he wanted me to be as strong as I could be. He relished my strength. He wanted me to be his mate, his match, and at the very least, his equal.

I looked away as he cut open my wrist again.

When Master Cassius decided he had enough blood, he began the task of assembling the ingredients. He dug a handful of white wood shavings out of a stoppered glass jar and threw them into a clean basin.

"Elderwood," he said at my curious look.

My eyes widened in horror, and he patted my arm. "Don't worry dear. These were not harvested from a living tree. They are from a broken limb gifted to the stewards by the Ildegarl itself.”

The look of confusion on my face must have been comical because the master tittered. "You have a lot to teach your lady, my boy."

Io turned to me, "The Ildegarl is the largest elderwood in the world. It grows near the Palace of Dreams, in Orin. The stewards are guardians who watch over the Elderwood Forests."

"But—" I said, scrunching my brow as I watched the master pour a white crystalline powder into the bowl of wood shavings as though salting his dinner. "I thought the last of the sentient forests was our Elderwood in the south."

"Fortunately not, though it is by far the largest,” Master Cassius said, grinding the wood shavings against the sides of the bowl with a short pestle.

“—and very quietly protected by the stewards as well, I might add.

" He looked up sharply. "Though that is a secret I should not have told before you officially become the Lady of Darkwatch. "

"Your secret is safe with me," I told him, grinning.

"And she will be Lady of Darkwatch very soon," Io added.

I was curious about the stewards, though I was certain Cassius would not say more about them.

Windemere had the Arbor Guild who patrolled our border with the Elderwood to watch out for poachers who might brave the druidscap mushrooms that ringed the forest to try and claim a bit of the precious wood.

And, of course, the horse lords who lived on the wide Artaxian plains that surrounded its northern edges. They were the closest things we had to ambassadors to the trees.

But I had never heard of the Stewards of the Forests.

I made a mental note to ask Io later even though my brain was overloaded. I felt dazed when I tried to consider everything all at once.

I had these newly released powers. Io was apparently the rightful gods blessed king of the world. And I was about to have it officially confirmed that we were mates.

The implication of the last set my heart skipping fearfully again even as the reminder of the bond soothed much of my anxiety.

The rest of our problems would fall like dominoes behind the sanctity of the mating bond.

When confirmed by a master of the citadel, a priest, or the prime of a witch coven, the bond could dissolve a decades long marriage as though it had never been. It was held that sacred.

Master Cassius threw a spark from a strike plate down into the bowl of wood shavings. The resultant whoosh of flames cleared the tumultuous thoughts from my mind.

Elderwood could not be burned, but when the fire died down, the shavings were somehow a smoking pile of ash in the bottom of the basin.

Cassius quickly mixed them in with the blood and stirred until the contents of the basin were stained an unnaturally dark color for such a small quantity of ashes.

He dipped the sharp point of a long silver stylus in the mixture. "Your hand, my dear," he said.

When I gave it to him, he poked the tip of the stylus deeply into the flesh of my palm.

I flinched, drawing back my hand.

No blood welled up. There was only a blackened dot in the center of my life line.

"What now?" I asked as Cassius did the same with Io's palm.

"Now you wait," he said, a tremulous smile on his face.

"For what?"

"The mating mark," Io said. "It will spread out from the dot and be permanent proof of our bond.”

"And what if it doesn't?"

"It will," he said.

It did not. We sat in several minutes of tense silence. I glanced up to see Aben studying Io's face expectantly.

"Amon," Master Cassius began, his tone full of sorrow and regret.

"Do it again," Io said. "You did something wrong."

"My boy, there is nothing to do wrong. It is natural, earth magic—"

"I said do it again," Io snapped, holding out his wrist and angrily slashing his skin.

The master lurched forward to grab another basin to catch the blood as I reached for Io's forearm. "Io—"

He smiled reassuringly, taking my hand. His eyes were full of apology. "I'm sorry to do this again, Sera."

"It's okay," I said, turning my arm over and offering him my wrist.

He cut me—much more gingerly than he had cut himself. He laced his fingers in mine and held our wrists over the bowl, letting our blood run down together into the basin.

"Don't hesitate so long this time. I think you went too slow. The blood clotted or...something." He spoke calmly, but I thought even he did not believe what he was saying.

Aben stared at Io as though ready for a storm, his body tensed and his eyes full of sympathy, just as mine were.

But I was not surprised. How could I be when I already knew it? I had known it deep down—in my bones. I loved him desperately, more than I imagined any fucking mating bond could account for, but I knew it was not true.

He had been wrong—horribly, terribly mistaken. Repeating the test would not change that.

I would gladly oblige him as many times as he needed me to, though.

I knew he loved me, and I thought he probably felt precisely what I felt—deep, impossibly endless love.

Along with his newfound seer’s abilities, he had mistaken that for the mating bond.

It was his mind and heart’s desperate attempt to change the cards those fucking fickle bitches, the fates, had dealt us.

Or maybe...maybe he felt it, but something was broken in me that made it impossible for me to form the other half of the bond. Maybe I had been the one to let him down—to ruin his chances at being happy.

If not for the circumstances, I wouldn't have cared. No magical or natural mating mark could have made me love him more or less than I already did. But we needed it. We needed the safety of the mark as a refuge against the path we had strayed from to be together.

And now that the hope of it was gone, the reality of my future crashed down on me with a crushing ferocity.

Would the king strip Io of Darkwatch? Would he send his armies to claim the territory?

The second test went exactly as the first had. We waited in silence, staring down at our palms with their twin dark, sooty marks for a quarter hour before Io pushed up from the table. "Let's go, Sera," he said coldly.

"Amon, my boy," The master said, moving to step around the table.

"No," Io said and the word held power that crackled through the air, stopping the old man in his tracks.

"Let's go, Sera." he said again. His eyes were swirling pits of black. The shadows had gathered, and they were barely staying below the surface of his skin.

I rose, turning to the master, but I couldn’t speak. I was afraid whatever I said would be construed as sorrow and Io would fracture. I was already so near to the point of fracturing myself.

Io took my hand, and he was icy cold. The shock of it stilled my steps for a moment, but only a moment as I went with my shadow-wreathed lord wherever he was taking me.

He stopped at the door and turned back to Aben. "Go back to Orin. I would not have you caught between Behr and me—for what comes next."

"Io, no," I said sharply.

"Sera," he warned.

I was about to open my mouth again when Aben pushed off the wall. "You know good and gods damned well I wouldn't stand against you for anyone. I will stay."

"You will go." Io said angrily, involuntarily tensing his hand on mine until I winced.

"I fucking won't,” Aben said. “Even the king would never expect a man of Darkwatch to stand against his lord."

"There will not be any standing against anyone," I said, looking at them both in turn.

Io's thick, oppressive power filled the air, and I felt Aben's fire for the first time. It was a smoky, liquid pulse through the chamber. It pushed up against Io’s magic as their anger drew together in a storm cloud. The room wavered in front of me like the air above a flame.

"Stop it, both of you," I said. Surely they wouldn't truly hurt each other.

I put my hands on Io's chest and shoved him. He was immovable.

In the end, Aben put his hands up. "We'll talk about this later, cousin. When you and Sera have had time to discuss it."

Io stared, his face a dark effigy of my dragon rider. His brows were drawn low over narrowed black eyes, sharpened into blade-thin slits. He relaxed slightly and nodded. I still felt the rage simmering off him. It thickened the air and made that dull ache in the pit of my stomach much larger.

He turned to go, pulling me behind him as faint tendrils of shadow streaked back from the edges of his body.

We left the Citadel on Veles, whose normally bright green eyes seemed muted and dull, as though Io's dark attitude was infecting him as well. Temperamental ripples of displeasure ran down his body as we landed at the back of the Mountain Palace.

Io pulled me along across the ridge's wide expanse of snow and rock. He had not spoken a single word since we left Master Cassius' chambers. Neither had I, since I knew the moment I did, we would fight spectacularly.

I was not ready to say what I knew I would say.

He was not ready to hear it as his body thrummed with dark, twisted energy.

I was barely able to think about it as my heart fractured painfully inside my chest.