Page 121 of Golden Queen
I sucked in a breath, feeling the air rush into my straining lungs. I didn't think I had been under very long, but I coughed and sputtered as water poured up hot and burning from my mouth
"What the fuck, Sera?" Io demanded angrily, spinning me around to face him in the waist deep water.
"I—I didn't mean..." I tried, my voice hoarse.
"You didn't mean to what, Sera? To drown yourself?" He was incredulous, his eyes wide and angry. His hands were on my arms, fingers digging in as I began to shake. It took me a moment to realize the shaking was sobbing. I looked down, trying to hide my face.
He pulled me against him, wrapping his arms around me as he loosed a ragged breath. "Sera," he said. "Gods, Sera. I'm sorry."
I didn’t speak, fighting the instinct to assure him that I was okay, even as my body continued to shudder with the force of my tears. I wrapped my arms around him and held on, feeling the strain of my tired, aching limbs.
“Youaresafe now, Sera,” he said, tightening the arms that surrounded me. “I have you. There is nothing to be afraid of.” He was speaking as though to a small child. Some part of me wanted to bristle at that, but I couldn’t. Iwasterrified. I needed reassurance. I needed his arms around me.
I didn't know how long we stood that way, soaking wet in the middle of the icy river, but I never got cold. The water stayed warm as he held me until the crying subsided and the shaking ended.
"We have to go," he said, after a while. "We are not yet far enough away from the city for my liking."
I nodded against his chest, still reluctant to let go.
Only when I heard the rustling of Veles' big body sliding through the godsgrass did I let him go and move to the riverbank.
He followed, no longer trying to avoid looking at me as he helped me get dressed. Thanks to his fire, even our clothes were dry when we climbed back onto the big black dragon and once again took to the skies.
We met up with the caravan of refugees at sunset, finding them camped beside the Godsway.
We made our way to one of the groups, where Io's general, Malach, was regaling a crowd made up of Albiyn nobles and common people alike, gathered around a small fire.
He was telling them a story about the time a dragon's egg had gone missing from the nursery at the Reach, and the entire city had joined forces to find the thief.
Malach didn't miss a beat as we joined the group, sinking down beside the fire gratefully.
"Meroway was in an absolute uproar. Neighbors accusing neighbors, fathers accusing sons." Malach's voice changed to show the drama of the moments, proving his skill at storytelling. "The lord, Vidar, in those days had just ordered his men to fan out across the kingdom—to search every keep and castle in Darkwatch.
And then a young boy of only four years old, who had perhaps decided the trouble he was in had reached a tipping point, stepped up to his uncle and admitted the truth. ‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘I must confess. I took the egg.’
Vidar was obviously angry. This child, barely out of his swaddling clothes, had caused a city-wide uproar and put an unborn dragon at risk of being out of the heat of the nursery for too long.
But still, Vidar forced patience into his words and asked the child, ‘Why? Why did you steal a dragon's egg?’
The little boy looked at him with not a speck of guile and said,‘Because it is mine, uncle.’
Now the lord had to laugh at this. Dragon riders do not bond with dragons until they hatch, and that doesn't happen until a mage is nearing maturity. This small child was at least a decade away from that.
But the boy was adamant. ‘This is my dragon,’ he said to anyone who would listen. And even after they took the egg from where he had placed it in a basket he rigged above the fireplace—" Malach paused as the people around the fire chuckled at the idea of a four-year-old rigging up a basket over the fireplace to keep a dragon's egg warm.
I glanced at Io, seated by my side. He smiled, slightly abashed, and shrugged.
It was true then, I realized.
Malach continued, "The little boy visited the nursery each day for nearly a year until, on his fifth birthday, his father and mother came to visit him. He took them excitedly to the nursery to see what he still calledhis dragon.
And lo and behold, there before the King and Queen of Nightfall, a night-colored dragon tumbled from the egg and went streaking across the cavern floor to the little Lord of Darkwatch."
Malach finished the tale by reaching his hand out to indicate Io beside the fire.
Io smiled a little boyishly and hung his head between the arms extended over his bent knees, in what for all the world might have looked like shyness if I didn't know better.
And then, as if on cue, Veles' huge head swung out of the darkness and bumped against his back, sounding a deep, affectionate rumble.
