Page 67 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

My blood ran cold in my veins. "Demons...from…from under the godsgrass?" I stammered, my voice rising.

Io smiled ruefully, cocking his head to the side meaningfully. "Sometimes old stories get to be old stories for a reason."

My heart stuttered as I considered the implications of his words—all the old Presarion stories racing through my mind. "So there is a false king of the gods trapped under the godsgrass and now he's what...going to rise with his demon army and destroy the world?"

Io gave me a look as though I was being slightly ridiculous, and I didn't blame him. The words sounded ludicrous.

"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "I doubt there are any god kings involved in it.

More likely, these creatures rise every few years from some hibernation, and that gave rise to the legends.

There are other falciferum in the world, you know.

There's a massive dog-like creature called a farnook that lives in the dark forests in Maldur that would give you nightmares for a month. "

"And selkies," Britaxia said with another look of distaste, nodding in my direction. "Those nasty bitches are falciferum."

Selkies were horrid sea creatures who wore the skin of dead seals like a suit and made me glad I had never set foot near the sea.

"Regardless," I said, looking at the blackened godsgrass.

"There has never been anything like falciferum in Windemere.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the godsgrass is dead here where they’ve risen, or that they've risen now, when shadow mages and necromancers are on the continent for the first time in ages. "

"It does seem unlikely that it's not connected to Penjan," Io agreed.

"Especially when they seem to have cut down the grass to allow their revenant army to pass.

The godsgrass obviously provides some protection against dark magic, but it has no effect on a shadow mage, and it didn't stop those demons from running through the field either. "

"So, does the godsgrass lock them under the ground, then, as the priests claim?" I asked. "Did someone kill it here on purpose so that they could rise?"

Io shook his head, his hands fisted at his sides, knuckles cracking. "I'm not sure."

"How do you know the creatures did not kill it themselves with just their stinking black filth?" Britaxia said, eyeing the gore splattered across her leather tunic and down her arms.

"We don't," Aben admitted. "But let's talk about it later. Let's get back in the air and see if we can manage to find Cosdam before night fall—or a fucking stream to get this shit off."

As Io and I walked back to Veles, I held his sword in front of me, my wrists straining with the weight of it.

"I would have been fine with that demon lizard if this thing didn't weigh as much as me," I said, handing him back his sword.

He took it, swinging it lightly as though to test my assertion for himself.

"Well then, we'll have to work on that," he said, sliding the sword through the straps of his leather tunic so that it lay across his back.

"We'll have to get you stronger. But in the meantime, we'll get you a more appropriate sword in Cosdam. "

The words were a balm to some raw part of me that expected him to tell me that I shouldn't worry. He would protect me—there would always be someone to protect me.

And he had protected me. I might’ve had the creature if he hadn’t interfered, but I might not have. I needed his help. And his answer to that was not that I should not have been there, or that he would make sure to protect me better next time. His answer was that I should get stronger.

I took the information and tucked it away in some sheltered place in my heart, even though I knew it would lurk in the background, only to wrench itself out into the open as soon as I tried to fall asleep.

"Will you look for Castille in Cosdam?" I asked, changing the subject to safer topics. Aben’s mention of Cosdam had reminded me that Castille was supposed to be in the city.

"I doubt we'll have time. We can't linger long. My brother will be expecting us to come straight there, and I don't want to give him any reason to change his plans."

"Would he really do that?" I asked, suddenly fearful that all of this had been for nothing. If the king might call his armies back for us taking too long to reach him, what would he do when, or if, he learned of the relationship that had been between us before the betrothal?

"No, Behr will keep his word," he said simply. "But if we linger too long, he might do the same, and until I know the men have marched, I would rather make haste."

I almost thought he was lying—making some attempt to reassure me, but that wasn't like him.

I was more inclined to believe he was lying to himself.

I felt sudden guilt that all my problems were taking him away from his original goal—his reason for coming to Windemere in the first place.

I knew how important it was to him that he find the Withian children.

"There was a Withian boy—an acolyte of the Presarion—at my coronation," I told him. I could hardly believe I had forgotten about him in the madness of all that happened after the ceremony.

He halted his steps, turning to me. "How old?"

"Maybe eleven or twelve," I guessed. The boy didn't have distinctive skin, other than that he was very pale, so I assumed he was older even though he was still quite small.

"The Presarion chose not to evacuate," Io said, thoughtfully.

I nodded.

"So I assume he's still in the temple then," he surmised.

"Most likely," I said.

The Presarion would not leave the godsgrass—not for any invading army, the high priestess told me when I encouraged her to leave.

I was not overly concerned with their safety, though, in their fortress temple just a few miles south of Albiyn.

In addition to high, sheer walls, they had an entire underground fortification that could withstand even an aerial assault from Wyverns.

And they had enough stores of food and fresh water to last through years of siege from Penjan.

"When the city is yours again, I'll go and find him," Io said. "To ensure he's there by choice and that the Presarion has no hand in the disappearances of Withian children or any others."

"I'll do whatever I can to help with that," I told him, praying that the holy order did not have a hand in anything to do with dark magic.

As we climbed back onto Veles, I couldn't help but feel that I would never retake my city.

It didn't seem possible when I recalled the dark mark of the Penjani hoard spread out across the plains as we flew away.

I was suddenly sure that there would never be a time when I could put aside this war and focus on one single boy in the service of the holy order.

We didn’t reach Cosdam before the sun set, but we decided to push on through anyway. The lure of a real bed and a bath was too great even if we were all tired, filthy, and cold.

Well, they were cold. I was in a perpetual cocoon of warmth that made me wonder how much magic Io had inside of him to make it seem so easy to maintain the shield for hours with no effort at all.

We met in the common room of a well-appointed little inn on the edge of the city after retreating to our own rooms for a much-needed bath.

Britaxia loaned me an ill-fitting tunic and soft wool leggings, so I was at least finally clean as we sat down to eat a delicious meal of roast beef and vegetables.

It was much better food than I expected to have. The simple wood and bare stone building, with its boisterous taproom, had seemed too simple to manage what ended up being better than many of the seven-course meals served in the castle in Albiyn.

We drank big frothy tankards of fragrant ale as Aben talked about a trip he and Britaxia took to the Falls of Kesher a few decades before—when the two of them had apparently been a couple.

Kesher was a series of waterfalls in the Withian Highlands that dropped from the edge of a thousand-foot cliff of ice to crystal clear pools of steaming spring water.

They were heated by under-ice volcanoes, and the only thing that made the boiling water cool enough to swim in was the constant flow of ice water from the highlands above.

"So we were in the spring, naked, doing a bit of frolicking, if you catch my meaning," Aben said suggestively. "And when we eventually climbed out, our clothes, packs, boots—all gone."

"No!" I gasped.

"Yes!" Britaxia said laughing. She had been friendlier since we left Albiyn, and I wondered at her change in attitude as she continued.

"We were in the middle of a thousand miles of frozen Withian tundra—no people, no settlements—only hungry ice bears for company.

We had to go back into the water or freeze to death! "

"What about your dragons?" I asked. "Could you not fly them back or I don't know...send them for help." I giggled as I said it, imagining telling a dragon to go and find help across a thousand miles of tundra.

"We would have frozen to death in minutes—or I would have," she added.

"Aben might have managed to keep himself warm long enough to get help, but in High Withia it’s so cold your skin will freeze in just a few minutes.

Even dragons can struggle to stay warm in winter.

We had worn Withian wool under our furs—spelled for warmth—which is why we assumed someone had taken it. It's very valuable."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I eventually went looking for them," Io cut in. "I found them in the middle of the hot spring the next day, shriveled and so angry that they wouldn't look at each other."

Aben and Britaxia both laughed, and then Aben leaned over to add, "And the worst part of it was, Io found our furs—and the Withian wool—under a half an inch of fine powdery snow at the edge of the pool."

"No!" I hissed, and nearly squealed with laughter as Io nodded.