Page 163 of Golden Queen
My fears were confirmed when I saw Britaxia's expression grow fierce just before her eyes shot up to me accusingly. She was angry, and I didn’t blame her. She served Behr in his court, but even if she hadn’t, she would still be capable of seeing what a debacle this would create for us all—how many pieces of this game would fall from the board entirely by Io’s insistence on taking me to Darkwatch.
It didn't even surprise me to see the look of consternation on Aben's normally smiling face as he, too, looked in my direction.
After a short conversation, the three of them strode back toward me. Aben had his arm around Io's shoulder, and Britaxia trailed a little behind them, her beautiful face stormy. She looked a bit like she might want to rip something apart with her bare hands.
"Did he at least tell you that I’m against his new plan?" I asked when they reached me.
Io smiled. "I did."
"You don't look like you are being bound and dragged away," Britaxia said with a slight sneer.
I had no answer for that as Aben took his arm from Io and slid it around my shoulders. "I suppose either way, we will be family," he said with a lopsided grin.
"Not when Behr's army gets done with them," Britaxia put in, glaring at me.
"Behr's not going to war with Darkwatch," Aben told her, then added to me, "Walk with me, Aelia of Windemere."
He swept me along whether I agreed or not, guiding me across the snowy ground with that big arm around my shoulders. He smelled surprisingly good to have spent so many hours traveling in thick furs.
"Do you love him?" he asked, pointedly, once we were out of earshot of the others.
I hesitated, unsure whether it would be better to deny it or admit it to the Darkwatch dragon mage who served the king in Orin.
"I do." When I could not decide, I settled on the truth.
Aben nodded. "I'll do what I can to help make this alright. But if it comes to the worst, then I will be on the other side of that line—by my oath to the king."
I shook my head. "I will never let it come to that. I'll leave him on foot if I must."
I saw some bit of relief cross his features.
"I don't know what I'm doing Aben. I can't think of walking away from him, even if he was willing to let me."
"He can be very hard to reason with," he told me with a tight smile.
"Did he tell you about the prophecy?" I asked, certain he had not had time during their short conversation.
When he shook his head, I explained, giving him as many of the new words as I could remember.
"That is fucking ominous," he said after I described the burned angels in the snow.
"It was," I agreed. "I don't know what it means—I don't pretend to know what drives the fates or whether they are even holding the reins of all this prophetic bullshit. I do know that there are forces at work here that I cannot begin to understand. Something has brought us together, because I believe that prophecy speaks of us both."
"The black fire?" he asked, his eyes searching in the distance as he considered it.
"You've seen him like that?" I asked.
He sighed. "I have—many times." He pushed his hood back and ran his hands through his short, black hair. It lay in curls against his head and his fingers mussed them, making him look momentarily unkempt.
When he slid his eyes back to me, they were tinged with some sadness. "We’ve always been like brothers. We shared a room at the Reach until we were fourteen—by choice because we did everything together. We got intofights, as boys do. But one particular fight, we were really wailing on each other—fighting about something I can't even remember. He lost control of his temper, for just the barest fraction of a second, and he burned me with that black flame. He very nearly killed me."
I clamped my hand over my mouth, startled by the admission.
"He healed me himself—so quickly I barely even felt a thing. And he certainly never meant to do it. He just got angry and lost control. I think it was far worse for him than it was for me."
Aben's eyes were focused far away again. "My parents tried to hide it from Io's father, but somehow he found out. He showed up at the Reach, telling me I was going to serve in Orin. And then he beat the shit out of Io. Beat him until he was bloody, and then beat him some more. The way we heal, you can get in a lot more licks than you would a human, and Io heals faster by many times than any other fae. His father beat him for a full day and night. Then put him in the black cells beneath the citadel."
My heart ached for him so badly that I laid my hand on my chest to ease the tension. Aben's face was a mask of misery, but as he continued, a note of reluctant pride began to show through. "Io stayed in there for almost a day before he broke the door and all the wards that had been placed on it. He strolled out of the citadel, still covered in blood, wearing that other face of his, and wrapped in those shadows."
