“Oh,” I reply, knowing what this implies. King Fulke will want to see me before he leaves. He has a near obsession with me that he doesn’t try to hide anymore.
Bright side? His enthrallment makes Midas pay more attention to me. It’s like when children are fighting over a single toy. When Fulke is around, Midas hoards me, making sure Fulke doesn’t get a chance to play.
If Midas notices my discomfort, he doesn’t say anything about it. “You’ll come to the breakfast room in the morning while we dine,” he says, and I nod. “Now go to your room and get some rest so you can be fresh. I’ll send for you when it’s time.”
I bow my head. “Yes, my king.”
With another smile, Midas walks out of the atrium with a flap of his robe, and I’m left alone, the atrium suddenly feeling cavernous.
I sigh and look at the expanse of gold bars that curve out into the room, silently hating them. If only I was strong enough to pull the bars apart and slip out. It’s not even that I’d run away, because I wouldn’t. I do know how good I have it here. But to just be allowed to roam on my own within the castle, to follow Midas to his bedroom...that’s all the freedom I long for.
Just for fun, I grip two of the bars and pull with all of my might. “Come on, you little gilded prick sticks,” I mutter as my arms strain.
Admittedly, I don’t have much to boast about in the muscles department. I probably should use some of my free time to exercise. It’s not as if I’m too busy. I could do sprints from one end of the floor to the other, or I could climb up the rungs of the cage and do pull-ups, or I could…
A snort of laughter escapes me, and my hands drop back to my sides. I’m bored, but I’m not that bored. That male saddle with the abs is obviously much more motivated than me.
I look past my bars to the birdcage that’s hanging from a pedestal a few feet away. Inside, there’s a solid gold bird sitting frozen on her perch. She used to be a snow finch, I think. A belly marked to match the white snow she would’ve flown over, wings outstretched to glide through icy swept wind. Now, her soft feather down is all hard metallic lines, her wings forever tucked against her small form, her throat clogged into silence.
“Don’t look at me like that, Coin,” I tell her. She stares unblinkingly back at me.
“I know,” I say with a sigh. “I know it’s important to Midas that I’m kept safe inside my cage, just like you,” I say with a tilt of my head before I glance at all the luxuries I have within reach.
The food, the pillows, the expensive clothing. Some people would kill for these things, and I don’t just mean that as a figure of speech. They would actually kill for it. Poverty is a vicious motivator. I know that all too well.
“It’s not like he hasn’t tried to make me more comfortable. I shouldn’t be so greedy or thankless. Things could be a lot worse, right?”
The bird just continues to stare at me, and I tell myself to stop talking to the thing. It took its last breath a long time ago. I don’t even remember the sound of its song anymore. I imagine it was beautiful, though, before it solidified into a gleaming, silent specter.
Is that going to be me?
Fifty years from now, will my body go completely solid like the bird? Will my organs fuse, my voice silence, tongue weighted? Will the whites of my eyes bleed out, lids stuck forever open, unseeing? Maybe it’ll be me on my perch in here, stuck immobile forever, while people look in, talking to me through the bars when I can’t talk back.
It’s a fear I have, though I’ve never voiced it. Who knows if this power will change? Maybe one day, I really will be a statue.
For now, all I can do is keep singing, keep ruffling my proverbial feathers. Keep breathing with a chest that still rises and falls like the sun. Coin and I aren’t the same. At least not yet.
Turning, I run my hand down the bars before letting my arm drop to my side. Bright side, Auren. You have to look on the bright side.
Like the fact that my cage isn’t small. Midas has slowly expanded it over the years to reach throughout the entire top floor of the palace. He had workers construct extra doorways at the backs of the rooms to be fitted with barred walkways that spill out into large circular cages. He did all of that for me.
On my own, I can get to the atrium, drawing room, library, and royal breakfast room, plus my personal rooms, which takes up the entire north wing. It’s more space than a lot of people have in the kingdom.
My personal rooms include my bathroom suite, dressing room, and my bedroom. Lavish rooms with giant-sized bird cages built into each one, and connecting barred walkways that allow me to walk from one room to the other so that I never have to leave my cage unless Midas comes to escort me elsewhere. But even then, he usually only takes me to the throne room.
Poor favored golden girl. I know how ungrateful I sound, and I hate it. It’s like a festering slice deep under my skin. I keep scratching at it, irritating it, even though I know I shouldn’t touch it, should let it heal over and scar.
But while every room is opulent and my every view elegant, the luxury of it all has long since faded away for me. I guess that’s bound to happen after being here for so long. Does it really matter if your cage is solid gold when you aren’t allowed to leave it? A cage is a cage, no matter how gilded.
And that’s the crux of it. I begged him to keep me and protect me. He fulfilled his promise. It’s me who’s ruining this. It’s my own mind warping me, whispering thoughts I have no right to think.
Sometimes, when I drink enough wine, I can forget I’m in a cage, I can forget the pestering scratch.
So I drink a lot of wine.
Blowing out another breath, I look up at the glass ceiling, noticing more clouds rolling in from the north, their puffy forms illuminated by a left-behind moon.
A foot of snow will probably dump over Highbell tonight. By tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the atrium windows are completely covered in white powder and thick ice, the sky hidden from me once again.
Bright side? For now, I still have that single star peeking through the night.
When I was young, I remember my mother telling me that the stars were goddesses waiting to hatch from the light. A pretty story for a little girl who would lose her family and her home in one fell swoop.
At five years old, on a clear, starry night, I was ushered out of my bed. Single file we walked, me and the other kids living nearby, while the sound of fighting erupted in the air. We crept out into a warm eventide, trying to get to safety while danger surrounded us. I cried beneath my parents’ kisses, but they told me to go. To be brave. That they would see me soon.
One order, one urge, one lie.
But someone must’ve known that we were being whisked away. Someone must’ve told. So while I and the others were snuck out, it wasn’t safety that we reached. Instead, before we could even get out of the city, thieves attacked from the shadows, like they were just waiting for us. Blood was cut out of our escorts. Hot liquid sprayed over small, stunned faces. The memory still makes my eyes burn. That was when I knew that I was awake during a nightmare.
I tried to yell for help, to call for my parents, to tell them that this was all wrong, but a leather gag that tasted of oak bark was pressed into my mouth. I cried as we were stolen. Tears trickled. Feet shuffled. Heartbeats lurched. Home faded. There were screams, and metal clangs, and crying, but there was silence, too. The silence was the worst sound.