Page 79 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

He leaned over my shoulder with one hand on the table as I wrote, but he did not touch me, which made it harder to focus since the feeling of him contacting some part of me was something I had come to realize as the dearest thing in the world to me.

So I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his wrist and pulled his arm down and across my chest as tears welled in my eyes.

He didn't pull away, but I felt him stiffen, his body going tight as he dropped his head to my shoulder.

I began writing again with him embracing me, even if it was reluctant on his part. I didn’t care whether he wanted to touch me or not. The moment his head had gone down to my shoulder was the first moment since we left the clearing that I felt like I could catch my breath.

He moved away only when I finished writing and handed him the paper.

My mind was still racing, trying to find the similarities and differences from what I knew of the Totampresario, and I found it difficult to concentrate. "I don't know if these words are true or...or what they mean," I said.

"The prophecy was given to you by the angels, Sera. There is no doubt about whether they are true."

I shook my head. "Those weren't real angels," I insisted. "They were burned, mangled versions of angels."

"I don't think it matters how an oracle receives the words," he said.

"I am not an oracle!"

"Perhaps not, in the traditional sense, my dear. But the literal definition of an oracle is one who is given prophecy from the gods or the angels."

"That cannot be what angels look like!"

"They were here before the cataclysm. Maybe they burned as the world burned."

The words from my dream came back to me then. Idrigard will burn. The words the shadow form of him had said just before I woke. "What does Idrigard mean?" I asked him.

He looked up from the paper as though resigned, but not at all surprised. I was beginning to suspect that he’d had the very same dream as me. "It's the old name for the world—lost to most. One of those secrets kept in Darkwatch that not even the king may know."

"Why is it a secret?"

"I don't know—and neither do the masters stalking the halls of the libraries inside the mountains, devoting their entire lives to the pursuit of a greater understanding of those secrets. Some of them believe something might be summoned just from speaking the name aloud."

I clapped my hand over my mouth, startled that I had spoken the name out loud myself. But Io only chuckled. "Don't worry. When I was a boy and first learned of Idrigard, I said the name more than a thousand times, hoping to find out what dreadful creature might be summoned. It never worked."

I tried to imagine what sort of naughty child he must have been to attempt to summon evil for curiosity's sake.

He folded the paper and tucked it away in his bag. "We'll take these words to Meroway, to the high master. Hopefully he’ll be able to shed some light on them. I can’t help but feel there's something much bigger happening here."

That was an understatement, of course. I was still certain the prophecy had been more warning than anything. The angels had felt less malevolent than they looked, and I almost believed they were somehow in service to me—or to Windemere.

But one thing was now certain. I was sure the prophecy spoke of me. It felt extremely arrogant and narcissistic to admit it, even to myself, but that made it no less certain in my mind.

The words spoke of me, and someone named Adrill, and maybe even him, my dark lord of shadows who wielded three kinds of fire, four if you counted the mundane, ordinary kind.

What if he was the black fire that would tear the sky in two?

The thought sent my pulse soaring at the recollection of his earlier words.

No matter if the whole fucking world burns for it, you will always be mine.

I turned to him with curiosity, though, as the implications of his other words finally filtered through. "We will take it to the masters? I thought we were going straight to Orin?"

He stilled and turned to me, slowly. "I told you, Sera. I will not give you up. We are going home—to Darkwatch."

The words rolled through me with sudden, undeniable pleasure while his intense, narrowed eyes surveyed me.

He was fearsome and powerful. My heart raced in my chest with the immediate urge to submit to his assertion.

But I could not succumb to that urge. I knew what a massive disaster would be created if he stole the king's betrothed—how many people would be put at risk by that action.

I believed his momentary insanity in the snow had faded along with the shadows, and that he had resigned himself to our fates again. He seemed distraught enough for me to believe he was coming to terms with it.

"Io, even if I did not require the alliance and your brother's armies for my kingdom, if you refused to hand me over, that could start a war between you and your brother. And I don't believe that you really want to kill him."

"Of course I don't want to kill him, Sera.

And I don't want a war, but there are things you don't understand.

Forces at work that will not be set aside no matter what kingdom falls because of it.

And frankly, my dear Aelia, I do not give a damn what my brother thinks. He will come to terms with it."

I do not give a damn. My own words, thrown back at me. My own thoughts. The ones I had pushed to the front of my mind at every opportunity to excuse the fact of what I was doing, the dishonor I was committing by being with him. Guilt and shame crashed over me with enough force to nearly choke me.

I had not given a damn then—or at least I had convinced myself that I did not so that I could allow myself to touch him—to be with him. Because I needed him.

But I needed the armies of Nightfall—and this alliance, for my people, too. "Io, I cannot let you refuse to take me. I need your brother. My people need his armies. They are suffering under Penjan. My family is, right now, fleeing across the godsgrass."

He looked sympathetic, and I thought that he would relent and see the sense in my words, remember the sacrifice that we had both been prepared to make since the moment we signed the betrothal contract.

He stepped up to me again, putting his hand against my cheek and looking at me with such reverence that it took my breath away.

He ran a thumb across my lips. "We will take your kingdom back—you and I.

We will return your people to their homes.

And when we are done and we come home, I will fill your beautiful belly with those dark-eyed babies that I know you saw just as clearly as I did. "

The words and the promise entirely undid me. I wanted that—dear gods in all the heavens, how badly I wanted that.

But I knew all of Darkwatch was not enough to stand against Penjan and their army of close to a million soldiers.

If it had been, we would never have been here.

I would never have signed that contract in the first place.

If we went into that war without the armies of Nightfall, we would all die. He would die.

I suddenly saw, with startling clarity, where the difference in our two dreams lay. In mine, my parents had been alive, which told me that it was not the future—not the world as it would come to pass—but a version that could have been if things had been different.

He believed the dream had shown him the future—bright and happy before us. Filled with love and children—and peace between the kingdoms. My confirmation of Eroa's name had only cemented the idea in his mind.

And dear gods, that would have been a future willing to fight anyone for.

As I looked up into his midnight eyes, feeling the promise of that life reflected in them, I simply could not bring myself to take it from him. My heart would not allow me to.

So I kissed him, feeling heartache and pain warring with the jarring realizations within me of what must come next—for my people and for him.

I would not let him die for a future that could never come to pass. I would have to find my own way around it. I would have to leave him and find a way to Orin before he could burn down the entirety of Alterra in the pursuit of that future that could never be.

And then, because I loved him so much that I thought I might die, I whispered, "I was never afraid of you, Io. Not for one moment."

He sighed, tipping my head up to meet his gaze more fully. He looked regretful again. "I felt your fear, Sera. And I will never forgive myself for that." He spoke with a calm resolution. "I promise you it will never happen again. You will never need to fear me."

"I was not afraid of you," I insisted, clutching the front of his shirt.

"Not for one moment. I...saw something of my own power and it startled me.

" I didn't say what I really meant—that what really scared me was the knowledge that my power would have driven me to burn all the world to ash to be able to claw its way inside him—to get to the dark center of that whirling mass of his power.

"I would love to believe that's true, Sera."

"I am not lying. I have not lied to you since you learned who I was, not once." I laughed, tilting my head before adding with a half-smile, "Not about anything important anyway."

"Oh, so what have you lied about then—that you judge as unimportant." He was smiling back at me, and it felt so...easy and natural. Like the world around us had settled back into place with us at the center. Io and Sera. Just some people who happened to love each other, teasing each other.

"If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn't have lied in the first place."

"Keep your secrets then, wicked creature. And I will keep mine."

"What secrets do you have?" I demanded, as he pulled away.

He laughed, infuriatingly, because it was the laugh that made me feel like my soul was singing. He moved to finish packing his bag.