Page 157 of Golden Queen
"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 meanslightin 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 togiveto 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.
