Page 77 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Twenty-Eight

I woke to a scream.

I opened my eyes to find Io already awake and tensed beside me. And then another scream tore through the night, and he was up and out of the bed, already dressing before I had blinked away the sleep from my eyes.

A knock sounded on the door as Io began pulling on his boots. When he opened it, Aben and Britaxia were there, already dressed and armed.

Britaxia gave me a single dark look as I sat up in the bed and said, "Something is happening."

"I heard the scream," Io said. "I'll be right there."

I caught Aben's half grin in my direction, followed by a long look at Io’s face, where a dark line of dried blood ran down his chin and neck. Aben shot me another look, brows raised as he disappeared behind the closing door.

I climbed from the bed and began looking for my clothes.

"You should stay here, Sera. I don't know what's going on out there."

"I can help," I said, not wanting him to go out while I was stuck there with no idea what was happening.

"I know that darling. But I would feel better if you stayed out of harm's way until you got those cuffs off."

I expected to bristle at his protectiveness, but I knew he was right. I was next to useless against anything but a human foe.

I nodded and went to find a rag to clean his face.

I hurriedly wiped at the dried blood, scrubbing it off as he watched me with an amused expression. When I was done, I handed him his coat. "Be careful," I said, pulling him down to kiss him.

He cradled the back of my head as he returned the kiss. "You know I will."

And then he was gone, and I closed and locked the door behind him.

I cleaned myself up and finished dressing, before pulling on my boots, just in case. I stood and paced the room, listening for the sound of screaming or any kind of movement from the brothel below.

Everything was deathly quiet.

I gave up waiting after an hour, deciding that even Io would not expect me to be so patient.

I grabbed my sword and crept down the stairs, hearing nothing but a large ticking clock and the creak of the stairs under my feet.

It was still a couple of hours before dawn. The taproom should not be empty in a place where people drank and whored all hours of the night.

I stepped into the abandoned room and saw a large smear of blood across the floor.

It looked as though a body had been dragged through the taproom.

Several bodies, I corrected, as I saw more and more trails of blood—huge, dark smears that all met the central mess leading out the open door of the brothel.

I walked to the front, my heart pounding out a rhythm in my chest. I stepped out, trying to avoid the bulk of the red as I looked for some sign of Io or the bodies that had apparently been dragged away.

There was a deep, bloody channel in the waist deep snow. Several tracks followed alongside it running off into the distance.

I trudged back into the brothel and closed the door, frustrated. I checked for anyone left inside the building, anyone who might know what happened. There was no one in the taproom, the offices, or the rooms upstairs. The entire place was deserted.

It made no sense. There was no way a commotion could have emptied the entire brothel without us hearing—unless we had been so wrapped up in each other's screams we didn't hear the ones of the dying people around us.

I hoped that was not the case as I checked the last room. It ended up being another office, so I went back to the door and stepped outside again.

The night was bright. The snow reflected the moon and starlight to unnaturally lighten the world.

I began to follow the tracks of the three mages. They led to the edge of a spruce forest. The tall trees were shrouded in heavy snow that weighed down their branches, giving them a disturbed and mangled look.

Inside the trees, the snow was less, and it was easier going. I trudged through, pushing back the pine boughs from my face.

I heard a rustle and stopped, turning. Something darted by. I pulled my sword from the scabbard slung over my shoulder.

A rabbit, I realized. It frantically zig-zagged, startled by my appearance, and then disappeared under the low branches of an enormous pine.

I relaxed my shoulders, chuckling, and started to sheath my sword.

But then I heard a hissing sound behind me. It was soft, grating, familiar.

I turned, keeping my sword out in front of me. Several dark human-shaped creatures stood, their backs against the edge of the trees. Massive, ruined wings rose behind them, looking charred and burnt.

"The blood," one hissed.

"We can smell it," another said.

"Blood opens the gate," said a third.

Terror raced through me. There were six of them—not good odds for me at all.

They looked like they had once been men, or something like it, but they had been burned alive, leaving their skin and the bald domes of their heads charred and cracked.

Some of their wings had the remains of feathers hanging limply from them. The rest were like thin bones covered by dark, melted wax. It looked painful.

I was trying to decide if running was my best option when they surprised me by going to one knee in the snow, all as one. They bowed their heads to me.

"Come, my queen," the first burned man said. "We will show you the way." His face was almost beautiful with a long, sloping nose and bright solid white eyes, but his mouth was a dark, cavernous hole as he spoke. “Come,” he repeated, holding out his hand.

"Come where?" I asked, backing away.

He didn't answer, only stared back at me for several heartbeats before they all opened their mouths to speak in one hushed, resonant voice.

It was more wind than words. "The mother's veil is ashes.

Cut with gold and corruption spills out.

The angel opens her eyes. The father's grief is poison.

Her shadow falls across the stars. Her tears fall upon the little blind rat.

She remembers malice, but the child knows only the night. "

I spun around, looking at the dark creatures who now surrounded me in a circle. There were more of them, maybe a dozen then. They were all kneeling with their charred, cracked heads bowed, whispering some version of the Totampresario—the Arkyllan prophecy.

"The sleeping angel bleeds red gold. Angels weep. Angels die. Angels rise! Aelia! Aelia! Redemption!"

When they said my name, it was in a nearly devout cry that sent dread through me—bone deep dread and horror.

"Death stalks across the plains as godslion's teeth rend flesh of the twice born king. Wings and drums beat." Their voices were growing more frantic as they spoke. "Aelia! Aelia! Savior!" they cried in their terrible hissing breath.

I turned wildly in the circle, clapping my hands over my ears. I did not want to hear another word!

But the sound, barely more than the hiss of dried leaves blowing across the ground in autumn, seemed to come from inside my head. There was no blocking it out.

"She harbors the seed of salvation and ruin. Aelia! Aelia! Hope! She hides behind the beast while gold burns beneath her feet. Aelia! Aelia! Traitor!"

I closed my eyes, feeling my knees sink down into the snow.

"The stolen shadow bleeds darkness upon light. He opens his father's eyes. The unnamed is made. Infinity is crowned with shadows and blood. Adrill, Adrill, destroyer!"

I realized the words of the familiar Totampresario were different; new. I tried to commit them to memory.

"He breathes a frozen breath of ether that wants to burn the worlds to ash. Flesh is broken and black flame rends the sky in two. The dragon opens its bloodied eyes. It is hungry with her own fell appetite. Aelia! Aelia! Death!"

The pounding of my heart in my ears was so loud I could hardly hear the last of the words.

"A flame is kindled as they watch and cry; she is the first. Her tongue bleeds lies.

The kingdom burns. The Golden Queen burns!

Blood will bear ash across the seas and the skies will rain fire before Malus rises on a tide of death.

Her veil is ashes and the taste of glory is her meal. Blood opens the gate."

The whispered voices died away as an icy wind kissed across my skin. I opened my eyes, barely daring to hope.

They were gone.

I pushed myself up, turning in a circle again, looking for some sign that they had ever been real. Now that they were gone, leaving not so much as a single footprint in the snow, it didn't seem like they had ever been there at all.

Their words, though, were seared into me as though carved into my heart.

Aelia, Aelia, death, they had whispered in what I now knew was not the sound of autumn leaves blowing across the courtyard. The sound of their voices had been the hiss of the godsgrass swaying in the gentle winds that blew across the Windemerian plains.

I had never before left the godsgrass, so it was a sound that I had always known. A constant backdrop to life that could be heard if you were standing outside even in the middle of the city.

I once thought it sounded like the hiss of snakes as the golden heads of the stalks rubbed against each other.

But as I grew up, even before anyone told me, I began to know in my heart that the sound of the godsgrass was the sound of protection. It was the sound of safe harbor from forces that I could barely begin to understand.

And now that silence surrounded me in this snow-covered land on the other side of the world, where the godsgrass ended, I felt vulnerable.

I knew that the burned angels had come to give me some kind of warning. I would heed that warning, even if I did not know what it meant or how to do it.

I made my way back out of the trees. I strayed away from the path of the mages as I entered the spruce, and I hoped to find their tracks so that I could make sure I was going the right direction back to town. I would wait for Io, even if that meant I waited all night.