Page 112 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

His black fire unfurled as he thrust into me with his own release. Our flames met, twisting and blending in a mass of golden fire and cruel, dark flame that surrounded us. His magic burned through me, blazing a path of dark, angry, beautiful power through my body.

When the shaking of our bodies had eased and our breaths had evened, he kissed me. Tenderly and wantonly. He held my face in his hands as though he could not let me go as his lips trailed across my skin.

His own skin was fiery hot again, that familiar warmth that guided me to him like a compass, drawing me to true north and what felt like the only way I could have ever gone.

He was back inside me in the span of a few moments, easing himself into me like breathing.

I saw our breaths mist in the air and realized the chamber was freezing, as though open to the cold mountains beyond.

"I can’t do it, Sera," he whispered.

"I know." I did not need to ask him what he meant.

"I'm so fucking sorry." He said it as though the mating bond's absence was somehow his failure. Or did he mean that he was sorry for his inability to let me go, knowing it would mean war and my own people's suffering?

Either way, it was the same, and it did not matter. It was my failure. They were both my failures. "You have no apologies to make, Io."

"I have failed you—in every way. I made you a vow that I know I will break no matter the cost to anyone but you."

"We can fix it, Io. We’ll find a way. I know that you love your family, your people, just as I do. We will find a way to protect them all."

I felt the words as the rotten lie they were. There was no way forward together that did not put him squarely in the line of danger. There was only one path that would leave him whole—leave our kingdoms whole.

And I could not do it. I could not walk away from him. It would kill me.

"I can't," he said again, his voice harsh, as though the burning words were wrenched from his soul and cracked open as they reached the icy air around us.

And then something hit my chest—a tear, bitingly hot.

Pain lanced through me—desperate, aching pain filled me, stealing my air, making me dizzy.

He was still inside me but moving slowly—as though his body in mine was a soft caress.

I wanted to curl around myself with the pain. I wanted to sink into the ground beneath us and let the darkness swallow me whole.

But somewhere in that blinding maelstrom of anguish and heartbreak, I felt another tear hit my shoulder. It was icy cold as it raced across my chest and gathered in the hollow of my throat.

He laid his cool lips against the skin of my neck, in the curve where it met my shoulder, and I felt such hollowness from him that it scared me.

A wave of protectiveness rose up in me that startled me with its ferocity.

I would not cower in the darkness, falling prey to the whims of the fucking fates while his fire was smothered under the weight of his vow to me. I knew what needed to be done, and if he was not strong enough to do it himself, well, I was stronger. He had told me so himself.

I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him up. He let me, drawing up to give me a curious look.

But I only kissed him, finding his lips as I pushed him onto his back and climbed over him. I found him with my body, sliding onto him, rising over him, my hands on his beautiful chest, his face. I rode him until his hands warmed on my hips—until that gold fire burned hot from his palms.

We both reached release again, the pleasure not even slightly diminished from it being the second time that night. It never was. Each time with him was always everything and still, somehow, more.

After he fell asleep, I watched him. He was so fucking beautiful, peaceful, and wholly, utterly mine. I counted his breaths, felt the thud of his heart under my palm, smelled that distinctly Io scent.

I tried desperately to commit it to memory.

And then I eased from the bed and wrapped one of the warm dressing robes he'd given me around my shoulders.

I lingered by the bed for a while, watching him as he slept the deep sleep of the wounded, and then I went to his study.

I wrote him a letter to explain.

I addressed it to Amon. Thinking better of it, I crumpled the paper and started again. Io, I wrote his name in my messy handwriting.

If I used his other name, he might discount the rest of the words entirely. And I needed him to believe every cruel, horrible, fucking lie I wrote.

Each brush of the pen across the parchment tore more and more of my heart free, until by the time I was finished, I was empty.

The place where my heart should have been was just a raw wound where Sera had been carved away, leaving Aelia of Windemere in her place. She was nothing more than a game piece on a chessboard, not the queen or even a knight. She was just a pawn.

I saw the torn pieces of the letter from the king with all the hateful words scrawled across it. I wanted to incinerate the entire library to burn it away. But in the end, it was only a part of the puzzle that needed to be set for the rest of the pieces to fit in this tragic farce I was creating.

With my face swollen from the tears that poured out as I wrote the letter, I went to my own chamber where the pile of clothes had been left until we could make room for them in Io's wardrobe.

I dressed with shaking fingers, slinging the baldric that held the blade he gifted me over my shoulder. I had named her Seema, an old Withian word that meant freedom.

I left Sangui, the sword I named hunger, my armor, and that unbelievable hoard of gold behind.

I didn't want to ask myself why—beyond the fact that I could not carry so much. Because some part of my poor, broken soul was trying to hold on to the idea that I would ever come here again?

I left the ring with the letter, pulling it off with shaking fingers, nearly dropping it onto the floor.

I cherished it, of course, but I knew it had been an afterthought, born of custom and tradition to signify a betrothal with a ring.

His true gift to me had been the sword and the flower he admitted flying halfway down the valley to find.

That flower, pressed between the pages of some random small book I had stolen from his library, was tucked into the breast pocket of my nesericum silk coat. This one was bleached a pale gray on the inside and the color curled around and over the lapels making tangled vine shapes.

I would likely not have the opportunity to wear clothes like that again for a long while, so I chose what I considered the finest of all the ones he gifted to me...for the last of it.

And I left the rest behind.

I exited the palace through the front doors. There was very little need for guards in such a peaceful land at the top of the world, so there was no one around to see me.

I made my way in the direction of the dragon nursery and those massive caves.

Everything counted on Veles—and my ability to make him understand that I had to do this to protect his master.

The further I climbed up the rocky path around the side of the mountain, the more impossible my plan seemed. By the time I reached the top, I felt like all the resolve that was driving me had been left somewhere below. I was an empty, exhausted shell.

I carried on despite it, making my way to the Dragon's Rest.

The caves were hot, the air stifling from lava and the breaths of so many dragons lying asleep in the deep recesses of the mountain.

I walked down the central pathway, illuminated only by faint light from the aurora-streaked sky behind me.

I tried not to think how many dragons lay in the shadows to either side—how many hungry beasts who did not know me would be awakened by my footsteps on the uneven cave floor.

Veles did not sleep in the shadows, though. Like the king he was, he lay in the center of the chamber in the last vestiges of the starlight, with his neck crossed over the back of his silvery-scaled mate.

As my feet scuffed on the stones beneath me, I felt a warm wind from my right.

I turned to see a massive pale-green head with bright yellow eyes silently creeping toward me out of the darkness. Its lips were pulled back to reveal twin rows of long, pointed teeth.

A warning growl from Veles sent the green dragon's head darting back into the darkness of the cavern.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached him. He swung his big head around to rub against my shoulder, setting me off balance so that I stumbled back. "Hello, Veles," I told him, reaching out to touch his scales along the side of his massive jaw. "I need your help."

Veles made a low growl in his throat. I had to jump back a step as he shook his head like a dog shaking water off its fur.

He turned away, resuming his position across Freya's back, and closed his eyes.

"Please Veles," I whispered. "It's the only way I can protect him—the one way he ends up surviving what comes next without shattering himself into pieces. Carry me, just one last time. Please."

Veles faced me again and growled—a hissing, snarling sound. He bared his teeth, so much longer and sharper than the green dragon's had been.

He opened his mouth, and I saw through wavering, heated air, bright churning embers at the back of his throat. A ruthless, hot wind stung my cheeks.

I would not be deterred. "Please," I begged, a sob wrenching from my chest.

Veles only opened his mouth wider in warning.

"Go ahead and burn me, you stubborn fucking beast, because if you don't, I will make you take me!"

He eyed me as the flames began to swirl and eddy in the back of his throat.

And then he shut his mouth abruptly and turned, sliding away into the darkness.

His wingbeats echoed through the cavern a moment later, and I knew he was probably already halfway across that wide expanse that spread off into the gloom.

I fell to my knees as a desperate sob tore through me. I felt my knuckle bones crack beneath my teeth as I struggled to hold it inside.