Page 61 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

"Meroway was in an absolute uproar. Neighbors accusing neighbors, fathers accusing sons.

" Malach's voice changed to show the drama of the moments, proving his skill at storytelling.

"The lord, Vidar, in those days had just ordered his men to fan out across the kingdom—to search every keep and castle in Darkwatch.

And then a young boy of only four years old, who had perhaps decided the trouble he was in had reached a tipping point, stepped up to his uncle and admitted the truth. ‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘I must confess. I took the egg.’

Vidar was obviously angry. This child, barely out of his swaddling clothes, had caused a city-wide uproar and put an unborn dragon at risk of being out of the heat of the nursery for too long.

But still, Vidar forced patience into his words and asked the child, ‘Why? Why did you steal a dragon's egg?’

The little boy looked at him with not a speck of guile and said, ‘Because it is mine, uncle.’

Now the lord had to laugh at this. Dragon riders do not bond with dragons until they hatch, and that doesn't happen until a mage is nearing maturity. This small child was at least a decade away from that.

But the boy was adamant. ‘This is my dragon,’ he said to anyone who would listen.

And even after they took the egg from where he had placed it in a basket he rigged above the fireplace—" Malach paused as the people around the fire chuckled at the idea of a four-year-old rigging up a basket over the fireplace to keep a dragon's egg warm.

I glanced at Io, seated by my side. He smiled, slightly abashed, and shrugged.

It was true then, I realized.

Malach continued, "The little boy visited the nursery each day for nearly a year until, on his fifth birthday, his father and mother came to visit him. He took them excitedly to the nursery to see what he still called his dragon.

And lo and behold, there before the King and Queen of Nightfall, a night-colored dragon tumbled from the egg and went streaking across the cavern floor to the little Lord of Darkwatch."

Malach finished the tale by reaching his hand out to indicate Io beside the fire.

Io smiled a little boyishly and hung his head between the arms extended over his bent knees, in what for all the world might have looked like shyness if I didn't know better.

And then, as if on cue, Veles' huge head swung out of the darkness and bumped against his back, sounding a deep, affectionate rumble.

Everyone around the fire laughed, some a little nervously. They were all delighted by the Darkwatch mages and the big black dragon that the Prince of Nightfall had stolen from the nursery.

I slept that night in a little knot of people under the open sky.

One of the common women, Veralie, offered me the back of her wagon as a bed. I refused, thanking her profusely, and graciously accepting the blanket she loaned me instead.

Io left to take his turn flying sentry over the camp as I laid down on the bent stalks of godsgrass, wrapped in the thick handmade blanket, using his wadded-up coat as a pillow.

I'd shared a few sips of whiskey with Aben earlier in the evening when he returned from his watch, but it was far too little to shut off the racing thoughts in my head. I lay awake until just a few hours before dawn when my tortured mind finally went quiet, and I slept.

I dreamed of burning from the inside-out—lit from within by whatever the necromancers had shoved inside me.

The pain in my dream was so real that it woke me.

I rose as quietly as I could and stumbled blindly through the godsgrass until I thought I might not be overheard while I vomited the thin stew I'd had for dinner.

In the dream, I knew they destroyed my insides—ripped me apart so that I could never bear a child or even be with a man.

As I sat gagging in the godsgrass, trying to keep my hair back with one hand while I balanced myself on the other, the very real fear assailed me that they had done something just like that.

Every time I thought I was finished retching, the dream's image came back to me; my stomach, melting in on itself—the hole opening wider and wider until I could see the glinting of the metal from that thing they had used on me.

I knew I wasn’t pregnant. Those symptoms took more than a few days to appear. And besides, I believed the necromancer when he said there had been no child in my womb. He had not been lying.

The vomiting was simply the horror of my dream bleeding over into consciousness.

It didn't surprise me when I felt Io's hand at my neck, gathering my hair back for me. I knew he would come.

He gently pulled back every strand, and I quickly felt the relief of his magic coursing through my skin.

It was much the same feeling, an illumination of the darkness inside me, a relief of the tension of my misery, but it felt oddly lessened—as though the sun had dimmed a fraction.

Or perhaps, the night was just much darker, full of new terrors.

When I was sure the last of the nausea had passed, I sat back, and he handed me a water skin. I held it up and rinsed my mouth out before taking a long drink. It was so cold it sent a path of ice straight through my chest, seeming to root out the last remains of the fire inside me.

"Better?" he finally asked. It was the first word either of us had said.

"Much better,” I said gratefully. "It was just a bad dream."

"I know," he said, standing and reaching a hand down to me.

When I was on my feet, he led me through the godsgrass to where Veles lay stretched out in the grass. The dragon opened one big green and gold eye just a slit and surveyed us before releasing a long-suffering huff and settling back to sleep.

I waited wordlessly while Io pulled a bedroll from the packs lashed to his saddle. When he had it laid out on the grass, he reached for my hand again. "Come sleep the rest of the night with me. We'll both rest better that way."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak without a sob of relief escaping my lips.

When we were on the ground and he had pulled my back against him with my head pillowed on his arm, he whispered, "Sleep now. You're safe. There are dragons all around you. On the ground and in the sky. Nothing will harm you. I will not let it. Not ever again, Sera."

I believed every word. He had never lied to me.

I slept, and it was a deep and dreamless sleep.

I woke to the bright sunshine and the feeling of the calloused ridges of his fingers skating along my collar bone.

I opened my eyes to see him holding the caged elderwood seed in his hand—and me against his chest. I had turned into him in the night.

Grief threatened to swamp me again, but I pushed it down. It was easy to push it down when I was so close to him—when I could smell his scent, the distinctly and wholly definitive scent of the Lord of Darkwatch.

"Where did you get this?" he asked.

"Adrio, the horse lord gave it to me. But it was a...gift, of sorts, from the Elderwood."

"They named you as a Guardian?" he asked, a note of something like awe in his voice.

"Whatever that means," I said.

"It's an honor that hasn't been given to anyone other than the Chief of the horse lords in thousands of years—since before the cataclysm."

"Well, that's preposterous, then."

He chuckled. "Why is that?"

"Because they obviously made a mistake."

"I don't think so," he said, gently tucking the necklace back into my shirt.

I scoffed, but his expression was serious as he looked down at me, his hand still held securely against my back.

Neither of us was ready to acknowledge that we shouldn’t be together like that, but he knew I needed him, and he had been there for me. Perhaps he had needed me in some way just as much.

There was nothing truly inappropriate about it as I lay against his solid, warm body. I didn't feel that heated, heavy wash of desire that usually came along with being so close to him. I just felt safe.

The part of me that had always burned for him was gone. It died in the dungeons of Albiyn castle...or even before that, during the scratch of my pen across that parchment binding me to his brother.