He jerks his chin. “Then get to work. Now.”
Hanging my head, I squeeze past him and start to walk down the street while my heart pounds in my throat and thrums down my spine. Two of Zakir’s cronies step in front of me to lead the way, while he follows behind like an ominous shadow, steering me to my decrepit fate.
My shoes stick to the washed out gravel, but I barely notice when pebbles lodge inside, gritty pieces stabbing the soles of my feet. I barely notice the busy market either, full of shouting and haggling and arguing. I don’t look at the ships again, because that taunt of freedom is just too much to bear. So, I search for that platitude of numbness inside of me and try to pretend that I’m anywhere but here.
I drag my feet, but it doesn’t matter how slowly I walk to The Solitude. I still end up at its white-washed door, still see my bubbled reflection in the crude arrangement of bottom-cut bottles cemented in place like a window. The poor person’s stained glass.
My heart hammers so hard that my feet waver, as if I were standing on one of those ships instead of solid ground.
Zakir steps up to my side, and I feel a breath of his blue smoke blown against my ear. It’s the same color as those bottles. “Remember what I said. Earn your keep, or I’ll let Barden East have you.”
With a stern look, he walks off, a hand in his pocket jangling the coins I’ve made him, while two more of his men materialize and follow like guard dogs. The others stay behind with me and take up stances by the door, herding Zakir’s sheep. I already know without looking that there will be another man stationed at the back.
The spindly man on my left looks me up and down, the gray pallor of his face mismatched with his sallow eyes. “Hear Barden East likes to try out his whores first. Makes ’em go through tests before he lets ’em work,” he says, causing the other man to trudge out a snort.
I stare at the door, stare at the blue glass bottoms that remind me of the circular eyes of a spider, knowing I’m going straight into its mouth, already trapped in the web Zakir threw me into.
I try to remember.
I try to remember the lyrical pitch of my mother’s voice. The breeze through the wind chimes that hung outside my window. I try to remember the sound of my father’s laugh. The way the horses nickered in their stalls.
But a blink goes by, and it’s all drowned out with the sound of the men taunting me. With the market banging in my skull, pitched in shouts and clacking, just as the clouds crack and start to pour again, drenching us all with fetid water.
No, the sky doesn’t sing here.
And every year that passes, the song of home gets drowned out from my memory just a little bit more, washed away to a polluted seashore rife with cragged cruelty.
Just lie down on the pallet, girl.
I shun the ships sailing away at my back, shun the choice that is no choice at all, between the East and the West, between Barden and Zakir. Between life and death. Then, with a raindrop on my cheek that might have spilled from my eye, I open the door and walk into the inn.
And I die, just a little bit more.
Chapter 1
AUREN
Truths are like spices.
When you add some in, it means you have more layers to digest. You get a taste of things you were missing before. But if you add too many, life can become unpalatable.
But when those truths are repressed for too long, when you realize you’ve grown accustomed to the bland lies, there’s no hope of removing the overpowering taste from your tongue.
And right now, my mouth is charred with the revelation I have to somehow swallow down.
You’re King Ravinger.
Yes, Goldfinch, I am. But you can call me Slade.
Rip, Ravinger—whoever he is—he watches me choke on his truth.
What do you do when someone isn’t who you thought they were? In my head, Rip and the king were two very different males. King Ravinger was an evil I didn’t want to face. Someone with a foul power that I wanted to stay far away from.
And Rip was...well, Rip. Complicated and dangerous, but someone I considered as a sort-of ally who taught me a lot in our short time together. Someone who both scared and irritated me, but who I came to care for.
But now I have to reconcile all of those previous thoughts. Because the person who pushed my buttons and forced me to admit what I am, the male who kissed me in his tent and stood on the snowy shore of an arctic sea to watch a mourning moon...he’s someone else.
He’s the king everyone fears. The ruler who delivers rotted corpses like they’re bouquets of daisies. He’s arguably the most powerful monarch that Orea has ever seen, because he’s fae, and he’s been hiding in plain sight.
I’ve been sleeping in his damn tent, just feet away from him every night, without knowing who he really is.
I’m unable to sift through all of the layers that this truth brings. I’m not sure I’m in a state of mind to properly pick it all apart and digest it, and I don’t even know if I want to.
No, right now, I’m too pissed.
I glare at him. “You...you fucking liar.” I can hear the scorching vehemence burning my words as surely as I can feel their flames light up my eyes. It consumes me in a second.
Rip—Ravinger, whoever he Divine-damned is—rears his head back, like my anger is a shock to him. His body tenses, the malevolent spikes of his arms reflecting off the dim light of the room. A room that feels entirely too small all of a sudden. “Excuse me?”
I stand in the doorway, and my fingers bunch into fists at my sides, as if I can take the reins of my anger and steer it galloping forward. I take a step into the cage room toward him, my exhausted ribbons trailing after me like sickly worms writhing on the floor.
“You’re the king,” I say, shaking my head like I can erase this fact. I knew his aura was strange. I knew I could feel an underlying power there, but I never would’ve guessed the depth of his trickery. “You tricked me.”
Rip levels me with a glare. The black coal of his eyes looks like it wants to catch the flame of mine. He looks like he’s ready to burn in my anger.
Let him.
“I could say the same,” he retorts.
I bristle. “Don’t you dare try to turn this around on me. You lied—”
“So did you.” Ire bleeds through his expression, making the gray scales along his cheeks glint in the dark, the sharp face of a predator bearing down on me.
“I concealed my power. There’s a difference.”
He scoffs. “You hid your power, your ribbons, your heritage.”
“Being fae has nothing to do with it,” I snarl.
He eats up the remaining space between us in three long strides. “It has everything to do with it!” Rip seethes, looking like he wants to reach out and shake me.
I lift my chin, refusing to cower, imagining my ribbons rising to punch him in the gut. If only they weren’t so limp and exhausted. “You’re right,” I reply with forced calmness. “I’ve had to hide in a world that wasn’t my own for twenty years without seeing a single fae, until I met you.”
Some of the hardness leaves his face for a split-second, but I’m not done. Not nearly.
“You pushed me relentlessly to admit what I was.”
Irritation flashes through his features, lightning to strike the hollow ground. “Yes, to help you—”
My eyes narrow. “You forced truths out of me while concealing yourself. You don’t think that’s hypocritical?”
Rip’s teeth grind together so hard I wonder if he’ll break a tooth. I hope he does, the lying bastard.
“I couldn’t trust you,” he replies coolly.
A whip of a scoff comes out of my mouth, the sound of it punishing and unkind. “You self-centered ass. You stand there and talk about how you couldn’t trust me?”
“Careful,” he says, baring his teeth in a wicked smile. “There’s a saying about rocks and glass houses.”
“I don
’t live in glass, I live in gold. So I can throw whatever damn rocks I want,” I snap.
“Right. I should probably expect nothing less from you.”
My back goes rigid. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that you’re always so quick to judge me,” Rip replies with cool indifference. “Tell me, did you call Midas a liar as well?” he challenges, his spiked brow lowering over his eyes. “How long has he been claiming your power as his own? How long have you been lying to everyone about him?”
“We’re not talking about Midas.”
A cruel laugh snakes out of him, ready to bite, to hurt. “Of course not, right? Your golden king can do no wrong,” he says scathingly.
My nails dig into my bare palm so hard that I nearly break the skin. “You had no right to be angry when I chose to come back to him. Not when you’ve deceived me from the start.”
A terrible growl escapes his chest, like he tried to hold it back and failed. “He’s deceived you too!”
“Exactly!” I scream, and the sound of it, the utter emotion that comes barreling with it, makes him stagger back. “I am so damned tired of being deceived! The lies, the manipulations. You tried to pretend that you were so much better than him, but you’re exactly the same.”
Rip’s expression goes as dark as night, and my stomach clenches. “Am I?” His reply is a strike, but his eyes land the blow.
A hot, heavy quiet drops between us. The dead-weight of a corpse smoldering at our feet. The smoke of our discretions clouds our sights of one another.
“Thank you for explaining exactly what you think of me.” His aura slinks around him, and since I know now that it contains the repressed steam of his festering power, it makes me want to run and hide. “It’s a good reminder of just how skewed your perceptions are.”
I hate him. I hate him so much right now that my eyes burn. They burn until I can’t hold back the lick of flame anymore. A scorching tear leaks down my cheek, and his eyes follow it until it drips off my jaw.
“Maybe my perceptions wouldn’t be so skewed if the people I trusted didn’t constantly trick and twist and lie,” I retort, bashing away another stray tear.
Behind him, set in the shadows of the room, the broken cage mocks me. It’s a reminder. Of exactly what can happen when someone I trust misleads me.
“Auren...” There’s a sound there, in his voice, one that I can’t bear to hear.
I look down, focusing instead on the puddled shadows that have formed at our feet, a breath shaking through my chest. “You stood there and kissed me and tried to make me choose you, when I didn’t even know the real you at all,” I say, voice gone flat as I look back up at him. “You made me feel like the worst person in the world for choosing him, even though I warned you over and over again that I had to.”
Rip’s head jerks at that last part, eyes narrowing in the dark. “You had to?”
I regret my slip of the tongue immediately.
Keeping a stoic expression, I say, “I want you to leave.”
That dark, shadowy anger returns to his face, the lines of his power writhing against his bristled jaw. “No.”
My heart squeezes tighter than my fists. I hate that part of me still feels relieved that he’s here, as if I’m safe now, as if he’s still my ally.
He’s not.
I have no allies, and I need to remember that. Whatever I thought Rip was to me, that’s gone now. I have no one.
Uncurling my fingers, I raise a hand and drag it down my face. I’m so tired. So damn tired of the lies. His. Midas’s. Mine. I’m wrapped in deceit and molded in manipulation, stuffed full of everything I’ve done to survive.
I want it all to unravel. I want to come out of the tangles that have coiled around me before I become mummified with them.
The tension rolling off Rip’s shoulders is so tight that he’s practically vibrating with it, a cloud of thunder ready to roil. “So that’s it? I’m to bear the brunt of your anger, while you continue to fall at Midas’s feet?”
My eyes flash. “What I do is no concern of yours.”
“Dammit, Auren—”
I cut him off. “What do you want, Rip? Why are you here?”
He crosses his arms, spikes sinking beneath his skin in a fluid, effortless motion. “Me? I was just going for a walk.”
“Oh, good, another lie to add to the list,” I say sardonically. “Should I grab a quill and paper to keep track?”
Rip sighs and scrubs his hands down his face in a rare crack of his stony facade. “You’re overreacting.”
My entire body goes still as I gape at him. “I just watched you change from the king to the commander as quickly as someone pulls on a coat,” I say pointedly. “A few hours ago, you rotted Ranhold’s front yard just by walking, and you threatened the city with war. Behind me right now, I’m fairly certain there’s a roomful of guards that you killed. You just admitted to deceiving me the entire time I knew you, and yet...you think I’m overreacting?”
The muscle in his jaw jumps. “Tell me, which one of those things bothers you the most?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not a fan of lies, but mindless murder is pretty up there too.”
“It wasn’t mindless.”
I swallow, trying to deal with the confirmation that there are definitely dead guards in the next room. “Did you rot them?”
“I’m far more interested in your power,” Rip replies, and my stomach drops as he turns to look at the woman’s statue inside the cage. “Is that the first person you’ve turned gold?”
“It was an accident,” I blurt, because I’m not a mindless murderer.
His eyes flick back to me in victory, gaze sweeping my face, and I want to kick myself for just confirming his assumptions.
Realization dawns over his expression, making his eyes glint in curiosity. “An accident... Is it by touch, then? Is that why you always stay covered? Are you unable to control your own power?”
His condescending questions make shame pool in my stomach. Coming from the male who seems to have insurmountable control over his magic, I shouldn’t be surprised that he picked up on my inadequacy, but it still stings.
“How does it work?” he presses when I don’t answer.
“There you go again, trying to rip truths out of me that you have no right to,” I say. “Is that why they call you Rip?”
“You let people call you the gold-touched saddle,” he counters, making me see red. “For every thing you hate about me, it seems Midas has already done it a thousand times over.”
He’s right, and I hate him for that too.
The skin around my eyes tightens, but I can’t say anything, because all that’s caught in my throat is my own self-loathing.
Rip cocks his head and looks me over. “He plays it very well, to be a king without power. To use you with such clandestine forethought. No wonder he keeps you caged.”
The last thing I want to do is talk about being caged. A cold sweat breaks out over my back at even hearing the word.
“How do you change the way you look?” I ask, changing the subject. “How the hell does no one realize that the two of you are actually the same damn person?”
As furious as I am with him for deceiving me, I’m even more furious with myself for not realizing the truth. Even with the rotted lines of power that crawled up his face, even with the green eyes and the shadows he was bathed in, I should’ve recognized him. I’ve been with Rip enough that I should have seen through it.
Ravinger has the same strong jaw, the same black hair. Rip is just more fae looking. Sharper. It’s no wonder people say that the feared commander has been mutated by King Rot, because Rip looks so other. The bones of his face, the tips of his ears, the spikes on his back and arms, all sharp enough to cut glass and so different from anybody else I’ve ever seen.
In his Ravinger form, he looks strange because of those creeping dark roots that sway against his ski
n like shadows, so much of it hidden beneath the scruff of his jaw. I wonder just how far those lines stretch. I wonder what they mean.
Yet even with these deviances, Rip and Ravinger show enough likeness that I should’ve picked up on it. As soon as the king walked into the room, I should’ve sensed who he really was. Green eyes or black, spikes or smooth, tipped ears or curved, I should’ve known.
Both forms are drop-dead gorgeous and otherworldly, and no matter the eye color, he looks at me with the same intensity as always.
“A learned maneuver,” he answers simply. “As far as other people, they see what they’re told to see, believe what they’re told to believe. But I don’t have to explain that to you, do I? Midas has been reaping the benefits of that for years,” Rip says with apparent disdain. “Why the hell would you let everyone believe that he’s the one with gold-touch power, when it’s been you all along?”
I nearly roll my eyes at his irritated bafflement.
“Are you kidding? I was glad to hide it. The first time gold started to drip down my fingers, I knew I was in trouble. Do you know what people would do to a girl who can turn everything gold?” I shake my head at him, swiping a tired hand across my brow. “No. This world has used me enough.”
Used, abused...and that was when I only looked gold. I don’t even like to think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t run away when I did. If I’d still been there in Derfort Harbor when my power manifested, things would’ve become much worse for me, and I never would’ve gotten away. A tremor goes through me at the thought.
The spikes on Rip’s back curl like fists, while unreadable expressions move over his face like shadows. “And now? Do you feel like you still need to hide, Auren?”
My golden eyes hold his gaze. “Don’t ask me that.”
“Why not?” he challenges.
“Because you want me to spill the truth for the wrong reasons.” There’s a sadness seeping through my skin, a disappointment that’s settled over my shoulders like a cloak. “You want me to stop hiding so that I ruin Midas.”
His silence, his inability to deny it, says everything.
Gleam (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 3) Page 2