“No?” Fulke repeats, as if he’s never heard the word before. “What do you mean, no?”
“We—we didn’t take Cliffhelm. Ravinger’s training outpost there was full of soldiers. We never even breached the walls before they were on us.”
One of Fulke’s guards curses, Fulke’s fists tightening at his sides. “You’re saying my entire division was taken out?”
The messenger hesitates. “Yes, Your Majesty, and…”
King Fulke picks up one of the ink bottles and sends it hurtling against the wall, the glass shattering, ink splattered and dripping. “And what?” Fulke fumes. “Spit it out!”
Something is wrong here. Very, very wrong. They were celebrating. Their plan was victorious. My brows pull together in a frown as my mind whirls. What happened between then and now? How could such misinformation be passed to the kings earlier? Or is this soldier lying? But if so...for what purpose?
The messenger grips the hilt of his sword tighter under the scowl of his king, and I’m not the only one who notices. “What are you doing, soldier?” King Fulke’s guard asks, tone heavy with suspicion as he reaches for his own blade.
But the messenger isn’t looking at him. He’s not even looking at Fulke. He’s looking at Midas.
My body coils with tension, my instincts blaring at me that something terrible is about to happen, but I have no idea what.
“Explain to me how we were told that we took Cliffhelm this morning, only for you to now inform me that my men were all slaughtered!” Fulke snarls. “Tell me how Ravinger’s men were able to overtake both my soldiers and Midas’s without us knowing!”
Fulke’s guards close in on the messenger, like a pack of wolves sniffing out a traitor. A liar.
But they’re closing in on the wrong man.
The messenger tilts his chin up, a proud stance widening his feet even as resignation flashes in his eyes. “They didn’t overtake King Midas’s men. Because Midas’s army never met ours. Sixth’s army never went to Fourth’s border. Your soldiers were there to face King Ravinger’s men alone, and the earlier messages were a deceit.” Accusatory eyes cut over to my king. “Midas betrayed you.”
Chapter Thirteen
For a span of a breath, no one moves.
Shocked silence fills the room at the messenger’s declaration. Then both sets of guards tighten formations around their kings.
King Fulke frowns, confused. “You are mistaken, soldier,” he says to the messenger.
“He’s not.”
My eyes shoot over to Midas at his bold declaration, but he only looks steadily back at Fulke with pleased arrogance. Fulke’s face changes from confusion to shock and then into budding fury as the world settles in, shaking with the aftershocks of the shift.
“You betrayed me?” King Fulke asks, his voice like a whip.
His guards tighten their hands around their blades, purple pommels with their kingdom’s sigil of jagged icicles carved through the hilt. Just minutes ago, these men were all drinking and laughing together. Now, tension radiates through them as they face each other.
Allies to enemies.
Enemies from allies.
“Let this be your last life lesson, Fulke,” Midas replies calmly, not the least bit threatened despite the deadly menace hanging in the air. “True kings don’t give out their armies for cunts.”
I don’t know who looks more shocked—Fulke or myself.
The monarch of Fifth Kingdom stares hard at Midas, like he’s truly seeing him for the first time, like he’s no longer being blinded by all the gleaming gold, the immeasurable wealth. “You were never going to take Fourth Kingdom,” he says, a flat understanding braced in his tone.
Midas laughs. He actually laughs at the other king. “Of course not. Everyone knows you don’t attack Fourth Kingdom. King Ravinger decimates anyone who dares.”
All of the faces on Fulke’s guards fill with bleak hate. It darkens their brows, makes their eyes flash.
Horror fills my veins as I realize the extent of what he’s done. Midas has been forming a bond with Fulke for years. Seducing him with riches and filling his coffers, and Fulke has lapped it all up greedily. Happily.
It always made me curious—what Midas was getting out of it. But now I know. Midas was never making Fulke rich. He was treating Fifth Kingdom like his own secondary vault. Fulke was simply transporting the gold for him, while Midas bided his time.
It’s brilliant. It’s brutal. And I know without a doubt that there won’t be two kings who walk back out of this letter room.
Fulke’s lips thin, a bead of sweat collecting at his left temple as he nods—in either understanding or resignation, I don’t know which. He shows no fear, only wears a cold glare as the pieces fall into place. “Your army was never going to Fourth Kingdom to attack. You lied and drew my own soldiers away to be slaughtered so that you could invade my kingdom.”
Midas’s eyes glitter with satisfaction. Fulke’s harden with enmity.
Allies to enemies.
The bead of sweat starts to fall off Fulke’s temple, an invisible line down, like the one Midas crossed.
I don’t get a warning, and I don’t know which king gives the order to attack first. I just know that all at once, a battle breaks out.
I’m dropped hard onto the floor by someone before I can blink. The breath is knocked out of me, a woven rug the only thing to break my fall.
Purple and gold clash in an explosion of metallic clangs.
Red comes next, in violent splatters.
I hear the short shouts. The swords meeting in vicious swipes. And the abruptness of it acts like a shock to the brain, dredging up memories as my past and present meet.
Fighting is too close and too loud, and I’m sprawled on the ground just like I was on a different day, during a different fight.
A fight under a yellow moon, its shape like a fingernail scratching at a dark sky. Ten years ago, when raiders came to the tiny town where I was living. Raiders doing what they do—taking. Taking everything that didn’t belong to them. Money, livestock, grain—women.
The sound of swords clashing again is like a gruesome melody, the sound prompting my mind of a tavern song that I’ve played on my harp.
They pillaged the village,
They burned the sterns.
They hail to no king,
But they’ll bow for a ring.
The silly lyrics play in my head as I slap my hands over my ears. My mind wavers from then to now, from there to here, as I start to scramble backward, aiming for the wall. If I can just stay low and get to the wall, then I can get to the door, and if I can get to the door, I can—
A body suddenly falls on top of me, making my chin slam to the ground hard enough that I see stars. With a grunt at the heavy weight pinning me, it takes me a frantic moment of shoving and rolling to get the person off, only to realize that he is very, very dead.
Before I can really take in the fact that he no longer has a head, I’m suddenly dragged up to my feet. My ears are ringing, the stupid song still playing, as a blade is shoved against my throat.
“You fucking bastard!” King Fulke shouts beside my ear, jostling me in his hold.
I whimper as his erratic movements make the dagger dig down too far, his hands unsteady as a shallow scratch is cut in. “You think you’re so clever. You want to kill me?” he snarls. “Then I’m taking your gilded bitch with me.”
It’s a surreal feeling, to have Death breathing down your neck. In this case, Death is Fulke, and his hot exhale slithers down my spine like spilled wine, dampening my skin with slick fear. His hand clenches onto the hilt of the dagger so tightly that the blade shakes, the tremble making it dig deeper into my skin, making blood gather there.
There are eight men lying on the floor or slumped over tables, their red life pooling beneath them, falling out of gaping wounds. I blink at the puddles, like it’s just paint, and all of this is just a bad dream playing out right alongside that macabre tune.
All of Fulke’s men, including the messenger, are dead, along with three of Midas’s guards.
The other two of Midas’s guards stand at his side protectively, their sharp golden blades stained crimson. The wind howls outside, hail hurling at the glass of the window.
Midas looks at me with something indistinguishable in his eyes, while mine are probably wide with shock, shock and horror.
I squeeze my eyes tight, because I don’t want to see what happens next. I don’t want to watch their reactions as my throat is cut open.
Die. I’m going to die.
As soon as my eyes are closed, the blade presses in, like it’s cornering me, trapping me, fulfilling Fulke’s savage threat to take my life. I suck in one last breath of air and hold it in my lungs, bracing myself, willing the breath not to leave me.
But before the sharpened edge can cut any deeper, Fulke’s body lurches, and I’m suddenly being wrenched to the side by a grip on my arm as the king’s form slams to the ground on his side, jerking violently at my feet. I look down in shock at the sword stuck all the way through him from back to front.
Whipping my head to the right, I see Digby. Digby, who I’d forgotten was even in the room. Holding me up with his steady grip on my arm, blood splattered on his face, his sword missing from his scabbard.
At the sound of a horrible gurgle, I look back down at Fulke where he writhes. His hands come up, touching the sword where it’s coming out of his chest. His mouth opens and shuts without words, blood lining his lips. He grips the blade, slicing his palms into ribbons as he holds it tight, as if he wants to strangle it into submission.
He dies like that, with both hands clenching the golden weapon, mouth sneering like a curse was left on it, one that would damn us all to hell.
Midas stands across the room with his other two guards, all eyes on King Fulke as his chest gets stuck on his last gurgling exhale. My vision tunnels on it, on the deep red blood bubbling out of the wound, slow as syrup.
The shakes hit me first. Then it’s the tunnel vision.
My heart pounds against my skull with a rap, rap, rap—or is that still the hail against the window?
I turn and bury my face against Digby’s collar. I don’t even care how uncomfortable it is because of his armor. I hold on to him anyway, my whole body a tremor.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I repeat against his chest. He saved me. My quiet, stoic guard just killed a king to save my life.
I hear voices—Midas’s, one of the guards, maybe Digby too. I can’t hear what they’re saying, though, can’t care enough to concentrate on it.
My feet sway a bit, and my eyes pop with flares of black light. More talking. More hail pattering. That song still playing.
“Take her to her rooms,” Midas says—or maybe I imagined it.
Digby’s hands shift me around, and then he’s picking me up, letting my face stay buried against his chest plate.
“You have blood on you. I have blood on me.” My voice sounds far away, small. The blood is such an inconsequential thing compared to everything else. I don’t even know why I point it out.
He carries me away, away and up.
“I need a bright side,” I mumble.
Bright side. I need a bright side to ground me. To keep me from going under.
Bright side...bright side, I didn’t get raped or murdered.
Great Divine, what an abysmal bright side.
Digby stays silent, not offering any suggestions, not that I expected him to. But the sure steps of his boots reassure me for some reason, even though my mind is whirling and those black flares in my vision are getting worse. “You killed a king for me, Digby,” I mutter.
He just grunts.
I close my eyes just for a second, lulled by the sway of him walking. I open my eyes after what feels like just a few seconds, but I realize I’m already on the tallest level of the palace, back in my bedroom, and Digby is setting me down on my bed.
I sit up, bracing my hands on the mattress, my fingers curling into the covers. With one departing look, Digby turns and walks out on quiet footsteps, the creak of my cage door closing softly before he leaves me to my privacy, the lit candles in my room my only companion.
I was going to be raped by a king tonight.
But that king was killed, a blade shoved through his chest just inches away from me. His blood is soaked into my slippers. I can still feel his hot breath against my neck. And the night is crushing me. Crushing me on all sides, as every part of what happened presses against my mind, replaying, picking it apart. Showing me again and again what happened, from the moment I woke up to right now.
I sit here like this for a long while, thinking, listening to the hail and the wind, wondering if I did something in a past life to offend the goddesses—or if I’m so hidden here in Sixth Kingdom, beneath a cover of snow clouds that never leaves, that the stars just haven’t been able to see me.
And for the next hour, that’s all I do, is wonder. With the blood of a dead king still smeared on my shoes, and a shallow wound drying at my throat.
Chapter Fourteen
The sound of a key fitting into my door pulls me from my thoughts. Several sets of footsteps come near as servants file into my cage one after the other. They walk past me, steps determined, as they head for my bathroom, steam rising from buckets in their arms.
A minute later, they all walk right back out silently, the cage closing again, my bedroom door shutting.
I don’t turn, don’t move, but I wait. Listen.
I can feel him behind me, watching, but I keep my back straight, keep my eyes on the window, to the blizzard raging outside.
Finally, Midas walks over, a dark silhouette that stops in front of me a few paces away.
He waits for a beat, and although I can’t see his eyes, I feel the trace of them, feel them land on the slash over my throat.
Midas takes three slow steps and then offers his hand, holding it in front of me, waiting.
I don’t take it.
“Let me get you cleaned up, Precious.”
My eyes lift up to his face. I still don’t take his hand.
His expression fills with remorse. “I know,” he says hoarsely. “I know, but let me explain. Let me—I want to hold you. Take care of you. Let me help you, Auren.”
That slowly creeping crack spreading up from the gash in the glass, it halts. Waits. Wonders.
Because Midas said those words to me before—Let me help you.
Is that why he’s using them now? To remind me?
When I was on the streets, I slept during the day and crept around at night. Hungry, often. Afraid, always. I was too scared to buy anything, to approach anyone. I did so only when it was absolutely necessary.
I wandered alone, stayed hidden. It was the only way a girl like me could stay safe. To make sure I didn’t end up right back in the same situation I’d escaped from.
Bad men. The world was run by bad men.
And as much as I tried to lay low, to be invisible, I couldn’t. I wasn’t.
I knew better than to stay too long in one place. I knew better, but I was tired. Worn down. I slipped up. Got sloppy. I knew it was just a matter of time before something bad happened to repay me for it.
The looters came that night.
With fire and axes, they took the village I was hiding in—the one I should’ve left behind days before.
They took everything and anything they wanted. The farmers who lived there didn’t stand a chance, didn’t have any defensive training. They didn’t even own weapons other than their pitchforks and shovels.
I tried to run. Too late. I was far too late.
Pulled from an alleyway, I was shoved into a cart with the other women who’d been dragged from their beds.
They screamed and cried, but I was silent. Resigned. I knew it was over for me. I knew there was no way I’d escape. Not again. The fates don’t give second chances. So I steeled
my spine, and I readied myself to face the life I’d tried to run from.
And that’s when he came. Midas. Like the goddesses themselves had sent him, riding in on a dappled gray horse with a half dozen other men.
At first, I thought the shouts were just continued fighting from the villagers, a last-ditch effort to defend their homes. But then I saw the looters being cut down. And then the cart was opened and the women were running, sobbing again—this time, with tears of terrified relief.
But I had no family to reunite with, no one to run to. So I staggered back to that alleyway. Tense shoulders collapsed against a rough stone wall. I didn’t believe it was over so quickly. Didn’t trust it. But I thanked the stars, all the same.
At some point, the sounds of the fighting stopped. The fires tossed on thatched roofs were put out, the clinging smoke in the air the only thing warming my thin, bedraggled body.
And then a lone figure appeared in the alley. I cowered against stacked crates until he stopped in front of me, and I looked up at his handsome face. He smiled at me. Not a jeer, not a cruel tilt of lips. A genuine smile. It was warm. Just looking at it stopped my ceaseless shaking.
He held out a hand while that smile stayed on his face. “You’re safe now. Let me help you.”
And I was. And he did.
From that moment on, he kept me safe. When I wanted to hide from the world, he gave me his cloak and hood. When I shied away from other people, he made sure we stayed separate. When I clung to him, he held me.
And when I kissed him for the first time, he kissed me right back.
You’re safe now. Let me help you.
I was done being exposed and vulnerable in the world, so he made sure I didn’t have to be anymore.
Swallowing hard, I look up at Midas as our past settles around me, like he’s once again leading me out of that dark alley, like he’s reminding me where we’ve come from. Of what he did for me.
He earned my trust. My love. My loyalty. I wouldn’t be here, in this gilded cage, if he hadn’t.
“Please,” he pleads, surprising me. Midas never pleads. Not since he put a crown on his own head.
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