Page 74 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Twenty-Seven

We slept until nearly noon when there was a knock on the door.

Io rose and donned his breeches quickly to open it.

Ida stood there, holding a tray with a little vase that held a flower arranged in the neck of an old whiskey bottle.

I pulled the covers over my shoulders and smiled at her.

"Good morning, Milord and Milady," she said with a wink. She was dressed in a more modest gown that looked to be brand new, and her graying hair was pulled back in an elaborately styled updo.

"Good morning, Ida," I greeted her as the aroma of coffee reached me.

"I brought your dinner last night, but the sounds through the door told me you might not want to be disturbed." She glanced back at Io who was by the door shrugging on his shirt. "It sounded like that one knows what he's about," she said, waggling her eyebrows.

I laughed, but Io narrowed his eyes on me in mock disapproval.

He was trying to suppress a grin as he took the tray from her and set it on the table.

"He does indeed know what he’s about," I said, holding his gaze as my cheeks warmed.

The look he gave me, tilting his head in surprise, and then tightening his mouth in mock warning, made me laugh again. I knew he was thinking of the things we had done in the night just as I was.

After Io gave her another few gold pieces, likely more than she would have made in a year working in the Beaver Trap, Ida left.

We ate in bed with him propped against the pillows with the tray balanced on his lap while I sat cross-legged beside him with the covers pulled up around my shoulders.

He fed me with mock solemnity. "I'm telling you, this is the height of romance,” he said as I laughed and took the proffered bite.

"Somehow I think it should not be done with floppy strips of bacon," I replied.

He muttered something under his breath, though I could see the humor in his eyes.

"Did you say, I'll show you a floppy strip of bacon?" I teased, doing my best impression of his deep voice. That was definitely not what he said, and the laugh that escaped around the words ruined the effect.

He moved the tray carefully to the bedside table and turned quickly, catching me under the backside with his big hands, sliding me down the bed and trapping me beneath him.

I laughed as his lips found my neck, "What are you doing?" I asked, though I knew the answer well enough.

"Showing you my floppy strip of bacon, of course," he said with a mockingly seductive voice.

I choked on the laughter that sputtered out of me, and when he joined me, the shaking of his big frame jostled the entire bed.

The teasing did nothing to diminish the fire that had been lit, though. We made love again, since that was what it had turned into sometime in the night. Even when his hands had been rough and he’d said such wicked things, it had been love between us.

The pleasure was as intense as ever, never seeming to diminish whether he took me urgently and hungrily, or slowly, as though cherishing every slow caress and movement of our bodies.

Afterwards, we lay on our backs with my head resting on his shoulder and his arms around me, and we talked—more than we ever had before.

The raging snowstorm outside had halted our world for the time being, and we took advantage of it, completely ignoring what was waiting on the other side. Living as though we were simply two people who loved each other, snowed-in, inside a brothel.

I told him what it was like to be a child in Albiyn castle—meeting Tatana and Set—how they had become the family I had never had.

I told him what Markus had done to my sister; how long she suffered before I made my deal with him.

"He will die for that—and for so many other things, Sera.

I am a patient man—that is one of my many virtues," he said with a sly grin.

"But I know he’s the one who put those bruises on your neck," he reached out to trail his fingers across my skin, as though remembering.

"And when I retake your city, he will be the first to pay for it. I swear it to you."

I smiled, knowing he spoke the truth—after all, he was sworn to me. The oath demanded it. Consequences could be dire if someone broke the old words of fealty.

I told him about how badly I had wanted to train on Fareye—and how Markus refused, even when Arkadian's father offered to pay the guild price for my entry himself.

"He told me, Girls may go to the Nuoctelenne, but princesses never do."

Io narrowed his eyes. "That’s a lie, of course. My sister, Eyildr trained on Fareye—though she was kicked out after only three years—for being too violent, they said."

"Kicked out of the Temple of the Sword for being too violent?"

He laughed, but there was an edge to it that told me it caused him at least a small amount of grief.

"My sister is conflicted...about her duty and her place in the family.

My mother would like to see her marry, settle down, and give her grandchildren to dote on, but I'm afraid Eyildr has seen a lot of grief surrounding love, and what its loss can do to someone.

" His voice had gone hollow, and his eyes were far away.

"Seeing what Behr went through when he lost Egrid is a lot of it, but Eyildr and my mother have never quite been the same since my father died. "

"What happened to your father?" I asked, tentatively. "If it's not too..."

He shook his head. "It was a long time ago," he said. "But to answer your question, he was old. More than five hundred years old. He died in his sleep—" he looked like he was counting before he added, "—thirty-seven years ago."

The concept of time for someone who lived five hundred years must have been a lot different than it was to me, because I found it hard to grasp someone that old fathering children who were only Io's age.

I was oddly reluctant to ask him how old he was. He only looked to be in his mid-twenties, thirty at the very oldest. But the slowed aging of the fae meant that he was likely barely older than me and would be long after I grew old and died.

"So, is your mother also old?" I asked instead. I regretted the question immediately—bringing up his mother's mortality after talking about his father's death. "That was rude," I said before he could answer.

"Not at all," he replied, resting his chin on top of my head. "She’s still quite young—only eighty. They married when she was only twenty or so."

"And he was like...four hundred years old?" I asked, chastising myself for being rude again.

He only laughed. "Four hundred isn't old for the Fae. We only really start aging in the last decades of our lives.

"Oh," I said. "So you are..."

"Fifty-nine," he answered. "Behr is sixty, Eyildr is forty-four, and Fyr, to her absolute horror, is only twenty-two. Which to the fae, is more like on the verge of sixteen."

“So, your mother remarried, then?” I asked.

“She did not,” he replied, and I might have kicked myself for how ill-mannered I had apparently become, but he continued, “Fyr’s father is a great mystery. My mother won't tell—although I have my suspicions.”

“Who?” I demanded, pushing up to look at him. All semblance of civility had apparently been obliterated by my curiosity.

“You’ve met him,” he said, arching a brow.

“Aben?” I guessed.

“Gods no,” he laughed. “He’s her nephew, even if they don’t share blood.”

I searched my mind. “Malach,” I breathed, thinking of the tall, gorgeous dragon rider. It had to be him. He was the only other man I’d met.

He chuckled darkly. “He never denied it, even when I planted my fist squarely in his pretty face.”

I covered my mouth, imagining what a fist fight between two powerful dragon riders might have looked like. “I would never have guessed the two of you had any discord,” I told him.

“We don’t. That was a long time ago. And Malach would have done right by Fyr if my mother had ever allowed him to.”

"Are you a close family?" I asked, curious about them all despite my general desire to leave thoughts of Nightfall, and the future that existed there, somewhere outside in the snowstorm.

"In some ways. They are all close—though I've always been a little on the outside."

"Because you grew up in Darkwatch? I asked. The idea of him as the outcast broke my heart for him.

"Mostly. Behr and I were close when we were very young, and then again when we were both in the Tyrion as boys. But something changed along the way, and we grew...perhaps a little too competitive."

"And your parents?" I asked, trying to steer the subject away from Behr.

"My mother and I have always managed to remain somewhat close. Though, she is above all, a stoic and proper queen. Not one to get her hands dirty picking up a filthy little boy, even when he skinned his knee or bumped his head."

I did not like to imagine him as a little boy, hurt and wanting his mother, finding only a cold-hearted queen before him. I didn't remark on it though, knowing instinctively that my pity would not be well-received.

"But anything approaching familiarity with my father was next to impossible,” he continued. “The Aldurs can be a stiff family—which is, no doubt, why my stoic mother fit in so well. I’ve always been amazed at my aunt Yadala's warmth, having come from them."

"Lord Vidar was not an Aldur? I thought he was your father's brother?"

"No, my father had only a sister. And Yadala turned out to have no interest in ruling in Darkwatch. So, my father named her husband, Vidar, as Lord of Darkwatch in her place."

"But she could have ruled?" I asked. "As Lady of Darkwatch even if she had been unmarried?"

"Of course. In Darkwatch, there is no distinction between men and women in terms of title or rank. Women are valued just as highly as men." He tightened his arm around me, and I had the first moment of abject misery since we arrived in the brothel.