Page 146 of Golden Queen
It was a dream of peace—a beautiful, heartbreaking vision of the world unfolded before me.
And it felt real, so heartbreakingly real, as Io and I watched our children grow. We laughed as gray hair replaced that midnight dark on his head while mine still remained as white as it had ever been. And we cried as we watched our children marry and leave us behind.
We loved through what felt like hundreds of years of gods blessed time, while the world unfurled and grew around us like moonflower vines, covering everything they touched with their silvery leaves and pale white flowers.
But I had not been born into that world.
Suddenly, I watched the kingdom fall away around me—the figures of my children dissolving into smoky ash. The godsgrass blowing away like dust kicked up in the wind.
I knew I was dreaming when I felt my feet at the edge of a precipice and a cold, angry wind rising up at my back. Stones began crumbling under me as the world gave way beneath my feet.
I began to fall backward into the void below. Wings made of sunshine and fire unfurled behind me, arresting my fall, turning it into a slow, graceful descent. I almost hovered at the edge of the precipice.
Relief flooded through me. I had stopped myself from falling. I suddenly knew I could also stop the slow destruction of that world I had never been born into. I could save them all. I could stay there…if I could just...
The thoughts fled away from me as shadows appeared in front of me, midnight black and swirling. A figure stood at the heart of the churning maelstrom.
I knew him. The face and body were as achingly familiar as my own heartbeat.
But it was not Io who stood before me cloaked in darkness. It was some vengeful creature of shadows who looked down at me with dark, malicious eyes and a cruel mocking smile. I did not knowhim.
Wings made of living black fire and darkness unfurled at his back, rising and extending above him, blotting out the starlight and casting me in shadow.
"Blood opens the gate," he said as the shadows pierced my wings of sunshine and flame, disintegrating them until they swirled away like ashes on the wind.
I screamed as I fell, my hands vainly reaching for him. I knew that if I could somehow reach him, I would find only shadows and smoke beneath my fingers.
"Idrigard will burn."
I woke with a gasp.
Warm hands, with familiar rough calluses, slid across my cheek, cupping my face and cradling me to a solid chest. Half-lidded midnight eyes looked down at me.
"It was just a dream, my love," he whispered softly, in a voice hoarse from sleep. He kissed my forehead.
My love. I let the words wash over me. They drove away the memory of the dream as though it had never been.He loves me.Of course, I already knew that. I had probably known that somewhere deep down from the very start.
What that meant for the future didn't matter at all. All I knew was here and now and he loved me.
I pushed up and slid my leg across him until I was straddling him. I felt him harden beneath me in an instant as his eyes sparked, opening fully as he came awake.
Dawn was breaking on a world of still swirling snow, and the gray light cast a cool ethereal tint over his body beneath me.
I slid onto him as he rose up, bringing our faces close. I nearly cried out with relief as the feeling of him inside me again eased some deep, incessant ache.
But I stayed quiet, unwilling to break the silence that blanketed the world around us as I moved on him. The only sounds in the chamber were our breaths coming together and our bodies moving. I pressed my lips to his, but neither of us moved them. We just held ourselves together while I rose and fell, his hands on my hips guiding me.
I climaxed with slow, shaking ecstasy, feeling myself tighten around him as I rode the waves of pleasure until I felt him stiffen beneath me, grabbing my hips and holding me onto him as he found his release in me.
"I love you," I whispered, finally moving my mouth gently against his, tasting his smooth lips.
He took my face in his hands. "I love you more than life itself, Sera."
Twenty-Seven
We slept until nearly noon when there was a knock on the door.
Io rose and donned his breeches quickly to open it.
