“Shh,” Midas croons, his hands running up and down my arms in comforting strokes. “It’s alright. You don’t have to think about any of that anymore. You’re here now. No one will ever take you from me again.”
I nod, trying to get a hold of myself, trying to stop the flood of golden tears pouring from my eyes. “I missed you.”
He squeezes me slightly, warm eyes looking at me like I’m his greatest treasure. “You know I would stop at nothing to get you back.”
A small smile tilts up my lips. “I know.”
We simply watch each other for a moment, and I feel his presence tethering me to the comfort he represents. It’s that old, familiar warmth, that sense of security. It makes the beast inside of me settle, her claws drawing back, maw closing.
All of the uncertainty and anxiousness that I’ve felt all of these weeks, it all slowly retreats until I’m standing on familiar footing again. It’s a relief that I no longer have to be so alert, to be so careful. A quiet sigh slips out of me, and my shoulders lower slightly, losing the months of tension I’ve been carrying.
Midas’s brown eyes go soft, cushioning soil to pillow the vulnerable seed. “You’re here with me,” he murmurs. “Everything is okay now.”
I desperately want to reach up and brush a hand against his chest, to feel the beat of his heart, but I manage to hold back.
After a moment, Midas’s gaze takes on a more assessing edge, sweeping over me from head to toe. “You look a mess. Did they not even allow you a bath? A brush?”
I cringe, suddenly feeling self-conscious, embarrassed. Here he is, looking just as handsome as always, while I probably look like something not even the dogs would drag in.
I try to give him a smirk, but it feels forced, my cheeks trembling slightly. “It’s not like there were many bathhouses in the Barrens,” I joke lamely. Midas just frowns.
Pulling away, I look down at my wrinkled dress, hem stained and fabric loose. The top of my torn bodice is still gaping from where Captain Fane tore it, and my coat is ripped too. My boots are scuffed, my socks worn with holes, and I don’t even want to think about the state of my body and hair.
“I know, I look awful.” I pull at the end of my braid, thankful that I kept my hood on. Weeks and weeks of rag baths have not done me any favors.
“We’ll get you right as rain in no time, Precious,” he says with a warm smile. “Now that you’re back, we have so much to discuss. So much to do.”
I’m content to simply hear him talk. I’ve missed the sound of his voice, missed the way he lights up when he has plans and dreams to share with me.
“I won’t ever make the mistake of separating from you again,” he vows solemnly. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear it.”
“You couldn’t know this would happen.”
“No, but I’ll ensure it doesn’t ever happen again.”
With his fierce promise, he moves and goes around the desk where there are a pile of rolled up messages. I wander closer. “Did you get my hawk?” I ask.
“What hawk?”
I blink for a moment. “You...I sent you a letter. I found the army’s messenger hawks and managed to sneak out a message to you. To warn you that Fourth’s army was coming. You didn’t get it?”
He shakes his head and grabs a golden-fur monarch robe from the back of the chair. Slipping it on, he then picks up his crown that I hadn’t noticed was sitting on the desk.
“I received a message from King Ravinger himself. The bastard was gloating that he had you, that he rescued you from the Red Raids,” Midas scoffs angrily. “As if you were in any better company with his soldiers.”
“Actually, they treated me well. Much better than the pirates,” I explain, and I can’t suppress the shudder just thinking about them. I don’t even feel a lick of remorse for killing a man. The world is better off without Captain Fane.
Midas places the crown on his head and shoots me a dark look. “I will deal with the Red Raids,” he says, the promise darkening his eyes. “I’ll skewer their wretched bodies on solid gold spikes, letting their screams echo from the ramparts. If they so much as touched a hair on your head, I’ll peel the fingertips from their hands. I’ll cut out their eyes for even daring to look at what’s mine.”
The threat brings a chill to my skin.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” I say, hoping to redirect his thoughts.
I don’t want our reunion to be tainted with his fury. I want to hold on for a little bit longer, to just bask in his nearness. I’m also desperate to talk to him. To really talk, the way we used to, when we wandered from Second Kingdom to Sixth, traveling by day and talking by night, wrapped in each other’s arms beneath the stars.
“Soon,” he promises. “For now, I have to meet with that bastard, King Ravinger. But I have a gift for you first.”
“A gift?”
He tilts his head. “Come.”
Intrigued, I follow him as he leads me through two rooms—a sitting room of some kind and then a bedroom. I look around, briefly noting the coat flung over a chair, the fireplace, the large bed. Both rooms are built with black iron and gray bricks, lush whites and purples to decorate every inch.
“It’s so nice in here,” I muse, looking around. I start walking toward the balcony so that I can check the view while he grabs a candlestick from his bedside table.
Before I can reach the doors, he lights the candle and gestures to me. “This way.”
I give a longing look at the balcony before I turn around and trail after him into the next room. I come to a stop just inside the doorway, immediately understanding the need for the candle. There aren’t any windows in here—it’s nearly pitch black except for a lantern flickering at the back of the room, but it’s obscured slightly by something.
Midas strides confidently forward while I hover at the door, trying to get my eyes to adjust. “What’s this?”
He stops by a spot at the wall to the left and fiddles with something with his lit candle, and I realize he’s lighting a wall sconce. A soft orangish glow flares to life.
“This is technically my dressing room, but I’ve made some adjustments.”
A fingertip of unease prickles on the back of my neck as Midas goes to the opposite end of the dark room and lights another sconce.
As soon as he does, my blood runs cold.
Because there, built into the middle of the room, is a beautiful wrought iron cage.
Chapter 37
AUREN
It’s strange how your body reacts to certain things. For me, when I see the cage, there’s a roaring in my ears. It howls, gusting over my skin and whipping against my bones.
I wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with a new cage so soon.
Midas turns to face me with a smile. “I had this made for you,” he says, motioning over to it with clear approval. “I know it’s small. This one is temporary for now, and not gold yet, of course,” he adds with a wink in my direction.
That roaring wind starts blowing hard enough to batter my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
When I see something inside of the cage move, I startle. “What—” My words cut off when a person rises from the small bed. From the faint light, I see her—my decoy.
She has bed-mussed hair and paint-smeared skin. A quick glance to the blankets shows stains from where it’s rubbed off. Metallic gleam left behind on the sheets like the damning evidence of a secret lover.
The woman rises and looks between us. “My king?”
Her hair hangs around her shoulders, a little shorter than mine by a couple inches. She has round, light brown eyes, and a similar face shape to me. Her lips are plush, and her body is an hourglass wrapped up in a gold dress.
My gold dress.
And even though the paint covering her body and hair isn’t my exact shade, and even though I can see it creasing around her eyes and wiped off her palms, the sight of her sets me on edge.
“Good news for you, my favored has arrived,” he tells the woman.
She smiles, creasing dimples into her cheeks. I can tell from the relief in her eyes that she can’t wait to get out. I wonder if she feels like a wing-clipped bird. I wonder if she can’t wait to wash the gold from her skin.
This was temporary for her, when it never is for me.
When she notices that I’m still staring at her, the smile on her face falters. I know it’s not her fault that she’s in there, that she’s painted and dressed to look like me, but emotions roil through me as erratic as a cyclone. I’m shocked, embarrassed, hurt.
To see that I can so easily be replicated, to see me, from the outside looking in...
Osrik was right—the woman I’m looking at right now? She’s nothing but a symbol for Midas. Not a person, not someone in charge of her own life, but a living and breathing image to showcase the Golden King’s might.
The sight of her makes me sick.
“I’m sure you’re relieved to be back where it’s safe,” Midas tells me. “Where no one can get to you.”
My eyes drag away from the cage and settle on his face. I grasp my skirts to stop my trembling hands.
“Ready?” he asks me.
Too fast, this is happening far too fast.
“Midas...” I choke out.
He crosses the room to come back to me, and takes my gloved hands into his. “I know I let you down, Auren. I promised to always keep you safe, and I failed you. But I won’t fail you again,” he promises, his expression focused with determined intent.
I swallow, trying to stop the whirling emotions so that I can be intelligible enough to talk. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I’m not afraid anymore. Not like I was,” I begin, swallowing past the acid that keeps climbing up my throat.
Midas frowns at me, and I fumble with what to say. This isn’t how I envisioned our reunion. Not at all.
He was supposed to hold me and not want to let me go. Our separation was meant to make him open to hearing me. I imagined being wrapped in his arms for hours while he listened to me talk.
Disappointment is a roughhewn boulder settling in my stomach. It rolls and scrapes, making me go raw with the realization that none of that is going to happen.
We’re picking right up where we left off.
I thought because I’ve changed, that he would change too. What a silly, naive thought.
The road that we were on has forked, and I went on a different path. I need to explain things to him now, need him to catch up to me.
“There’s so much that’s happened, Midas,” I tell him, trying to move that deadweight boulder, pushing it like I can push him to meet me on that forked road. “I know I need to prove it to you so that you believe me, but...I don’t need the cage. Not anymore. We don’t need it.”
He stares at me for a beat, his blond brows pulled together. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“This,” I say, my head cocked toward the cage, though my eyes can’t bear to look at it, can’t bear to meet the eye of the woman inside. “We don’t need it.”
The confused frown morphs into a scowl, and his tone grows incredulous. “Of course we need it. That fact should be blatantly clear after what you just endured.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s because of what I endured that we don’t,” I hastily explain, tugging my hands from his. “I spent all that time with the army, and everything was okay. I know how to handle myself now. I proved it to myself, and I know that once I tell you everything, I’ll prove it to you too.”
I relied on the cage for too long. And then I resented it—resented him, resented myself. I don’t want to go back to that. I’ve outgrown it, and I’m finally strong enough to admit it to him.
Midas lets out a long-suffering sigh and rubs his blond eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. From my peripheral, I can see my decoy watching us with rapt attention.
“Auren, I know you just experienced some terrible things, but for now, I need to go meet with King Ravinger. Afterward, once it’s dark out, I’ll bring you out for a bath and a meal, and we’ll talk, alright?”
I shake my head, hands held up in front of me. “No, it’s not alright. Just listen for a minute—”
He cuts me off. “I don’t have time for this. Get into the cage.”
He’s doing what he usually does—talking over me, making me feel like I’m always wrong and he’s always right. If I could just get him to listen, to really hear me, then he would understand.
He’s under a lot of pressure right now with Fourth Kingdom breathing down his neck, and I don’t want to add more stress to him. I know that, at the heart of it, he craves this control because he was worried about me, so I understand the root of his reactions. But...I need him to understand mine too.
For once, I need him to see my side.
I don’t want to be cowed by him. I want to set a different tone now than the way things were before. I want to start off on the right foot and have a fresh beginning. Show him how things can be, that I’m ready for it. That I need it.
I take a calming breath. “It doesn’t have to be this way anymore.” My tone is gentle, as if it can draw out that softer side of him too.
Silence stretches between us, and it’s filled with the reactions that play over his face, a song with the rhythm of his disapproval and disagreement. I don’t want to hear it.
“We don’t need it. Trust me. Things are different now. I’m different now,” I say, pointing at my chest. “Things don’t have to be the way they were in Highbell.” I tilt my chin up. “And I don’t want them to be.”
He stands so still, and he’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before, and maybe I’m looking at him like that too.
Midas blinks at me for another moment before he runs a frustrated hand down his face. He starts pacing the small dressing room, shoes scuffing over the purple rug on the floor.
“I’m trying to be patient with you right now, considering what you’ve been through, but you’re making this very difficult,” he says before turning back to me. “You’ve never behaved this way before.”
I bristle from his chastisement, but he’s right. I haven’t, not with him.
Two months ago, I would’ve backed down immediately. I would’ve never pushed him in the first place. But I’m changed now, and the worries, the dangers—we can work through those together.
But the thought of being shoved back in a cage, especially one so small…
Osrik’s words blare in my ears.
I’ll never get how you fucking stand it.
Right now, in this moment, I realize.
I can’t.
Chapter 38
AUREN
My traitorous eyes flick over to the cage.
I take in its thick, menacing iron, its six curled pieces looped around the top to add decorative flair, before I look back at Midas.
“I know you’re in a rush, and I don’t want to make you late, so I’ll stay in your rooms while you go to the meeting, and then we’ll talk after.”
He pins me with a fiery glare. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, but you’re not in charge, Auren. I’m your king, remember? You will do as I say.”
My heart pounds with the command, and I know I’ve lost any hope of rekindling old Midas. King Midas is firmly in place.
He jabs a finger to point in the direction of the cage. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re in that cage, safe and secure, where no one can get to you. Do you want to get taken again? Do you want to be vulnerable?”
“Of course not.”
He’s agitated, cheeks reddened, eyes lit with that temper I tried to subdue. I’ve failed miserably in keeping him calm and open to what I have to say.
“Did you betray me?” h
e asks suddenly.
His question makes me pause. “What?”
“You heard me,” he says flatly. “Did. You. Betray. Me?” Every word is a sentence, each one bitten off.
My mouth drops open, mind whirling. “What... How could you—of course I didn’t betray you!”
“Did you let any of those filthy pirates touch you? Did you let Fourth’s army touch you?”
“Let?” My question stretches like a string ready to snap.
I know he can hear the hurt in my voice, because I hear it too. That hurt is stitched from my words to my face, woven through my features.
“Fine,” Midas replies, but his voice is still hard, still cruel, the voice of a king who expects to be followed. “But if you didn’t betray me, then prove it. Get into the cage.”
I feel tears prick the backs of my eyes, and my shoulders stiffen. He’s not going to listen. Even though I’m right here, standing in front of him, trying to tell him, he won’t listen.
My chin drops to my chest, as if it feels the burden of a forlorn weight pressing down. “Don’t do this, Midas. Not now. Not after everything. Please.”
His stony exterior isn’t touched by my plea. “This is the way it has to be, and you know why. You agreed.”
My eyes flick up. “I changed my mind.”
Midas levels a flat look at me. “I didn’t give you permission to change your mind.”
I rear back like he’s hit me. For the pain that’s emanating through my body, he might as well have.
His mouth is tight, shoulders tense, crown still proudly sitting on his head. “Last chance,” he tells me, a viciousness in his tone. “Get into the cage, or I’ll put you in it.”
It’s like I’ve been pierced directly in the heart.
I haven’t seen him for two months. I thought I was going to be killed multiple times. All I wanted was for him to tell me that he’s proud of me, that he loves me.
Glint (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 2) Page 27