Page 80 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

"What secrets," I demanded again, feeling an urge to stomp my foot like a child. The memory that beneath my feet was a taproom smeared with blood might have been the only thing that stopped me. It was too easy to forget all the world around me during moments like that, when it was easy between us.

We left the eerily silent Beaver Trap and stepped out into an equally quiet world.

The brothel was on the edge of Cold Garden, at the end of an L-shaped street near the forest. We took the wide avenue that headed in the direction of the more populated areas since Io wanted to find some inhabitants of the city and reassure them that the threat had seemed to pass.

But the streets were empty until we were more than halfway across town.

When we reached what looked like a wide plaza with the vague snow-covered outline of a fountain in the center, a group of armed men, dressed in furs stepped out from between two buildings.

"I wouldn't be out and about right now, friends," one man called as he saw us. "There are wolves in town. They carried away seven people from the whorehouse with not a trace left behind."

"I saw it myself," came a voice from the back of the group; a familiar man with a bushy red beard jutting out from his fur hood.

Io greeted them with a nod. "We have dispatched them already. They were not wolves, though, but hellhounds. Bar your doors and do not travel at night for a time. They will not come out in the sunshine."

He indicated behind us before he added, "You'll find their carcasses in the spruce. Burn them after dawn."

The men looked at us with a mix of wariness and respect as we continued through the plaza.

Io's big boots made the trudge through the thick snow much easier as I followed closely behind him, keeping in his tracks.

I looked up, startled as the sound of dragon wings filled the space around us. I assumed we would meet the dragons outside of town to keep from startling the citizens of Cold Garden any further, but suddenly Veles' inky black scales were in front of us as he landed in the deep snow with a thud.

I turned to give the cold garden men a reassuring smile, but a figure was coming from between the buildings, pushing past the men.

A handsome, expressive face under a shock of blonde hair split in a wide grin.

"Sera!" Rhychulson Nygaard, the son of the Knight of Cold Garden, was striding my way. I had not seen him since the night I met Io in the brothel for the first time after stabbing him—the same night Rhychulson made his wild confession to me.

I turned to stride back and meet him, wrapping my arms around his tall frame over the dark brown fur he was wrapped in.

"You are the last person I expected to see here!" he said, drawing back to look down at me. "We weren't even sure you made it out of Albiyn until a bird came from your cousin."

"I made it, but I didn't think you would even be in Cold Garden yet," I told him.

"Father called me home right after I saw you last—took me away from all the fun, but it turned out to be a good thing." He looked at me ruefully.

“Have you heard from Petta?” I asked. The last time I saw her, she and her father had been heading north with one of the first groups leaving Albion.

Rhychulson shook his head. “Not yet. But they will likely come through Cold Garden on their way home.”

“Tell her…tell her I will fix it. That we will all go home soon.” I felt guilty that I’d hardly spared a thought for her and Rhychulson in the chaos of the last days.

"Speaking of, I heard about your betrothal," Rhychulson said with comically raised brow. "Is that him?" He was looking across the plaza behind me.

I glanced back to see Io standing beside Veles with his arms crossed over his chest, glowering.

"No," I said, suddenly wishing I could tell Rhychulson that Io was the one I had gone to meet that night.

"That is his brother," I said instead. "He's taking me to Nightfall.

We got caught in a storm and then, well. ..hellhounds."

"Hellhounds?" Rhychulson said with a look of horror.

I put my arm in his and led him away from the group of men in Io's direction. We stopped when Veles' big head swung around in front of us and eyed Rhychulson menacingly.

Io made no move to speak to the man, just stood there glaring at him threateningly—in a way that made me want to throw a handful of snow at his face.

I quietly explained as much as I knew about hellhounds, though I admitted to him that it wasn’t a lot. I repeated Io's instructions to burn the bodies.

“This is not a conversation I ever imagined you and I having, Aelia,” Rhychulson told me when I was finished. It was jarring to hear him use my first name. Even in the castle, he had always preferred to call me Sera.

"I have a lot of conversations like that lately, Rhych. But we have to go now." I gave him an apologetic smile, laying my hand on his arm. "Be careful, okay. And I'll be back as soon as I can with the army we need to take Albiyn back. I swear it."

"You be careful, as well," Rhychulson said with a wary glance at the fae man behind us who I had to admit looked rather threatening.

"Oh, don't mind him," I said, giving Io a pointed look. "He just doesn't have any manners."

Rhychulson laughed as he hugged me again.

"Until we meet again, Your Majesty." He looked at me almost wistfully, and I recalled his confession in the carriage that night.

I felt a pang of sympathy for him, imagining that all those times when he had made jokes about being in love with me, might have been his way of avoiding a painful truth.

Perhaps he would have been easy to read if I had been paying the slightest bit of attention.

I released him and turned to trudge away through the snow toward Io.

I rolled my eyes as I reached his side. "That was rude," I said. "He is my friend."

He smiled doubtfully. "Friends don't look at each other the way that man looked at you, my darling."

I turned to begin the climb onto Veles, and Io came up behind me and leaned his face into my neck. "I didn't like him touching you," he admitted.

"Stop that," I said, pushing him back and setting my foot onto the strap on Veles' side. "He knows who you are."

"So then he should know that you are mine."

I was becoming angry then, especially at the way my body, my soul, thrilled deep down at the possessiveness from him.

The memory of how it felt to see Radella touch him, and then take him outside to do whatever it was they had done, came back to me.

Instead of assuaging my anger at his jealousy, though, it only brought my own unreasonable bitterness to the forefront of my mind.

It settled right in place with the outrage over his behavior toward Rhychulson.

By the time I swung my leg over Veles' wide leather saddle and gave Rhychulson another friendly smile, I was seething with anger.

I felt Io settle behind me.

The crowd of men were all staring at us warily as his arm locked around my waist. I scooted forward in the saddle, but he scooted me back, holding me against him while I tried to school my expression into neutrality.

Rhychulson and the men were still watching, wide-eyed. Most of them had probably never imagined seeing a dragon in Windemere, even this far north. Their expressions were masks of bewilderment.

Veles rose onto his back legs and launched us into the air with a great flap of his wings. Io’s shield settled in place as I was pushed back against his chest.

"I did not do anything when you took Radella outside to fuck her in the godsgrass,” I said through clenched teeth. “So, you have no business acting like a jealous dog that I hugged my friend. It is very unreasonable, Io."

He tensed, and I felt him reach out for the length of my hair and sweep it to the side before his lips came to my neck. I started to push him off, truly angry by then.

"I did not fuck Radella in the godsgrass or anywhere else, Sera."

"Liar," I accused.

"I swear it, Sera. I did not touch her. You must know that I would not do that to you."

"It was not...you were not..." I struggled with the words to express the fact that I had no claim over him then...or now. "Why did you not come to me then, when I..."

"Had a nightmare?" he supplied.

"I knew you would have heard me."

"I could not come, Sera. Not without the guards seeing—not without raising suspicion. I sent Eroa to you. It was all I could do because back then, I was stupid enough to believe I could ever give you up."

"Oh," I said, realizing that he had done all he could at the time, and I should have known that.

He took a deep breath. "And I’m sorry I was rude to your friend." He said it in a way that told me he was still not convinced that it was all Rhychulson was—or all I was to Rhychulson, rather. "I promise to be nicer next time," he added.

"I can't make the same promise as regards Radella," I said, feeling my lips curve into a smile.

"Oh really. Why is that?"

"Because unlike with Rhychulson, you have fucked Radella, and I don’t think I can ever look at her without wanting to stab her in the eyes for remembering what it feels like to have you inside her."

His laugh burst out of him with enough force to make me flinch before I realized what the sound was.

He leaned down and bit the side of my neck even as he continued to chuckle. "You wicked, violent little thing. Your jealousy becomes you. But rest assured, she may remember me, but the moment I slid inside you, I forgot every other woman who came before."

Deep, delicious satisfaction rolled through me, even as I chastised myself for it.

What was I thinking, acting possessive and admitting it to him?

I could not stay with him, could not allow him to start a war with his own brother that might tear his kingdom apart—and then throw his life and the lives of his riders away by going into a fight they could not win.

My body would not listen to the admonishment, though, as he ran his hand down my leg.

"If Veles would not be absolutely mortified by it, I would fuck you right here and now," he said, and I felt the evidence of it in the hardness at my back.

Veles responded with a rumble and a ripple of distaste that rolled down his body, and then I was the one laughing.

I reached down to him, placing my hands on his warm, dark scales. "I'm sorry, my friend. He is such an asshole, I know."

Veles belched a cloud of fire—silver and gold with streaks of vivid blue snaking out and flowing back toward us. I had never seen his fire before and it was beautiful. The flames dissipated before they reached us down his long neck.

The golden flames had looked so similar to Io's fire that I wondered—and determined to somehow find out—if I was also immune to it.

I knew Eroa's silver fire wouldn’t burn me, and perhaps it was only misplaced hubris that told me I might just be immune to Veles's pretty gold, silver, and blue flames as well.