Page 102 of Golden Queen
I held her, feeling like I was saying goodbye to the closest thing to a mother I had ever known.
We cried together—for the war that was coming and the home that we were leaving behind—the only one either of us had ever known.
Her father was away in Gold Harbor, arranging passage for them on a ship heading north.
"We have kin between Lake Enid and East Harbor," she assured me. "My sister's boy leads a group of harbingers into the wilds, bringing the holy word to the bog people. He will take us in."
I ignored her rude name for the Aozin people who lived in the Eastern Wilds. I knew Madia meant no disrespect.
She refused my offer of any assistance for her and her father. But when I pointed out to her that she might come across someone else who needed help along the way, she reluctantly slipped the pouch of gold into her apron.
If I had not had a war to fund, I might have given her the entirety of the royal treasury as her cheeks reddened with embarrassment at taking the gold.
Madia was pure and good. She was the reason Windemere was worth saving.
When the sun set that evening, I left my guards behind and took my old route out of the castle. I was cautious as I made my way along the streets. They were beginning to empty as more and more people left the capital, but I could barely manage to feel a sliver of fear that the people who attacked me might still be around. It was all I could do not to stand in the middle of the street and yell his name until he had no choice but to find me.
When I reached the Mouse's Ear, it was busier than I expected it to be in the middle of a mass exodus.
Anetta met me in the taproom, her face filled with sorrow and her eyes red-rimmed. She had obviously been crying.
She gathered Igraine, Raitha, and Barrett, and we retreated to one of the private rooms in the back.
The four of us shared many of the same tears as I had with Madia, but then the whiskey began to flow, and laughter overtook the heartache. We ended up talking excitedly about the future, detailing all that we would do when times returned to normal.
The Courtesan's Guild was chief among those plans, and when Barrett asked who I would appoint to lead it, I looked to Igraine questioningly. The guild was her idea, after all. It was her passion.
Igraine looked at me in amazement, her eyes going wide, and her bottom lip quivering. It transformed her face into a heartbreaking approximation of the child I imagined her to be when she had been forced into the trade.
She let the tears flow, throwing her arms around me and weeping. It was humbling to see her, normally the most level-headed among us, brought to such heightened emotion by something so small as the honor of my notice.
She would make a wonderful guild master, a title that came with a great deal of authority in Windemere. I hoped that I would not fail her in the coming war so that she would have the chance to do it.
I left my friends after they promised they would be leaving with the first group departing the city gates at dawn, heading south to Athelen. I hoped desperately that I would see them again.
My thoughts turned maudlin again on my way back to the castle. When I was busy, my mind occupied with tasks and goals, it was easier to push away the idea of a future that did not includehim. But as soon as I was alone, I felt that aching, gnashing pit in my chest open and lay itself bare.
My new quarters in the Queen's Tower were even easier to reach from the roof than the old ones had been.
So, I ended the evening as I had the others, on the rooftop, numbing the endless ache of my loss with whatever alcohol happened to be on hand, and looking up into the darkness of the night sky.
I received word from Arkadian on the third day of the exodus from Albiyn.
He and the Lithaway fyrd were halfway back to the city when they learned of the evacuation—from a dragon that flew out of the sky carrying the Lord of Darkwatch himself.
Arkadian agreed to turn his army toward Athelen, and I knew it was thanks to Io explaining that it was one of my conditions for leaving the city.
Arkadian promised to keep his men on the other side of the Thelos River and be ready when I called him to retake the kingdom from Penjan.
He had one condition of his own.
I knocked on the door of an apartment at the back of a shop on Merchant's Square. When there was no answer, I knocked again.
"Can I help you?" came a female voice behind me.
I turned to see an auburn-haired woman in long, black skirts with a matching short jacket clutching the hand of a boy of only two or three years old.
"Are you Gwen?" I asked, gaze locked on the child, whose ruddy face had split into a smile.
