Page 78 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

But the snowy field before me was empty and untouched aside from the trail I had just made coming out of the trees. I didn't think I had walked very far—it only seemed like a few feet into the tree line.

I would need to forge my own path through the waist-deep snow to get back.

I looked up into the sky, thinking I might see the dark outline of Veles, whose inky scales were blacker even than the night sky—or the pale ethereal glow of Eroa, whose name had come to me in that dream of another life.

I saw neither Veles nor Eroa, just the breathtaking starry sky overhead.

I stood there for several moments, tracing the line of the constellations I knew—the maiden with her long flowing hair, the mother at her side, with her hand out in offer of some assistance, and the bent and aged crone, just above and to the right, whose stooped back had always made me think of a turtle.

A faint whoosh sounded far-off to my right, and I turned, trying to peer into the shadowy trees.

A growl came from behind me. Another, deep, ominous, and somehow wet sounding, came from the right.

I lifted my sword and turned in a slow circle, hoping whatever beast was behind me would not be startled into pouncing.

A huge black shape stood only a few yards away. I could see another at the edge of my vision, now on the left, the deep-black stark against the snowy landscape.

I held my breath, hardly daring to move my eyes as the sound of the creature's wet-raspy breathing reached my ears.

It was roughly wolf shaped, but enormous, its back rounded at the shoulders in a hump. Spiky fur jutted off in points that looked as sharp as blades.

Its face was shadowed as it growled again, low and menacing. Something dripped from its snout and fell steaming and hissing onto the snow—blood, most likely—from the people in the Beaver Trap it had dragged away.

It coiled its legs to spring, and I dove to the side, swinging my sword out in an arc. It connected with some part of the creature’s chest.

Where my blade grazed it, tendrils of black streamed out into the air as though its blood was smoky darkness.

I got to my feet and heard a yelp, strange and unearthly from my left. The creature I cut angled back towards me, coming at my face with snapping teeth and jaws.

I shoved my blade directly into the thing's eye—or where its eye should have been if its face was not blanketed in unnatural darkness.

Life fled from it quickly as it fell, pulling my sword arm with it. I was yanked down by the weight of my blade buried in its head.

I tried to wrench my blade free as I turned to face the second beast, but a set of thick shoulders obscured my view of the sky. I saw Io's sardonic smile and those night black eyes.

"Well, hello there, darling," he said, reaching a hand down to me. "I thought you could use a hand there."

He pulled me to my feet, and I just knew he was resisting the urge to run his hands over me, to see if I was alright.

He held his sword out to the side while gore dripped from the length of the blade. It hit the snow with a steaming hiss as though it was fiery hot.

"What was that thing?" I asked as his hand seemed to lose the battle a little, and he ran it down my spine. "Was that a farnook?"

"No. Those were fucking hellhounds," he said with a sudden look of disgust.

"Are they falciferum, like the others?" I asked.

"I suppose you could consider them so. But either way, they haven't been in this world for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They were eradicated very carefully over many long centuries by my Darkwatch ancestors, the druids."

"Were there others out here?"

"At least a dozen. I think we got them all though."

"Did you find any people?"

He shook his head, giving me an apologetic look.

"They can't have taken everyone in the brothel!" I said with renewed horror, thinking of poor Ida.

"No, the people ran into the city. I think there were only a couple who lost their lives. But they are gone—no trace of them left behind. Probably eaten by now. Aben and Britaxia, along with Veles and your dragon, are looking for them."

"Eroa," I said.

"What?" he asked, flinching back from me.

"Eroa," I repeated. "That's my dragon's name. It means light in the old language, right?"

He looked at me for several more moments with an almost pained expression, but then he made an effort to clear it, shaking his head slightly. "It does. But where did you get that name?" he asked, and I could tell his nonchalant tone was forced.

I wasn't sure what made me reluctant to admit the truth. But something deep, and perhaps a bit self-preserving, forced me to make my own voice nonchalant as I replied, "I don't know. It just came to me." I turned away, reaching down to begin to pull my sword free.

"In a dream?"

I froze, feeling all the air leave my lungs as I straightened and turned back to face him. "Yes," I admitted.

He closed his eyes, head tilting slightly to the side as his jaw took on that familiar line of hardness that meant he was struggling to maintain his self-control.

And then his eyes opened, and they were a swirling mass of shadow that obscured even the white for a moment.

Power—hot and hungry—radiated from him, seeming to suck the air from the world around me and replace it with the scent and sense of him. But where that fresh, open-air scent that sometimes made me think of cold mountains would normally be, there was only the deliciously wicked scent of fire.

"I won't give you to him. You know that right?"

His words stoked some desperate hope and joy in response to his claiming. But along with it, cold, self-righteous anger blossomed at the way he said the words. So final and possessive.

"I am not yours to give to anyone."

He laughed, and it was the sound of malicious darkness, the sound of him from my dream. "Oh, but you are," he said smoothly. "And I will burn him to ashes—and his entire city around him before I give you to him."

He stepped closer. Leaned down to me so that I felt his breath against my cheek. "I told you, Sera," and even my name on his lips was itself a claim. "You are mine."

His hands were on my face. They were wreathed in flame, but it was not his golden fire, or even yet, the muted shadow of the darker fire. Writhing black flames, as dark as midnight, as dark as death, licked across my cheeks, sending snaking jolts of power through me.

It riled me—setting my nerve endings alight, dredging up the ghost of my own power from where it lay somewhere trapped beneath those suffocating golden cuffs on my wrists.

I ached to release that power—to let it rise up in me and meet his.

I knew it would be positively explosive.

I felt how much of it there was—and it was great and terrible.

I knew it had the potential to be just as dark as the black fire that lit his eyes.

The two of us could remake the world into whatever we wanted—make them all bow before us.

I leaned into that darkness, letting it pulse through me as his mouth came over mine, his tongue parting my lips to let little flames dance inside my mouth.

Black flame tears the sky in two. Aelia, Aelia, death! The words tore through me like a knife, breaking the spell over me.

I pulled back from him, terrified of what I had glimpsed in myself. I stumbled back in the snow and landed on the carcass of the hellhound.

He looked down at me for an instant while the shadows still pulsed in his eyes, and then they faded away. Horror took their place on his face.

He released a breath, and his shoulders seemed to sag. He shook his head slowly as his features contorted into shame. "I'm...I'm sorry, Sera, I..."

I did not speak. I had no words as his own trailed off, the deep baritone of his voice fading away into the night.

I knew he thought I had been afraid of him—he had likely felt it himself. I knew what that would do to him—to believe I was frightened by him. It would break his fucking heart.

They had all been afraid of him—his family, the people of Darkwatch, and the rest of Nightfall. What little he had shared with me, told me that much. It had meant so much to him that I never had been.

But believing I was frightened of him had quelled that terrible power I glimpsed in him—in us both. The power that I now saw had melted the snow all around us, leaving the grass beneath our feet dry and charred.

He leaned toward me, and I thought he was reaching a hand down to help me up. Instead, he pulled my sword from the eye of the hellhound and wiped the blade through the grass to clean it.

He offered it to me, not meeting my eyes. "Let's go," he said as I grasped the sword with my shaking hands.

He turned to begin walking back towards the brothel. I got to my feet to follow him, feeling more despair and heartache inside me than I thought a person should be able to handle.

If he felt it, he made no indication as he strode across the frozen ground in the tracks he had made through the deep snow.

I looked back at the melted area behind us and was not in the least surprised to find the snow had been cleared away in the shape of two enormous, outstretched wings.

He didn't speak until we were back at the brothel. Dawn was beginning to break over the horizon as we went upstairs.

"Get your things and dress warmly," he said as he began to gather his own articles of clothing, putting them in his bag. He even picked up the ruined, burned shirt that we had dropped into the bathtub and stuffed it into his pack.

"Do you have paper?" I asked, pulling open the drawers, looking for something to write with.

"Why, Sera?"

I told him about the burned angels—since that was how I had begun to think of them.

His eyes were wide and his expression worried as I relayed some of the words. "I want to write it down, before I forget the rest," I said.

He pulled papers and a fountain pen from his pack and handed them to me.