Page 15 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

I looked up at him, his face towering above me, a few stubborn strands of hair falling over his forehead. I knew my face must have registered how much I wanted him to touch me. But he didn't. He took another deep breath, almost like he was scenting me.

"But most of all, Sera, I thought about what it felt like when I woke and felt you on top of me, your thighs around my hips, and your hips pressing me down to that bed."

"Oh,'' I breathed, my heart pounding out a rhythm in my chest as I began to ache—to literally ache for him to touch me.

"So tell me, Sera, did you think about me today?"

"Not even once," I said, giving him a wicked grin.

"Liar," he said, his lips almost to mine. "I need you to tell me, Sera. Tell me that you want me."

I waited, not quite able to just say it.

"I've never been with a woman who was...paid to be there. But if you do want this as much as I do, then I will pay you whatever you ask."

The words took a few heartbeats to filter into my brain, but when they did, they cut through the heat like an icy knife.

I knew that was what he thought—that I was a courtesan. The rational part of my brain had known to expect it—to expect him to think my body was for sale.

But as he looked at me, as he had talked about my eyes, I began to believe it was something...more. And perhaps then, the rational part of my brain had simply shut down.

Little bits of swirling fog, trapped behind glass. I thought that was what he had said…

The realization that this was a transaction to him, even if my stupid mind had thought of it in a very similar way not so long ago.

..well, it sent rage and humiliation crackling through me.

"I have never been paid to be anywhere, you prick," I said sharply, making him take an automatic step back from me.

I moved away from the wall and started to turn away as he stared back at me warily.

I thought better of it, though, and whirled back on him. "Maybe next time, you should ask around a little. Find out if someone actually is a whore before you try to pay them."

I turned again, but that word I had used—it shamed me to my core. The immediate fear that one of my friends in the brothel might have overheard me momentarily drowned out the anger I felt.

I had wanted to sting him the way his words had stung me. But using that word, well it was uncalled for.

I stopped, ready to take it back.

When I faced him, he was looking at me like something I said was highly amusing.

"You're an asshole," I said and turned away again, letting my footsteps carry me across the courtyard quickly before I could change my mind again.

"Well, fuck," I heard behind me. He was indeed laughing.

"Absolute fucking self-entitled jackass prick," I muttered.

I left him at the brothel and walked away down Antevemer Street, looking for a carriage for hire. It was becoming harder to find one as the streets filled with more and more people arriving for King's Day.

The added people meant relative safety, though.

I was able to walk all the way to the castle without ending up on a single empty street.

I stayed vigilant for any sign of the people who had pursued me, but I met with no one who didn't seem to be out and about for the city-wide party that was underway.

With my hood pulled over my hair, I entered the Presarion's cathedral as just one more of the penitent worshipers who found themselves in need of the refuge of the gods' temple during the night.

The gate at the head of the long corridor that led to the castle was manned by sentries in gleaming gold armor at all hours, but I didn't take the gate.

As usual, I crept along the back wall, past the alcoves that held the marble statues of the gods and the little benches for parishioners to pray and reflect.

I passed the statue of Niktos, the god of darkness, holding his long broadsword out before him. His statue was the only one in the cathedral that had any color.

His large, spread wings were a dark, shadowy gray. The paint was swirled over them to look like they were made of smoke, and then they were flecked with white, green, and blue to create stars and constellations.

Niktos was also the only god in the cathedral who had been depicted nude. I often found my eyes wandering to the nether regions of the statue, where his marble cock hung limp, but sizable, between the muscular carved thighs.

I checked out Niktos' equipment as I passed. As usual, I felt a bit of shame for how sacrilegious it seemed to admire his impressive architecture. But really, if they didn’t want people to admire him, they should have hidden his large, well-muscled form beneath a long robe—as the rest of the gods had been carved.

The Dagda and the Morrigan, the king and queen of the gods, were behind me at the head of the long chamber. Their statues had been carved from one enormous block of granite.

Their spread wings overlapped to form a shape like an 'x,' where Danu's crowned heart symbol lay at the intersection.

I did not need to see the dead gods’ symbols to have dread slicing through me as I remembered the little caged elderwood seed that lay in a drawer in my chambers.

It was said that Amundur and Danu had gifted the world with the elderwood trees before they ended up dead on the fields of Windemere, with their blood watering the golden seeds planted by their angel servants.

I didn't know if any of it was true. The history the Presarion taught was a convoluted mess of conflicting theologies.

The gods had died—sacrificing themselves to save the world and imprison the false god and his demon army in Chronus—beneath the godsgrass.

But they were also alive—sending messages that only the priests and priestesses could pass along to us.

They were served by angels, but they also were the angels.

I had never seen any sign that they were more than the creation of the Presarion themselves, even if Nightfall supposedly did have possession of the God King's elderwood sword. It was said to be hidden somewhere in their hoarded treasure because it was too powerful for any but Amundur to wield.

Who was to say it wasn't just some ordinary sword that some ordinary man had found in some ordinary cave? It wasn't like anyone alive would be willing to touch it to test the theory, after all.

There was no doubt in my mind that the gods were dead, though. The first King of Windemere, Edgeon, had lit their funeral pyre himself for all the world to see. And if they were dead, that meant they had probably never been gods at all.

I was admittedly angry and sullen as I stalked through the cathedral, each so-called god looking more and more false as I passed. By the time I reached the door in the corner, I felt mentally exhausted.

I looked around to be sure I wasn’t observed before I released the small catch on the side. It didn't look like a door at all. It was disguised as a section of the wall so that the nobles and courtiers would not need to be reminded of the servants who stalked the halls of Albiyn Castle.

I assumed it had once been frequently used before the Presarion had begun assigning housekeeping duties to their young acolytes. The change suited my purposes perfectly, as I would not have fared well meeting anyone as I climbed back to my chambers.

The stairs led to a disused section of servant’s quarters and to a hallway with a single door that opened up to a tiny balcony.

It took little more than a scramble onto the balustrade for me to pull myself up and be walking across the roof tiles in the direction of my rooms.

Tatana's little brother, Set, had been the one to learn how easy it was to scale up and onto the roof.

The boy stalked the halls of the castle like a wraith—always underfoot on some task for the kitchens, or else forgotten and allowed to roam at will.

He was eleven and small for his age. It was easy for him to blend in with the countless other young castle serfs.

My chambers were dark when I entered. My ladies had long since found their own rooms, and only Tatana remained. She had fallen asleep in my bed, something she often did, even though she claimed to prefer her cot in the corner of my wardrobe.

"It's cozy," she would say, even though I knew the room grew chilly in the absence of a hearth.

The truth was that she didn't want me to know how often the nightmares still plagued her—ones of Markus and his cruel hands—others of her home where the scent of moonflower pervaded even her dreams.

She once admitted that the dreams of her home were the worst, since she would wake in Albiyn, certain that she would never again see the shores of Elysium.

That crushing blow was somehow harder to bear than the ones landed by my sadistic uncle.

But that had been in the days before I made my deal with him—the days before I sacrificed my pride for her safety.

I studied her as she slept. She looked so peaceful, her skin unmarred by the dark circles that had once plagued her from lack of sleep.

Not for the first time, I hated, absolutely hated, every single member of that fucking Council of Eldermen aside from Arkadian.

The council had been no help to Tatana. Even the Baroness of Khiebol had refused to intervene to prevent the regent from taking his pleasure with her. To them, she amounted to little more than a slave.

For all her kindness, Erelzeba had advised me to help Tatana see it for the honor it was—to be chosen to be in service to the crown.

I wanted to claw her eyes out when she had uttered the words.

It had taken me years to stop holding them against her and come to terms with the fact that she simply did not understand.

Arkadian was the only one who did not know the truth. Tatana and I both knew what would happen if the hot-headed young duke learned what Markus had done. Arkadian would have killed him, and the defense of a lady's companion would never stand as justification for striking against the throne.

I had been young, idealistic, and angry in those days, but I had also been powerless. I lived in the cage my parents inadvertently created for me when they left me alone at the mercy of a cruel and dangerous man.

In my mother's case, it was fate that ended her life. She caught a fever that had been spreading through the kingdom while she was weakened by my birth. She died swiftly, only days after I came into the world.

My father had usurped fate's role in his destiny by leaping from the balcony of the King's Tower in his grief. I had, perhaps, never quite forgiven him for the choice he made to leave me.

I crawled into bed beside my heart sister, pulling the covers over us both.

I tried so very hard not to think of Io.

I would never see him again. I would make sure of it.

He was only in the city for King's Day. I knew he was not with the emissaries from Radune.

They would not arrive for another two days, at least.

So, as long as I stayed away from the Mouse's Ear and ignored any summons he might have the gall to send, I could let him fade away into the back of my memory as though he had never been.