Page 62 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Twenty-Two

We left the refugees just after sunrise.

Aben and Britaxia would join us, leaving the rest of the dragon riders under Malach's command, to accompany the bands of refugees as far north as the Dyskala River on the edge of the mountains.

Other riders were already in the south, watching over the southern caravans and doing reconnaissance flights around the city.

They all had instructions to leave Windemere at the first sign of the wyvern legions and come north to meet King Behr's armies at the Twilight Gap. The other hosts of riders Io had called down from Darkwatch when we were still in the city, would receive similar orders to amass at the gap.

"How long will it take us to reach Orin?" I asked as I put my foot on the strap to climb onto Veles' back.

"A week," he said. "Ten days if we run into storms in the mountains."

I took my seat, reaching for the strap and sliding it over my legs.

At least a couple of those ten days we would be flying over the godsgrass plains where we could easily camp in open ground if we needed to.

But then the temperature would begin to fall.

It was already well into the autumn harvest, with winter just around the corner.

Cold came much earlier to the mountains, though, and it would be bitterly cold once we reached the end of the plains.

We would no longer fare so well camping in open country at night.

Io took his seat behind me.

“How do you sit so securely in the saddle when you never strap yourself in?”

“Instinct,” he replied, as though that explained it.

I frowned, but before I could demand more information, he laughed softly, anticipating me. “It’s a combination of magic and the bond we share. I know what Veles will do and how to respond to his movements. It’s the same for him. He keeps me in the saddle because he knows what I will do.”

“So, if you just decided to leap off…”

“He would catch me,” he finished.

I thought about that with something bordering on extreme jealousy at the idea of sharing a bond like that with a creature as terribly wondrous as Veles.

“Will I ever feel so secure on my dragon?” I asked, scanning the fields for her.

She was nowhere to be seen. She spent most of her time flying, and I didn’t blame her.

I might never touch the ground if I had the option to live in the sky.

“Most dragon knights strap themselves into a harness, as Raya does when she rides Styx. They are bonded, it’s true, but it’s not a mutual thing. Her dragon has a link to her that she doesn’t share with him since she’s mostly human.”

“Raya is human?” I asked, surprised. I had assumed she was fae.

“She’s a halfling elf,” he said, surprising me even more. “Without a drop of magic.”

I immediately sympathized with the girl being born without magic in a world of magic-wielders, but then I considered the kind of magic she might have been born with—shadow magic, and I changed my mind.

She was currently somewhere south, looking for stragglers from Albiyn who couldn’t make the journey up the Godsway.

“But all dragons have magic,” he continued.

“So there’s a bond there in any case—a link between rider and mount, even if only one of them can feel it.

” His voice had a note of amusement as he added, “Something tells me, though, Sera, that you and your little white beast might share a bit more than that when she’s done growing. ”

I chewed my lip thoughtfully. I’d never felt more than a simple awareness of her, and a sort of possessiveness—and only when she was close. I hadn’t even given her a name for the gods’ sake.

I closed my eyes, momentarily searching my mind for some sense of her.

The sunlight filtering in through my eyelids was tinted a dark, crimson color that reminded me of my blood as it had looked on the floor of that dungeon.

I shivered, opening my eyes and blinking in the bright light of the rising sun.

"We'll have to get some warmer gear in Cosdam," Io said from behind me, echoing my earlier thoughts about the cold we would soon face.

I nodded, holding myself forward in the saddle, unsure how much contact I should be making with him with so many people milling about, breaking camp and preparing to depart.

As he tightened the strap across my legs, I was all too aware of his body behind me and the fact that I had no right to its comfort.

But then his arm came around me. He pulled me back against him so that I was cradled in the ‘v’ of his legs, each of them running down the length of mine in a way that was quite pleasantly warm even if I didn't feel that familiar flush of desire.

I wasn't sure I would ever feel that again in my life, knowing what waited for me when I lay with someone—the unnatural virginity that had been forced upon me.

I had wanted him to be my first. Even if I didn't consider my virginity to be some gift bestowed upon him—as many saw it, it had meant something to me to make the choice that he was my first.

They unmade that choice for me so that I could give my virginity to the faceless Prince Refaedon.

And now, I thought with something close to despair, I was being forced to give it to some other faceless husband forced upon me just as unwillingly. And I knew he would be glad to find me whole.

Io had never once made me feel like something had been broken in me after I gave him my virginity—or that he was honored to be the one deflowering me.

He had accepted the gift of my body—offered to him not for his honor, but for mutual pleasure, and simply because we wanted to be together. It had never been a conquest for him. I had never been a conquest for him.

He had certainly never looked at me as though I was ruined afterwards.

But they had called me ruined, unclean—as though the touch of another person could render someone spoiled. And then they forced maidenhood back on me, stealing the choice I'd made as though it had never been mine at all.

I didn't even know what they had done to me. Had they stitched me up inside? Had they tried to repair my broken skin—to regrow it? Would anyone I lay with find me mangled inside?

Whatever they did to me, it made me feel ruined for the first time ever.

Veles rose up on his hind legs, extending his wings, readying himself to take flight.

"Are you cold, Sera?"

"No, I'm fine." I realized I was shaking, so I focused on the feel of the dragon's muscles flexing and bunching beneath us. The magic of his great billowing wings cracking the air like thunder. The sheer power of his body as he forced his way up into the sky.

I waved once more to the people on the ground watching us go. Malach striding across the camp in the direction of his own dragon, ready to take up the duty of guarding my people.

Veralie’s wagon, laden with a group of children, harnessed to an old, sway-backed mare who looked exhausted before the journey had even begun.

The nobles and common folk of Albiyn crowded together, indistinguishable from each other in the mass of refugees.

I looked south, wondering if Arkadian was safe—if Tatana and Set, in their carriage with Gwen and little Mattias, were still traveling the Godsway to meet him. It gave me a horrible, sinking feeling to realize the entire Penjani horde lay between us.

I turned, once again facing north, feeling my mind calm and my chest lighten. It was impossible to feel anything but awe as we raced through the sky, the entire world, and all its problems, so far below.

I smiled as the wind whipped my hair around me. He was not shielding us, as though he knew that was exactly what I needed. To feel the wild, bracing wind.

I reached up to pull my hair down to the side to contain it, realizing belatedly that I should have braided it, if only to keep it out of Io's face.

But when I turned, I met his eyes and the smile spread from my face to his.

He leaned down to my ear so that I could hear him over the sound of the wind. "This is truly where you belong, Sera."

Once again, it was praise I wasn't sure I had ever deserved. I wanted to belong on dragon back—and I knew someday when the little white blur that kept pace with us was large enough, I would be in the sky—as often as I could be.

But for just then, if I could have had my wish by some magic djinn in a bottle, I would have traded it all—dragons, my kingdom, the entire sky, and all the land below it, just to belong to him.

A short time later, as Veles spread his wings and soared across the open sky, I felt Io's shield slip into place. The wind stilled and quieted, the world muffled but not diminished.

My dragon was gliding just ahead, keeping pace with Aben and Britaxia. I felt overwhelmingly guilty that I had not named her. "How in the world does one manage to think of a name suitable for a dragon?" I asked.

"I can't say, really. Veles' name just came to me as far as I can remember. It's an old Withian word that means darkness—or night, more accurately. I realized quickly how well it suited him as he grew, and his scales only darkened."

"I know Veles hatched when you were a child, but surely you didn't ride him until you were older?"

He laughed. "My mother tried to make me wait. She and my uncle got into a serious fight or two about it. In the end, I only waited half a year."

"Half a year?" I marveled. "So even Veles was not grown when you began riding?"

"He was already larger than any other dragon at six months old."

"So you're really telling me that a five-and-a-half-year-old boy climbed onto this enormous beast and...flew?"

He chuckled. "I used to get the biggest thrill from landing him in the middle of a crowd and hopping down to see their startled faces.

I believed I was the greatest dragon mage who ever lived, riding without a saddle just for kicks.

It wasn't until I fell a thousand feet down into a snowbank on the side of a mountain, then rode the avalanche down to the valley floor, that I came to grips with my limitations. "