by Penny Cavan
“Go away, Nigel!” Midas and I both called, freezing. Midas’s head dropped back to the pillow. I smiled and rested my forehead on his, rocking my hips. He hissed as the tip of his cock slid into me.
“We could keep going,” I said, rocking my hips again.
“He wouldn’t disturb me here unless it was critical,” he said. “Damn him.” He slid his hands to my waist, holding my hips steady. He kissed me gently. “We are going to finish this. Today,” he promised. I nodded and slipped off him, rolling onto my back. I stared at the ceiling, studying the swirling gold on the molding, breathing deeply. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright.
“You’ve never done this,” I said, turning to look at him in shock. He looked up at me from his pillow, an eyebrow raised. “You turn what you touch into gold. You’ve never touched a girl.” He went bright red and immediately rolled out of bed. He stumbled slightly with his pants around his thighs, but he pulled them up as he walked over to a dresser. I brought my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them as I watched him in the mirror hanging over the dresser. He looked up and caught me watching him then looked away again, blushing. “Oh, Midas,” I said, getting out of bed and moving behind him. I hugged him, laying my head on his shoulder. “I love that I’m the only one who knows you like this.”
Chapter Eighteen
Midas
I tried not to storm into my office where I knew that Nigel was waiting. “It had better be important for you to have interrupted my morning,” I growled. He went slightly pink and cleared his throat, pulling a document up on a tablet. He silently handed it to me. My eyes widened as I looked at the data that Nigel had pulled together. In the last forty years, hundreds of thousands of children had vanished.
“This data shows that nearly a third of our population is gone by the age of six,” Nigel said softly, “and that’s just the records from within the City.” The numbers come from births and then first required test scores from schools. That doesn’t include any unregistered births.” I flipped to another screen which showed the demographics by area of the city, allowing me to flip through the different years. There were ‘deaths’ across every section of the city, but the most were concentrated in the poorer areas of the city.
“There has to be more to this than just people not magically gifted,” I muttered to myself. “What was happening forty years ago?” I asked.
“I’m trying to determine what could have triggered this,” he said. “The records of that time are vague, although I have seen both population control and social cleansing mentioned in a few of the underground news reports of the time.” Neither Nigel nor I were old enough to know first-hand.
“Talk to Ameliya,” I told him. “She was mentioning stories that she heard from back then just the other day. She should have some idea of where to look.” I looked up when the door opened and smiled to see Harlow coming in. She blushed when she saw Nigel.
“Good morning, Nigel,” she said pleasantly. “I do apologize for keeping Midas from his work this morning. Can you forgive me?” She smiled sweetly at him.
“Nothing to forgive, Miss Harlow,” he said graciously, blushing again.. “I just felt that this news was better reported away from our normal offices.”
“What news is that?” she said, looking at me as she sat on the edge of my desk. I handed the tablet over to her. She looked at it then up at me. “What is this?”
“Population and demographic data for the City going back forty years,” Nigel said helpfully.
“What’s a demographic?” Harlow asked curiously.
I walked over next to her and slid back to the first screen, which showed the declining population. “A population is how many people live in a given area,” I whispered in her ear, trying not to smile when she shivered. “This shows that our population has been going down over the last forty years, with the quickest decline in the first ten years or so.” I turned it to the next screen, pulling up this last year. “A demographic breaks down a population by a variable. In this case, each bar represents a different area of the city, and each pattern in the bar is a different age range.” She studied the graph.
“There’s a population drop between the youngest group and the next group up,” she said, pointing to the two sections. “And it’s biggest in the pleasure district and the manufacturing district.” She crossed one leg over her knee and I nearly groaned when I felt her toe moving along the inside of my upper thigh. “Two can play that game,” she said, softly enough that Nigel couldn’t hear.
“The newborn to six-year-olds, and the seven to twelves,” Nigel said. “That population drop is consistent every year with no explanation. The High Council doesn’t even attempt to explain it, like they did a decade ago when the Harla plague came through and decimated the older generations.”
I looked up at him sharply. “That would imply that someone knows about this at the higher levels. There’s no independent studies or addendums?” He shook his head. I sighed. “You were right to keep this out of the office,” I said, standing and moving to sit behind my desk. “Please, continue to dig, but keep it quiet. As always—”
“Record the hours I work outside of the office for compensation,” Nigel said, rolling his eyes with a grin. “Of course, Sir.”
Harlow giggled and I glared at her. “Such irreverence,” I said. “I should punish you all for it.” She grinned brightly at me, which had me thinking of all the different ways that I could punish her. “Nigel, I’ll be working from home this week,” I said, turning back to him. “Simply say that,” I paused, thinking.
“You had a personal matter come up, Sir?” Nigel asked. I eyed Harlow. Could I win her over in a week?
“Perfect,” I said, glad that I’d always guarded my personal life fiercely. “And make it two weeks. You can bring updates to me every other day.” He nodded and turned to leave.
“Nigel?” Harlow asked, and he turned back. “Two things. First, would you stop at my former lodgings and tell either Sara or Arida that the skies are blue? It’s to let them know that I am not being held against my will,” she said, explaining to me. He nodded with a smile.
“The second thing, Miss Harlow?” he asked.
“I think this house needs a pet. If you can catch the black cat that likes Midas’ vault, would you bring her?” I laughed. The little minx. Nigel looked at me.
“Bring the furry void,” I said, laughing. “It seems that I’m not enough company for our intrepid thief.”
I did have to work, so I sent Harlow off that morning with a sigh. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she returned with two sandwiches on a plate, a book, and the blue blanket from her room. We ate together, then she curled up with the book and blanket in a chair that she pulled over by the window.
I got less work done that afternoon than I had all morning. I kept glancing over every time she giggled at something happening in her book, or when she moved. Eventually I set the pen down and moved behind her. “You are terrible for my work ethic,” I whispered in her ear. She jumped slightly and closed her book. “What were you reading so intently?”
“An old romance novel I found in the library,” she said. “It starts with the heroine falling out of a tree and on to a roof.”
“Just like you?”
“Excuse me,” she said, pretending to be affronted. “I have never fallen out of a tree. Mostly because I’ve never climbed one.” I laughed with her.
“I have a little more work I have to get done today,” I said, kissing her head. She smiled and set her book on the windowsill.
“I’ll go see Ameliya,” she said. “She said something about chocolate chip cookies, and that she would teach me to make them.”
“Have you ever had a chocolate chip cookie?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said, heading for the door. “I don’t see how they can be any good at all. The only chocolate I’ve ever had was almost black and awful.”
“Don’t try them without me!” I called after her. �
��And we’ll be trying them in bed when I can feed them to you.” I muttered to myself. If she thought the monkey bread was good, she would go insane over these.
Chapter Nineteen
Harlow
The kitchen smelled absolutely amazing while the cookies baked. I’d had cookies before, but they had been dry and tasteless things compared to what I was sure was going to come out of that oven. They’d looked amazing even going in, but Ameliya hadn’t let me even try the batter. “Mr. Midas will love your reaction to these,” she said, smacking the back of my hand with a spoon when I tried to sneak a bite. “I am not going to take that joy away from him.” I rolled my eyes, grinning. We sat and talked as the cookies baked, and Ameliya had me chopping vegetables to make a stew.
“He was a precious boy,” she said, when I asked her to tell me stories of Midas as a child. “Lonely, but the sweetest soul. He collected rocks and would bring me flowers that he thought were pretty. Usually they were weeds.” We both laughed.
“Did he have the gold curse when he was a baby?” I asked, eating a carrot piece. She sighed and swept the chopped vegetables into a large pot.
“The family is always born with it,” she told me. “They can turn things to gold with a single touch from the time they’re born. Nurses and maids wear gloves, and the baby is always fed from his mother’s breast. We had to teach him not to touch anything without gloves on.”
I frowned. “If they turn everything to gold, how do they have children?”
“The rumor is that the family was cursed millennia ago by a witch. The first Midas had a daughter, and the son of the witch wanted to marry her. Midas refused, and threw him out of his palace. The witch told him that he was too focused on wealth and cursed him to turn anything he touched to gold. The first thing he touched was his daughter. Eventually, the witch gave the king a potion that he could give to one woman to make her immune to his touch until his son was born. Each Midas since then has had a single child, a boy.” She added water and spices to the vegetables before adding the meat she had been browning to the stew. “It’s sad really. Once the child is born, the father can no longer touch the mother. And once the baby is weaned, then the mother can’t touch the child either.”
“So, my being able to touch Midas is important?” I asked.
“It’s never happened before,” Midas said, coming to sit behind me. Ameliya nodded sadly in confirmation. She took a towel off of the racks where ethe first of the cookies were cooling. They were a beautiful golden color. “I checked through the family history after we met for the first time, and there’s no other record of a man of my family being touched without the potion.”
“Clearly I’m just special,” I said with a grin. “Now can I try one of these?” I asked, turning back to Ameliya.
“Only if you want to burn your mouth. They’re not cool enough quite yet.” She set a basket in front of me. “There’s sandwiches, a blanket, and some wine in there. Why don’t you two go have a picnic by the pond? The cookies will have cooled by the time you return.” I stuck my tongue out at her teasingly and grabbed the basket, heading out to the garden. Midas followed me.
“So, how do we get to the pond again?” I asked, reaching over to take Midas’ hand. He looked down at our hands together and frowned. He was going to have to get used to me touching him.
“This way,” he said, pulling his hand free, which hurt more than I wanted to admit. I followed behind him through the flowers, walking slower than my normal pace. He turned when he got to the small gate and pushed it open behind him as he held out his bare hand. I stared at it for a moment. “What? Did you think I didn’t want to hold your hand?” he said, studying me as he tucked his gloves into a pocket. I bit my lip and looked away. “Harlow,” he said, stepping forward and lifting my chin with his finger. “I always want my hands on you, I just don’t want a layer between them and you.” I smiled at him, leaning up to kiss him gently. I slid my hand into his and gestured for him to lead the way.
The pond was bigger than I expected. I had expected something that I could walk around in a few minutes, but it was big enough to have a rowboat at a dock. A large rock sat near the edge and I stared at it. There was something strange about it. “Look,” Midas said, pointing to it. “The turtle of the pond.”
“It looks like a rock. Are you sure that’s a turtle?” I set the basket down and walked to the edge of the bond.
“I’m sure it’s a turtle,” he said laughing. “To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s the same turtle, or just another turtle that’s grown to the same size.” He leaned over next to me, picking up a rock. He didn’t twitch as it turned to gold in his hand but took careful aim. He skipped it over the surface of the water, and it bounced at the right angle to hit the hard shell of the beast. It lifted itself up on scaly legs and hissed at us before it slid in the water.
“I am never getting in that pond,” I declared, backpedaling from the edge of the pond. I tripped over the edge of the basket and fell on my ass.
“I wouldn’t suggest it,” Midas said with a laugh, coming back over to sit by me. I glared at him and shifted onto my knees to pull the blanket from the top of the basket. Midas took one half so we could spread it out. He settled cross legged and pulled the wine and two glasses from the basket. I moved in next to him and rested my head on his shoulder. He handed me one of the glasses.
I studied my wine glass. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with all of this?” I asked. “You’ve gone from not believing me and kidnapping me to being all in on figuring out what’s going on.”
He took a drink of his wine. “Honestly, I’m still not sure. There is something going on, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t know what it is. I believe that you believe that your version of events is right. I want to solve the mystery to put your mind at ease”. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close. “I would give anything for this moment right here, so a little bit of digging into a new problem is nothing to me.”
“But—” I started, and he tipped my head up to kiss me and shut me up.
“Don’t worry about it, Harlow,” he murmured. “I can and will protect you.”
With a sigh, I went back to watching the surface of the pond. After a while, the turtle came back and crawled onto the rock. Midas told me that they were cold blooded, so they got their heat by basking in the sun. I could empathize with the turtle. The breeze was chilly when it blew off the water but between the sun on my front and Midas at my side, I was warm. I could get used to this life, but deep inside, I knew it wasn’t for me. I’d end up back at the Golden Drachma, but I’d have these memories to keep me warm at night.
Chapter Twenty
Midas
“Are you ready?” I asked, holding back a grin. We stood on opposite sides of Ameliya’s counter, a plate of still warm chocolate chip cookies between us. Harlow rolled her eyes, both hands on the table. It was almost a crime that she’d never had one of these cookies before, but I would forever be grateful to watch this moment.
“Midas, it’s a cookie. I don’t think it’s going to be as life altering as you keep implying,” she said dryly, one hand inching to the plate.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said, nodding to the plate. “If you think your life isn’t about to be change, take a cookie.” She rolled her eyes at me. She took a cookie and studied it between her fingers.
“Hmmm,” she started. “It appears to be a baked good, and still warm. It smells like butter and sugar,” she said sniffing. She transferred it to her other hand. “It leaves a slight residue on the fingers.”
“Stop playing the scientist and just try it already!” Ameliya exclaimed from the table by the window where she was working on something. Harlow descended into giggles as she took her first bite of the cookie. She was silenced as her eyes went wide. She stared at me, then down at the cookie, then back at me as she chewed, and quickly finished the cookie, grabbing another with one hand.
“Oh my god,” she said reverently. “These
are amazing!” She groaned as she bit into the next cookie, her eyes sliding shut, and I adjusted how I was standing. “How are they so sweet?” She looked back at me with wide eyes and a smear of chocolate on her lip.
“It’s the chocolate,” I said after clearing my throat. I reached over and wiped the chocolate from her lip. I showed it to her. “You said the only chocolate you’d had was bitter, it was probably dark chocolate. These are milk chocolate.” I stuck my finger in my mouth and sucked the chocolate from my finger. Harlow blushed and stuck another cookie in her mouth. I laughed and took a cookie of my own. “I told you that waiting would be worth it.”
“I could eat nothing but these forever,” Harlow said.
“I’m pretty sure that you have said that about everything you’ve eaten since you arrived,” I said dryly.
“The food is better here,” Harlow said, frowning. “Even Meg can’t get food of this quality.” She set down a cookie.
“I know,” I said, reaching across the counter to take her hand. “It’s not fair, and I already know that you would like to solve the problem. Let’s solve one problem first, then we can work on solving the rest of the problems of the city.”
“We?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We,” I said. “We’re a team now, Harlow. Your dreams and goals are mine, whether I fully believe in them or not, and I hope that mine are yours.” She chewed on her bottom lip.
“Can we take some of these to Arida’s?” she asked. “I know a little girl who would absolutely love them” I grinned knowing Addy would.
I didn’t give Harlow a choice as to where she was sleeping that night. I waited while she gathered nightclothes and whatever else she needed from her room, then wrapped my arm around her and led her to my room. “We’ll move your things tomorrow,” I said, pushing the door open.