My throat feels dry. “Behave?”
“Wear the gown tonight. Mind your guards. Don’t speak unless addressed, and all will be well. You trust me, don’t you?” he asks, his face penetrating, unyielding.
My eyes prickle. I used to, I want to say. Now, I’m not so sure.
“Shouldn’t I always trust you?” I reply carefully.
Midas gives me another smile. “Of course you should, Precious.”
He turns and walks out of my dressing room, his steps echoing back at me as he walks out of my bedroom, where I hear the door to my cage clinking shut. I stay still until I hear his footsteps walk away, the bedroom door closing behind him, silencing the rest of his retreat.
A giant breath whooshes out of me, and my body nearly collapses into the chair in front of my vanity. I stare into the mirror, unseeing, my fingers trembling from the rush of emotions that leaks into me.
I’m so conflicted that my stomach churns, threatening to make me sick. “Get it together, Auren,” I chastise myself, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes to force them to stop stinging.
He wants me to behave. He wants me to trust him. And hasn’t he earned my trust, after all these years?
Hasn’t he?
The answer should be a resounding yes. The answer should be easy. The problem is, it isn’t.
Gritting my teeth, I shoot to my feet in a rush, and before I know what I’m doing, my hand has grabbed the glass lantern and I’ve hurled it with all my might against the mirror in a wave of anger.
A crash resonates through the room, and I relish in the shatter. Chest heaving, I stare at the cracked glass of the mirror, my body distorted, broken off into three reflections.
“My lady?”
I turn my head numbly and see Digby on the other side of my cage, peering at me through the bars with a troubled look on his face. With the lantern now extinguished and lying broken on the floor, the room is cast in shadows, save for the candle in his hand. He says something, but my ears are ringing, my breaths coming in too fast to hear.
I shake my head to clear it. “What?”
His head tips, his brown eyes flicking down. In a daze, I follow his line of sight and look at my hand, turning my palm up. As soon as I look at it, it’s as if my brain connects with my nerves, and I realize I’ve burned my palm when I grabbed the lantern.
I touch it lightly, frowning at the slight twinge. It’s not too bad, just slightly discolored and sore. “I’m okay,” I tell him.
Digby grunts but says nothing.
I drop my hand to my side and look over at him. “I know how this must look to you,” I say with a shake of my head. “Poor favored girl throwing a fit in her room, surrounded by all her golden things,” I say with a self-deprecating scoff.
“Didn’t say that.”
His gruff words surprise me. They’re oddly...nice. Like the gruff old guy is trying to make me feel better. He turns and walks out of the room before I can reply, leaving me to stare at the place he left with a small smile on my face.
He comes back less than a minute later, holding a new lantern. It’s bigger, one that he must’ve taken from the library, but he feeds it through the bars and places it on the floor.
“Thanks,” I say quietly before I go pick it up and put it on the table. Now that there’s adequate light, I cringe a bit at the mess I’ve made. The servants who come in here to clean probably won’t be happy.
I kneel down to start to pick up the broken glass from the lantern, but Digby raps his knuckle against the cage to get my attention. “Leave it.”
My hand pauses over the glass. “But—”
“Leave. It.”
I arch a brow and sigh. “You know, for someone who barely talks, you sure are bossy.”
He just looks steadily back at me.
I sigh and stand up, relenting. “Okay, okay. No need to glare at me.”
Digby nods and scratches his scruffy gray beard, satisfied that he’s won. My trusty guard is very serious about my protection. Even when he’s protecting me from myself, apparently.
“I knew you were my friend, Dig,” I tease him, even though the smile doesn’t quite reach my eyes, it’s nice to pretend. I latch onto these emotions with him, and forcibly shove away everything else with Midas so that I can breathe right again. “Hey, how about a drinking game?” I ask hopefully.
Digby rolls his eyes. “No.” He turns on his heel, walking away, clearly satisfied that I’m not going to throw another hissy fit and break something else.
“Oh come on, just one?” I call after him, but he keeps going, just like I knew he would. It makes me smile a little bit wider.
When I’m alone again, I sit down and sigh into the broken mirror, the distracting playfulness with Digby leaking out of me all too soon. I study the three images of myself for a moment, and then I get to work, letting my ribbons carefully comb through my tender scalp so I can plait my hair. I imagine it’s a lot like a soldier putting on armor.
At least for now, while daylight burns, I know I’m safe. For now, I still have time.
But tonight, as soon as dusk descends and the stars burn, I’ll be expected to play the part of King Midas’s favored pet. I’ll be expected to behave.
But one question burns in my mind for the entire day: What would happen if I didn’t?
Chapter Nine
I take my time brushing and braiding, doing everything slowly, as if moving at a crawling pace will prolong my fate somehow. I’m pretending that I’m not operating on borrowed time.
You can pretend a lot of things in life. You can pretend so well that you even start to believe your own deceit. We’re all actors; we’re all on pedestals with a spotlight shining on us, playing whatever part we need to in order to make it through the day—in order to help ourselves sleep at night.
Right now, I’m going through the motions, refusing to let my mind think of what’s going to happen tonight. But my body knows. It’s in the tightness of my chest, the labored inhales coming from constrictive breaths.
I try to distract myself and stay busy, but there’s only so much harp a girl can play, only so much sewing one can tolerate before she goes out of her mind with boredom.
At one point, I’m so jittery with nerves that I just start walking the circle of my cage, the bars probably making me seem like an agitated tiger pacing in its enclosure.
Bright side? The burn on my hand feels better. There’s only a small slash along the center of my palm, making my golden skin look more orange than its usual cool gleam. My stomach still hurts, but my scalp is fine...so long as I don’t touch it.
Looking out the single window in my room shows nothing but a rabid snowstorm blowing a confetti of white against the pane. It’s nearly nightfall. I wish I could string up the sun and keep it tied in the sky, but wishes are for stars, and I hardly get to see any of those anyway.
Fulke’s and Midas’s armies should’ve reached Fourth Kingdom’s borders by now. I could go into the library to find out for sure, but that’s the last place I want to be today.
I still think they’re crazy for attacking King Ravinger’s land. Not only is Midas breaking a centuries-old peace pact, but Ravinger isn’t exactly known for his magnanimous kindness. They call him King Rot for a reason, and it’s not just because of his power of decay and death. It’s said that his viciousness makes everyone near him cringe.