I hesitate for a moment, but the past is a powerful thing, so my hand finally lifts, slips inside his grasp, and squeezes. That smile lights up his face as I let him pull me up, let him guide me into the bathroom, and something in me warms slightly. My body stops shaking.
Inside, a golden tub is filled, tendrils of steam curling over the lip, oil poured into the water, making it smell of winterberries.
He stops us in the middle of the room, the hanging sconces already lit, casting everything in its comforting glow. The hanging mirror above the washbasin shows the two of us, shows Midas step up behind me.
I feel his fingers skim up my spine before delving into my ribbons—each silken strand still bound around me.
Carefully, he unwraps me, layer by layer.
My ribbons don’t do anything to help him—but they don’t stop him either, don’t rip from his grasp.
He works slowly, taking his time with each pass, until the last of my long ribbons are let out, draping from my spine to the floor behind me. All the while, I watch him in the mirror, my heart beating quicker than usual.
He helps me out of the saddle gown next, his fingers never once straying, never crossing any sort of line except to simply help me undress.
When the fabric falls at my feet, Midas looks at my eyes in the reflection of the mirror for a moment, before taking my hand once more and leading me into the tub. One leg over, then the next, and I sit down, the hot water shoulder-deep, a few scattered bubbles mingling with the oil that seeps into my skin.
I sigh.
Midas sits on a stool beside the tub with a cloth in his hand, dipping it in the water before his eyes come back up to look at me.
“May I?”
I don’t answer or nod, but I tip my chin up slightly, and that’s invitation enough. He reaches forward and gently begins to dab at the wound, the sting making me flinch.
“I’m sorry.”
His words are gentle but steady—same as the swipes against my throat.
“For what part?” I ask, my voice croaky from disuse or emotion. Maybe both.
The cloth is dipped again and again, new warm water to wash away the dried blood, to clean the cut.
“You weren’t supposed to get hurt.”
My brows rise at his admission, even as indignant anger rises up, shouldering past the numbness I’ve felt for the last few hours.
“The slice against my throat is the least of them,” I reply, and I mean it.
I pull away from his ministrations and lie all the way back, dipping my head and hair beneath the water. With eyes closed, I let it envelop me, let it press into my skin, let the warmth soothe my body like I wish it could soothe my aching heart.
When I sit back up, I take a gulping breath and rest my head against the back of the tub, my eyes landing on Midas. I don’t cover up the hurt and anger there, don’t mask it from him.
Midas nods, like he accepts what I’m silently telling him.
“I know,” he says again, just like he did in the bedroom. “I know what you’re thinking.”
What I’m thinking isn’t nearly as bad as what I’m feeling, but I don’t say that.
“I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it,” I tell him, my tone accusatory. “And as nervous as I was, as gutted, some part of me thought that you’d have a plan. That you wouldn’t go through with it.”
My breaths come quicker, the water line rising and lowering over my chest. My ribbons swim in the water, pulling tighter around me once more, like they’re trying to keep me from cracking to pieces.
“I trusted you, Midas. I trust us. After all these years, after all I’ve done—”
Midas grabs one of my hands, squeezing it between his, his face earnest. “I was never going to let him touch you.”
I frown, my thoughts cut short. “What?”
“Just listen,” he tells me. “I knew Fulke coveted you. Hell, everyone knew. He was a fool. He dared to ask for what was mine.”
I blink, remembering the morning when Fulke asked for me, when they struck their deal.
“You set him up for it.”
Midas tilts his head. “Did I? Is that what you think?”
My lips turn down, confusion swimming through me, making my thoughts murky. “I don’t understand.”
Midas hooks his foot around the leg of the stool to move it closer, his hands still holding onto mine, the water droplets collecting on his palms.
“Fulke is a flesh trader.”
Shock courses through me. “What?”
Midas nods solemnly. “I heard rumors, but I found out for sure months ago. When I was able to confirm it, I knew something needed to be done.”
I try to keep up with his words, try to make the connections. “So you planned how to take him out? How to kill him?”
Midas’s lips press together at my damning tone. “Would you rather I let him continue to sell his own people for profit?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Auren, I’m a king, and kings have to make hard decisions. When it became clear to me that Fulke was no longer a viable ally, not even a good person, I decided to act.”
“By setting him up. Tricking him. By sending his men into a meaningless slaughter,” I accuse. “How many of his soldiers died, Midas?”
“As few as possible, just enough to make it work.”
I scoff. “As if that makes it any better!”
“Better a man die with honor on a battlefield than a child be sold to slavery. Wouldn’t you agree, Auren?”
A punch.
That’s what it is. His words punch into my stomach, against my heart, up my throat. He shreds me inside with a sentence, memories threatening to come up, to spill out my eyes.
“I did it for you, Auren,” Midas says, quieter now, losing the defensiveness of his voice. “To make sure they don’t endure what you did.”
When a tear slips past my eye, he swears and wipes it away, his face earnest. “I’m sorry. You know me, you know how I get. Once I get a plan in my head, it’s all I see. I didn’t stop to consider the consequences. I just knew I wanted him gone. Done. To stop him once and for all.” His hand comes up to cup my cheek, his eyes boring into mine. “But listen to me when I say this: I was never going to let him have you. It was a ruse.”
My throat is dry, but I clear it so I can speak. “Why not just tell me, then? Why not explain all this before so I knew?”
“I was worried that he’d find out somehow, that you wouldn’t be able to pretend. I needed Fulke complacent. Distracted. You did your part beautifully.”
I drop my head, shaking it. “I was so damn terrified, so hurt. I don’t know if I can get past that.”
“Like I said, I didn’t think,” he tells me, a stroke against my cheek before he drops his hand.
“You killed a king, Midas. Used him to attack another. What are you going to do?” I ask, the worry gnawing at my insides as my teeth gnaw on my lip.
“Don’t worry about that,” he tells me. “I have a plan.”
I can’t help the bitter snort that escapes me. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me it, just like you didn’t tell me that you were tricking Fulke about giving me to him.”
Midas sighs. “I didn’t dare say more. No one knows any of this, Auren. No one aside from you knew what I set up. And I have to play this next part just as carefully. Just as meticulously. But I need you to forgive me, Precious. I need you to understand.”
Do I? Do I understand?
I’m relieved, I know that much. The coiled tension that’s been inside me these past days has eased. He wasn’t going to let Fulke have me. He had a plan.
It was callous and thoughtless, but it makes sense. This is how Midas is, how he’s always been. That strategic, brilliant mind of his sometimes falls short on emotions. He can scheme and plan like an expert, but he often forgets the human side of it.
“I was so mad at you.”
Midas chuckles, the sound breaking some o
f the tension between us, bringing us a step back to what we were, what we should be.
“I know. I thought you were acting. Figured you trusted me enough and you were just putting on a good show. But then in the ballroom earlier, you were furious.”
A heat crawls up my cheeks. “Yeah, sorry about defying you in front of everyone.”
He gives me a soft smile. “It’s alright.”
Midas gets up and grabs a drying cloth off a hook, holding it up for me. I stand up at the silent direction and step out of the tub, letting him wrap me up in it.
Once I’m dried and dressed in a nightgown, Midas takes me back to my bedroom. My damp ribbons splay behind me with my hair, my head resting on his chest as his hand rubs down my back.
This. This is what we’ve been missing. How many nights has it been since he’s held me like this?
Months. I’m not sure how many.
“You used to hold me every night,” I say softly against his tanned skin, his chest peeking out from the undone tie at the top of his tunic. His legs are crossed at the ankles, both of us lying atop the blankets, not needing any other warmth besides each other.
Midas smiles against my head. “I did. Probably not the best thing for a newly wedded man to do.”
Probably not, but I was greedy for it anyway.
“If the queen was jealous, she had a strange way of showing it,” I say, remembering that first year. “She gifted you three royal saddles for your birthday.”
I remember being shocked. Shocked and jealous. His own wife expected him to have sex with other women. Encouraged it, even. Just not with me.
The first time he slept with one of them, it had gutted me. I’ve grown used to it by now. Not that it doesn’t still hurt, but I understand. He’s a king. What did I really expect?
As if he can sense the directions of my thoughts, Midas’s arm pulls me up until I’m lying on top of him, our faces in front of each other.
“It’s just me and you when I’m here,” he reminds me. “Nothing else exists outside of this cage.”
I nod slowly. “I know.”
His brown eyes fall to the mark on my neck before his hands come up to grip my waist. “You’re mine.”
I know that too.
His gaze flicks down my body, his grip tightening as lust simmers between us, and my breath catches. So long. It’s been so long.
I’ve waited to see this look from him again. For him to have time to give me more than just a passing caress, a distracted smile. For him not to be a king that has to behave like one, but to just be Midas. My Midas.
“You’re mine,” he says again, and his hands move, one to hold the back of my head, the other to skim down to my ass and squeeze.
“I’ve missed you,” he says, his lips poised at the hollow of my throat, right below the blade’s mark. “You looked beautiful tonight. So damned sexy.”
His fingers pull up the side of my nightgown, until his hand can dip beneath, bare palm against thigh. My breathing quickens, and I sigh into his mouth as he kisses me in quick, angled bursts.
“I missed you too,” I reply.
He sits us up, keeping me on his lap, my hands coming up to his shoulders to steady myself. With hunger in his eyes, he pulls off my dress, lets me undo the laces at his pants. “So pretty, Precious. So damned pretty.”
My heart beats fast, my stomach knotting and unknotting as his lips once again caress my throat, travel up my jaw. And then his hard length is pushing into me, his groan a taste in my mouth that I swallow down and try to keep.
He possesses me like this, hips pushing up, driving himself deeper, even as his arms tighten around me, squeezing, telling me he won’t ever let me go. And when I moan, my eyes fluttering closed, his tongue comes in to claim me, to rule me. He takes and takes, and I give. I give it all.
My heart swells when he sucks at my tongue and plunges deeper into my core, and I move with him, my spine like a wave as I work to bring him pleasure, to give him what he needs. To make him happy.
And when he pulls from my body and spills his seed against my stomach with a groan, I lie back down against his sweat-slicked chest with a sigh and a soft smile.
But the traitorous tear that falls from my eye tells a different story as it lands on my lip. It brines my happiness and rinses the smile away, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Midas leaves before dawn with a kiss, but his lips don’t take the taste away. And there in the dark, alone, I cry.
And that, that secret sob I let drain into my pillow, is an ugly truth. But it’s not one I’m ready to face yet.
So I let the satin soak it up, and then I fall asleep, the candor hidden beneath my head and shoved away by the time the morning dawns.
Chapter Fifteen
I watch the guards amble around my bedroom, carrying out the last of the trunks that I filled earlier.
My space looks emptier than usual, my dressing room with noticeable gaps from where some of the gowns and shoes have been taken and packed away. Outside, dusk has fallen.
It’s nearly time to leave.
It doesn’t appear to be snowing out right now, but snow never stays away for very long here, which is why I’m dressed in a heavy woolen gown, complete with fur trim and sheepskin-lined boots. Everything is shiny gold, of course, right down to my thick leather gloves.
My hair is coiled tightly against my head in countless braids so that the wind won’t thrash it around, kept out of the way so that my hood can conceal both my hair and my face.
“It’s time.”
I turn away from the window to see Digby standing ready on the other side of my cage. He looks gruff and quiet as usual, no hint of the man who ran a sword through a foreign king. No expression of worry, like when he carried me up six flights of stairs while covered in blood. But then, I appreciate that about him. His complete unruffled manner, his steadfastness.
Unconsciously, I lift a hand and run my fingers against the newly formed scar at my throat where King Fulke tried to slit it three weeks ago. Digby notices the movement, his eyes flicking down to my fingers, and I immediately drop my hand, trying to stop myself from that nervous fidget I’ve developed.
Sometimes, my mind forces me to relive that moment in my nightmares, and I wake up screaming and clutching my throat, convinced that I’m suffocating on my own blood.
Other times, my mind decides it would be a good idea to imagine what would’ve happened if that messenger had never shown up, if Fulke had dragged me all the way to his bedroom instead, and Midas never came to stop it.
Neither nightmare lets me get much sleep. That’s probably why I have circles under my eyes like bronzed bruises shaded above my cheeks.
I wish Midas were here.
Three days. He could only stay for three days after the incident, and then he had to leave—he and a regiment of soldiers to travel to Fifth Kingdom.
I stood beside him in the throne room the night after Fulke was killed. Watched Midas’s plan play out as he wove a tale of what had happened. The people know about Midas’s Golden Touch. But his golden tongue? To me, that’s his true power.
“We were deceived.”
The room was quiet, the gathered nobles watching Midas with rapt attention as the king and queen sat on their thrones with somber but determined faces, looking out over the gathered crowd.
“My ally, King Fulke, is dead.”
Shock rippled through the people, wide eyes and open mouths spanning across the room.
Midas waits a beat for the news to sink in, but not long enough for the whispers to start.
“King Fulke wanted to stop rot from spreading over our borders. Wanted to ensure that our territories were safe—and he was assassinated for it.”
I stood behind him, a step in front of the guards, my presence there meant to show a united front while Midas weaved his story.
“He sent his soldiers to the edge of Fifth Kingdom to do his duty to his people, but he was deceived by one of his own. One who s
lipped into enemy lands. King Fulke’s regiment was killed in a brutal battle against Fourth’s awaiting men. And as if that weren’t treason enough, that same defector, that betrayer, flew back here to Highbell to deliver a message—by murdering his own unsuspecting king.”
The mood in the room moved and ebbed, a tide stretching from horror to indignation.
Midas motioned to someone behind him, and a guard came up, holding something wrapped in black cloth. With a nod from Midas, the guard unwrapped it and held it up for all to see.
Gasps rang out. I couldn’t even track how many. They were all repelled, and yet, and they couldn’t look away.
The guard held up the decapitated head of the messenger—the one who was guilty of no crimes. His head gleamed shiny gold, his gruesome, dying expression to forever live on in this frozen state, never able to deteriorate as a body should.
The crowd gaped at the face of the messenger-made-traitor. Midas watched the crowd.
“This,” Midas said, pointing a hand at the cringing face. “This is the kind of rot that is spreading from Fourth Kingdom. This is what King Fulke was trying to staunch. Not just decimation and disrespect of our lands, but of disloyalty. Distrust. Treason against one’s own kingdom and monarch.”
He was good. So very good at speaking. At drawing in a crowd. Like a spider spinning a web, he caught them, each one.
The head was wrapped up once more, no doubt to be forged to the front gates later, where all the gilded skulls of traitors stayed. Exposed for the public to spit at, for the icy winds to batter.
“I shall go to Fifth Kingdom,” Midas told them. “I will assist them in their time of need, ensure that the land and people don’t suffer with the loss of their king. I shall take King Fulke’s seat, uniting our lands after his death, even as we were allies while he lived. I will continue to keep our borders secure. To make sure the rot of outside kingdoms does not touch us. Until the day his heir may come of age and take his father’s seat.”
It didn’t take long for the news of King Fulke’s death to spread like a heavy snow, drifting over the land, coating every tongue. Midas managed to come out heroic, to give the people a villain to blame, while he gained more power in one fell swoop.
Gild (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 1) Page 11