I blink in surprise. “What?”
“You heard me.” His tone is the low rumbling of a shaken ground, possessive fury coiling through every word. “Did. You. Fuck. Him.”
A churning, bitter hate coats my eyes, glossing it with a golden haze, and my angry beast roars in my ears. “No.”
Back and forth, his eyes flick between mine, fatal jealousy boring through them and snapping past his teeth. “Do you want him, Auren?” he croons with loathing. “Do you want that grotesque, ugly, spiked-up, magic-tainted monstrosity to bend you over and fuck you like a whore?”
The air decompresses, collapsing in on me like it’s broken up into shards that slice my lungs. I can’t think past the clamor in my skull, not with my outrage blaring so loudly.
How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
“You were watching him. I saw you.”
“Yeah?” I bite out. “Well, I saw you fucking your royal saddles all the time in front of me, so I think you can handle a glance.”
“Watch it,” he warns.
My tone drips with snarky disdain when I answer, “I did.”
It happens so fast.
One second, I’m standing there mouthing off, and the next, Midas’s hand connects with my face hard enough to rattle my brain.
I stagger back, head snapped to the right, my cheek flaming from the punishing blow. Tears drip unbidden down the aching flesh, like my eyes want to caress the spot he just smacked.
Time seems to stop.
A line forms between us, a fissure of cracked earth broken through from the force of a single hit.
He’s never struck me before. Never.
The pinching he did earlier was a shock in itself, but even so, that was a controlled punishment. A pointed reminder to stay in line, like a master yanking on a leashed collar, and very in-line with his usual temper.
But this is different. This was Midas losing control in a wave of anger, and he prides himself on his control.
Stunned silence stains the room in a void of dark shadows as I take in what just happened. The roaring creature inside of me takes it all in too, her beak bared to flash a row of razor-sharp teeth.
There seems to be a crashing sea of fury rising up, and my anger relishes in it, ready to swim beneath its depths. My entire body trembles with the force to hold her back. I can feel those waters closing in on me, a whirlpool ready to pull me under.
That love-stained girl inside of me is gone. The one whose heart was broken with the pieces used to pin her up like a bug to a board. She was burned down with the force of his palm. Her ashes are now nothing but soil to sprout the stems of the wickedness that seems to suddenly bloom brighter.
I take a fortifying inhale and turn back to look at Midas. At the man whose greed has so ruined him that he doesn’t even realize it. He’s swam out so far in a gilded sea and doesn’t even see it’s drowning him.
I hate him. I hate him so much that I know the truth gleams from my eyes.
A pregnant pause billows between us like a roiling cloud.
Midas’s eyes are wide, face pale as he looks at me in shock. Abruptly, his breath shatters the air. “Shit...”
Hands come up to my face, and his palm cups my jaw, thumbs stroking down my throbbing cheek. “Precious...I...I didn’t mean that. I was angry. I didn’t… Shit!”
Anguish bleeds through his tone, and my stomach tightens at the thundering noise. I try to jerk out of his hold, but his grip tightens, like he’s afraid to let me go. Afraid I’ll disappear into thin air.
That’s exactly what I intend to do.
He tips my head up, forcing me to look at him. “You make me so crazy, Auren.” I nearly scoff. Those are words to lay fault at my feet. “I’m not used to you behaving this way, but that was wrong of me. I lost my temper, but you know how much I love you. How much I need you.”
His touch gentles on my face, thumb wiping away the tear tracks like he wants to erase my every emotion, control everything I do, everything I feel. He wants to wipe me clean like a slate.
I almost feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for me too, that this is how we’ve ended up. However, once I’m gone, I can start over. I can have a life. But him…
By losing me, he loses everything.
“This is getting out of hand,” he says, tone quiet, the last of his vitriol expended and soaked up by my face. “Let’s go to bed. Let me take care of you. Let me show you how much I love you.”
I blink, incredulous horror spiking my pulse as I realize what he’s implying. Does he actually believe I’m going to have sex with him right now?
He either doesn’t see the look on my face, or he’s sure he can turn this around by physically distracting me, because the next thing I know, his mouth is descending, ready to capture mine for a kiss.
My abated anger rushes back like a held-back tide.
As fast as it takes to blink, my ribbons are up, curving around my front like a cocoon of ribs. With a powerful push, they shove him back, and Midas goes stumbling, nearly landing on his ass.
He stares at me with wide-eyed shock, eyes glancing warily at the ribbons poised at my sides, held up in the air with cocked ends. All that’s missing from their stance are fangs dripping with venom and a rattle in their tails.
“Don’t touch me.” My voice singes, landing against his ear and making him twitch with the burn.
Midas recovers by straightening himself, shifting on his feet warily. “You’re worked up,” he says placatingly, and although he’s trying to sound calm, to seem sure of himself, there’s a tremor in his hands as he tugs down his golden tunic, fingers running over the buttons. “It’s understandable.”
I say nothing. I’m too busy breathing shallowly through my nose while my ribbons strain at my back, tugging against my muscles like they want to rip from my skin and tackle the bastard.
“You know I love you, Auren,” he says quietly, shoulders slumping down in a rare show of remorse. “You’re the most precious thing to me in the world, but I let my temper get the better of me. You embarrassed me at the table in front of the queen, and we need her alliance,” he says, as if I care. “And I don’t like the way the commander thinks he’s entitled to touch you without my permission. Make sure it doesn’t happen again, and just...behave, alright? I don’t want this constant tension between us.” It’s nearly a plea, as if I’m causing him strife.
My eyes stay hard as stone. “I want to see Digby.”
“Soon,” he promises, eyes darting to the throbbing spot of my cheek. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk later, alright?”
The moment he leaves, the very second my door is shut with a click of a turning key, I stumble out onto the balcony and slam the door behind me. Then I pick up the snow-sodden pillow left out on the chair, and I scream into it with a pent-up bellow of rage.
It doesn’t seem to come from my own mouth, but from the throat of the beast.
I scream and scream and scream, and the sky thunders back with an answering roar that makes the mountains shudder.
Yet the creature born from a withered heart and suppressed fury isn’t satisfied. My ribbons writhe around me with spitting savagery, so I throw the pillow down and then wrap their lengths around the banister.
I haul myself off the balcony in three simple swings, executed solely by my pent-up rage. Then I’m stalking through the snow, running toward the decrepit stairs that will lead me to that forgotten antechamber with its locked doors and frigid air.
Because I can’t stay still. I can’t stay in that room where he laid his hands on me.
I have to move, or I’m afraid whatever this thing is inside of me will claw out of my skin and devastate everything in its path.
I have to find Digby.
I have to escape before I finally snap and become the monster I’m trying not to be. And the only way I can drown out that demand for violence and bloodthirst is to focus on my plan.
It’s the only thing keeping me from plunging into the flames that burn pure gold.
Chapter 21
QUEEN MALINA
Tensed fingers gripped around my arms make my eyes fly open, body jolting upright.
For a moment, I’m disoriented, mind scrapping between sleep and wakefulness, caught in that groggy, heart-pounding in-between.
With a spewed exhale, my vision adjusts to the darkness of night, and I stare up at Jeo. “What do you think you’re doing?” I bleat, the jarring way he woke me up setting my mood to plummet.
As soon as Jeo sees that I’m coherent, he turns on his heel. “We have to go. Where are your shoes?” He walks away without waiting for a reply and disappears into my dressing room.
What in the world?
“Jeo?” I call. No answer. I run a hand down my face, trying to wipe away the lingering slumber as I attempt to get my bearings in the dark room.
Jeo comes out of my dressing room a second later, and with only the low-burning fire to light the room, I squint at the bundle in his arms.
“What are you doing with my clothes?”
I push the covers aside and get up, still dressed, the cut of my white fabric now horribly wrinkled.
He stops at the bed, tossing down random bits of clothes before he starts shoving them into a knapsack—the same kind of bag that Pruinn carries for his bric-a-bracs.
“Jeo,” I snap, watching him frantically shove everything inside, his own clothing in disarray, blood-red hair sticking up in places like he just rolled from bed himself. “Tell me what’s going on right this instant.”
He looks over at me, blue eyes washed out from the light of the fire. “They breached the castle walls.”
“Who?” The stupid question falls from my mouth, unbidden. Of course I know who. I just don’t know how. I told the guards to have them all killed if they dared to come up the mountain.
“The rioters. They’ll be inside the castle within moments. You must get to the safe house.”
I feel my head shaking, feel the blood drain from my face. “That’s not possible. The guards—”
Fingers grip my arms again, shaking me, just as he did to wake me up. “The guards abandoned their posts. They opened the damn gates.”
“What?”
A nightmare. That’s all this is. I’m still sleeping, and this is a nightmare.
My temples begin to throb again.
I lift my fingers, pressing against the pulse, trying to flatten the pain out. “Send for some food. I can’t think with this incessant headache.”
“Food? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” he asks incredulously. “No food will be sent up on silver platters. Your servants are gone, already fled.”
The remnants of sleep bob in the water, my headache yanking at the anchor.
“Fools!” I curse. “Then the servants have betrayed me as well as the guards.”
“Malina, you ordered your soldiers to slaughter the people. Their people,” Jeo hisses, his fingers digging into my arms, forcing me to be present, to fasten me to the here and now. “That’s their families down there in that city. Their friends. Neighbors. And you commanded they all be killed.”
The accusation in his voice has my shoulders stiffening, lips pursing. “The people are rioting, Jeo! They needed to be punished, and I needed to put them in their place. It’s my duty as queen, and it’s the soldiers’ duty to obey me,” I snap. “The wall guard let them in? Well, I’ll see that they’re all punished too.”
With a disgusted scoff, he uses his grip to push me down and sit me on the bed. He kneels and shoves my feet into a pair of ill-laced boots. “You don’t get it, do you?” Deft fingers begin lacing me up, so tightly my ankles twinge. “You just lost the last of whatever power you thought you had here. They’ve turned on you. Everyone. You need to flee before they get inside.”
My head is shaking again, a mantra of disbelief in control of my neck. “Get my advisors. Call in the palace guards. No one will get into Highbell without meeting a bloody end.”
He finishes lacing me up, standing to jerk me back to my feet, and slings the bag of clothes over his shoulder. He pulls me to the door, while I try to extract my hand from his, but he doesn’t relent.
When I pound a fist against his back, he spins around to face me, eyes blazing. “Your advisors are gone. Most of your guards are gone too, and probably raised up arms to join the mob. It’s over, Malina!”
My throat clogs, fear and denial like clumps of gravel to scrape me up. “No.”
“Yes,” he persists, and that’s when I see past his anger, past his rush, and notice something else.
Fear.
That’s unmistakable, raw, frenetic fear there, his freckles made starker by the cold terror that’s paled his face.
I swallow hard, those jagged pieces of rock cutting down, cleaving my reality.
“What do I do?” It doesn’t even sound like my voice. No haughty confidence, no poised decorum. The tone is ragged. Vulnerable.
Jeo’s eyes soften for a heartbeat, and my own chest compresses at this saddle, at this man I’ve called my own for these past several weeks.
“You didn’t abandon me.”
He shakes his head slowly. “No, my queen.”
“Why not?” I’m not a kind woman. I’m not an easy personality. I’m certainly not warm. And I can’t even boast that I’m good in bed, because he’s my first other than Tyndall. So why he’s shown me so much loyalty is beyond me.
If the roles were reversed, I would’ve been gone. No guilt. No hesitation.
Yet here he is, shaking me awake and packing me a bag, ready to sneak me into safety.
Jeo doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t want to, or he doesn’t know why himself.
“We must hurry,” he says instead, a dagger I’ve never seen before held in his fingers. “Stay with me, and if you hear any violence, I want you to duck your head, alright?”
My heart pounds against my ribcage, threatening to cave it in, but I manage a nod.
“As soon as I open this door, your Queen’s guards will surround us and take us to your safe house. You need to keep moving, no matter what happens. Don’t stop. Okay?”
Dogged eyes look between mine for confirmation, and the moment I nod, he opens the door and pulls me through it. I gird myself, expecting the worst, head spinning like it’s still trying to argue that this couldn’t possibly be real, that I’ll wake up any moment.
But this is no nightmare. At least, not the kind you sleep through.
Just as Jeo said, my guards surround me the moment I’m in the corridor. I keep my head down, shoulders bunched as I’m rushed down the halls. My guards know how to get to the safe house, but it’s not common knowledge. Though if any of them told, if they’re leading me into a trap...
“What if the safe house is no longer secret?” I whisper to Jeo as we hurry side by side, his arm slung around my back protectively.
His grim face lets me know he’s considered this too. “It’s the best option we have left.”
My thoughts spin, trying to plot a way out of this. “The timberwings—”
“All gone. All taken with Midas.”
I curse beneath my breath, nearly stumbling when my too-tight boot catches against one of the new rugs placed on the floor, the glaring white fur an idiotic attempt at covering more gold.
Though when we get to the main floor, I hear it.
A cacophony of rage.
Voices, hundreds of them, bleating outside the castle walls. They’re all shouting something different, words or jeers or wordless hollers, joined in a clamor of unmitigated outcry.
When we race through the main hall, that’s when I hear the hacking. The destroying.
“What are they doing?” I cry out, the slashing and sawing noises growing so intense I can feel it vibrating through the castle walls.
“Getting their due,” Jeo answers gri
mly, his hold around me going tighter. “They’re splitting Highbell apart brick by brick, stealing the gold that they’ve been forced to see every day while they starve and freeze.”
Sour acid bubbles up my throat and coats the back of my tongue.
I hate the gold that Midas tainted Highbell with, but this...this desecration of my castle, of my home, makes my hands shake. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this.
How did this happen?
How did I lose control so fast?
A horrible booming noise shakes the walls, making the chandeliers sway as if dozens of people are out there heaving a beam to force entry.
“Will the doors hold?” I ask. They’re gilded, not solid, but even so, it should mean that they’ll be harder to break.
“The last of the guards who didn’t abandon their posts are on the other side,” the man covering my left tells me. “They’ll hold it as long as they can.”
Jeo makes me go faster until we’re full on running. We head for the doorway that leads to the bell tower, except instead of going through it, we take a sharp right into a corridor that appears to dead end. My guards shove aside a hanging tapestry to reveal a hidden doorway latched into the wall, obscured by wainscoting.
As soon as they muscle-open the secret door, I look down into the yawning darkness of a forgotten passageway. One that hasn’t had to be used by any royal for generations. Now, I’m forced to flee down it.
The way is so dark that all I can see are the first few steps of a narrow set of stairs before the darkness surrounds them. No gold down there. It’s nothing but raw cut stone, drab and gray, soiled with stale air.
“Torches. We need torches!” one of the guards demands, making another sprint out of the room to go get something to light our way.
I watch the doorway he just left through, mind churning with the horrible question of whether or not he’ll actually come back. I nearly jump out of my skin when a tear-stained servant walks past, hair in disarray, panic in her wild eyes.
“Go!” Jeo shouts at her, making her flinch. “You need to run. Hide. Don’t be caught serving in here when they break in.”
Gleam (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 3) Page 22