Page 29 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

"No, there are no other girls here. This is just some merchant prince's attempt to recapture his youth through flesh and fire.

He does it every year and tries to make it nastier and nastier.

I'm not even a girl, really. I'm nineteen years old, but that old twat thought he could pass me off as fourteen, as though he's not known me since I was near that young.

" She looked at the dead Merrik with disdain.

"Secondly, I don't know where the girls are kept. That's how I ended up in this mess myself, trying to earn a bit of coin by ferreting out information for...let's call them interested parties."

At Io's look, Rae added. "No, I cannot tell you who those interested parties are, but I'll pass it along to them that one such as you might be interested in working with one such as them."

She gave the remaining man, the one who'd purchased her, a sideways glance.

"Lastly, that is Elias Addison. He's a financier of big, pretty ships out of Gold Harbor, and if he disappears, most will celebrate.

His nephew, Kherial, will look for him only inasmuch as he will be needing a body to inherit.

If you leave him, perhaps as the result of some tragic mangling accident in a godsgrass mill, you'll not find anyone who gives a damn. "

She turned to me, finally. "And as a bonus, I'll tell you, good lady, that I am a seer, a sage, a diviner of the secrets of the ancients. That is how I know what questions you would ask, and that is how I am not a sobbing mess on the stones. I knew you were coming."

Io chuckled at the whirlwind of words from the tiny...woman—not a girl, I reminded myself, though she looked no older than sixteen.

"And the task?" he asked her.

She pushed her hair back from her face. It was a tangled mess of light brown that could use a wash and a brush. When she had it held to the side, I saw a trickle of blood running down from some kind of spike driven through the middle of her ear.

Io held her head gently and inspected the spike. He swore under his breath as he realized the same thing I did. It was barbed on both ends and made from Mellitrium.

It was the old way of binding a mage—by driving a mellitrium spike through the ear, then forming a barb at the end so it could not be removed—at least not easily.

"I'll have to tear it free," he said with a wince.

"Go right ahead, big fellow. I couldn't manage to do it myself, on account of the pain, but I never cared much for the look of my ears. I already had more than a good portion trimmed away before I could even walk."

She turned to me as I processed the information that someone had removed her previously pointed ears, and then she answered the question in my mind.

"Indeed, my poor departed mother did hop into the bed with an elven prick. Though she always professed it was love, I never knew how. They are such dark and brooding bastards." She looked at Io, sucking her teeth as she seemed to regret her words. "No offense to you and your fae kind, of course."

"We are not the same people," Io supplied. "Though many would find it difficult to identify the distinction in many cases. But all that aside, I can heal the wound left behind. Your ears will be fine."

"Ah," Rae said with a grin. "He's a healer, is he? It's my lucky day." She pulled up her shirt and I gasped. Angry purple bruises covered her ribs from sternum to navel. "Can ya do anything about these?"

"Let's start with the ear," he said.

Io removed the barb, pocketing the mellitrium, and then healed the girl as I stood watching. I wondered what kind of power such a tiny person could have inside her, aside from her ability to know what I was thinking, of course.

She gave me a look of mirth every time I found myself thinking about her.

When my eyes were finally able to accurately assess her, I saw how lovely she was. She looked like what I imagined a fairy, a true pixie, might look like—some wide-eyed woodland creature living amongst the elderwood trees—communing with the sentient forest.

She gave me a grateful, surprised look at that assessment, and I realized how much she could actually read my thoughts. She didn't just get a sense of what I was thinking, she heard it.

"I do," she said with a wink. It strangely did not feel like an intrusion to have her in my head.

When Io moved on to her ribs, she looked at me, chewing her lip thoughtfully. “Does he know who you are?” her voice said in my mind as clearly as if she had spoken aloud. Only the lip still stuck between her teeth betrayed that the thoughts were not words.

"Can you not read his mind to know?" I asked her in my mind.

"Only a little and only what he projects. Some minds are harder to discern. It's rather dark in his—shadowy and confusing—lots of places for thoughts to hide."

"He knows who I am," I admitted. I should have been frightened that this stranger knew who I was and could tell anyone where she had seen me; what I had been wearing in this twisted place.

But I was not afraid, and her reassuring smile as Io leaned back and revealed the smooth unbruised skin of her ribs told me that I was right not to be.

It never occurred to me to be frightened of Io's mind being a place for thoughts to hide. I wasn't sure what that said about my naiveté, my willingness to accept him as trustworthy so easily—especially in the face of the violence and power I had already seen from him.

"Pass a message on to your friends," he said. "Tell them that the Lord of Darkwatch would like a word with them. Tell them that I think they will find our interests are aligned." I wondered if he'd shared words with Rae, mind to mind, as she and I had done.

The girl smiled, nodding her head, and then she seemed to fold in on herself in the blink of an eye until an impossibly tiny bird flitted in front of us.

She hovered in the air for a heartbeat, and then flew past Elias, where he remained frozen.

She made a neat little circle around his head, almost gloating, and then flew out the door and was gone.

A skinchanger, I realized with wonder. Not just a skinchanger, but a seer as well. I hoped I might see her again someday, but I had the sinking feeling that I never would. She seemed so small and fragile, in both bird and human form. I thought the world out there might just eat her alive.

"Not if I eat them first," came Rae's voice in my mind. I had a sudden, brief image of a large white cat, bright blue eyes flashing, and then I heard her melodic laugh.

I chastised myself for making the assumption about her strength based solely on her appearance after she'd just demonstrated to me what she was capable of.

"Good luck, Iris Rae," I told her in my mind, hoping she could hear me.

When her reply came, it felt distant, as though from much farther away. "Good luck, Aelia Seraphem."

The journey up and out of the basement of the manor with Elias Addison walking stiffly in front of us seemed to take all the wind from my sails.

Io used a mixture of threats and magic to hold his tongue while we picked our way through the crowds, past those gauzy silk curtains, where people were still in the throes of passion.

It no longer seemed interesting to me. Where I had earlier felt that pulse of desire and intrigue, on the way out, they just looked like foolish hedonists, the whole lot of them.

Elias shook his head when the servant at the door asked if he had a coat to retrieve, as if that was all he was able to do under the magic binding his tongue. It was fascinating to see the power that Io had over the man, even when his attention didn’t seem to be on him at all.

Indeed, Io’s attention seemed wholly on me as he kept his hand securely around my waist, fixing me to his side.

Elias looked as oily and foul as he sounded, especially in the brighter lights of the entryway.

He had a slightly over-large head of blonde hair over a face that seemed unnaturally lined, weathered beyond his years.

With the added red of the tinted lanterns, he looked as foul on the outside as I knew him to be on the inside.

It would not have mattered if he had been as beautiful as Io. After what Rae said about him, he would still have been the single ugliest creature I had ever seen.

As we stood at the bottom of the long drive waiting for our carriage, I studied him. I had removed my mask, and he met my eyes only once. I held his gaze, forming my face into what I hoped was a perfect representation of what I would do to him if given half the chance.

I wanted to kill him. That was too mild a word for it really. I wanted to rip him apart with my fingernails.

As we climbed into the carriage and Io loosened his hold on the man's tongue to ask him questions, it became obvious that there would be no need for me to try to get to him at all.

The Lord of Darkwatch radiated raw, unchecked anger, all of it directed at the worm seated across from us.

"Do you know anyone in the city who is buying Withian children?" Io asked.

"Of course not," Elias spat, feigning indignance. His jaw quivered, though, and his eyes stayed glued to the man before him.

I glanced at Io, trying to discern what it was that Elias saw—or what Merrik had seen in his face that frightened him so much. All I saw were the now familiar lines and angles of the most terrifyingly beautiful man imaginable.

Io leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "You will tell me the names of every single person in this city who either buys or sells children."

"There is not enough time in a day!" Elias whined.

Io smiled, a menacing, merciless smile. "Oh, don't worry, Elias. You'll have many, many days to tell us all your secrets."

Elias paled even further than his sickly, pallid complexion and swallowed hard. "Why do you even care? They're serfs, beggars, little better than street rats."

Those were the wrong words, the last thing that pathetic, disgusting man should have said in the face of so much wrath from the fae man seated across from him. I felt the carriage vibrate under me—maybe even the ground vibrated as cold, striking power filled the air around us.

Shadows leaked from Io, seeming to bleed out from his skin like smoke, gliding and tumbling down to fill the floor of the carriage. They lingered, sliding and rolling around our feet before they began to climb up and over Elias Addison.

The man’s face contorted in terror, but I had caught sight of Io’s face, and I was wholly transfixed by it. The familiar one I knew was gone—or it was there, but it lay on the surface, concealed by the darkness that was bleeding through.

It was as if his skin had thinned and allowed some dark thing of shadows to rise. It was dreadful—so dreadful that I knew it should have made me shrink away. It should have left me as terrified as the man who sat open-mouthed, but silently, screaming across from us.

Instead, it sent a wicked thrill through me. It was beautiful, primal, and fierce. Instead of fear, all I could manage was some wild, exhilarating pride when I looked at the face of death that sat beside me.

That had been the thing that made Merrik scream. It had been enough to make him piss himself with fear.

The face turned to me. Eyes, still the same black pits of inky night, widened in some alarm, and then the specter faded from his features. The shadows dissipated, leaving Io's stricken face before me.

He stared at me for a few heartbeats, searching my face for something. "You...," he began, his voice raw and somehow dark, as though some of that mask was still in place. "You are not afraid."

"Should I be?"

His lips curved, imperceptibly upwards at my response. "No, Sera. Never."

And I knew it was true. Perhaps it was, again, naive of me. Perhaps I was the stupidest girl in the world, but I knew it in my bones, in my soul, that he would never hurt me.

I had the strangest sense that I was one of very few people who need never fear that monster I had glimpsed just beneath the skin of the Lord of Darkwatch.

I left Io in the carriage with the creature Elias Addison, to do whatever manner of torture he and his people would do to get the answers they needed. And I felt no guilt for the fact that it made me glad to know how he would suffer.

As I walked up the cathedral steps, I didn't need to look behind me to know Io's eyes followed me every step of the way.