He didn’t have to spell it all out to me, but he did anyway. He trusted me with his vulnerabilities, his hopes, his dreams. A man with no important bloodline, with no family, no land. He wanted to save a kingdom. To bring back glory to a place that was dying in a frozen tomb.
We talked long into the night as he laid everything out, all his plans, his intentions, my role in his life. It was a brilliant plan, one he’d clearly thought through right down to the smallest of details. I was in awe of him.
Midas pulled me up to my feet, his hands warm, steady. “I’ll put you in a palace, Auren. You’ll be safe. With me.”
“But you’ll marry her.”
He petted my cheek with the edge of his thumb, and I leaned into the touch. The first man I’d ever done that with. It felt like petals opening to soak up the sun.
“Yes, if all goes well, she’ll have my name. But you have my love, Precious.”
And what’s a ring when you have a heart?
He made love to me there, over a puff of snow that somehow felt like clouds, beneath a thick tent made of leather that brined in the salt of our sweat, soaked in the heat of our murmurs. He held me until the last of the stars winked out.
My eyes slowly adjust to the brighter light of the hallway as I begin to walk downstairs with the guards on either side of me. Gone are the weathered browns of wooden floorboards. No more are the walls a solemn weathered gray stone. Scratches are buffed into the gold floors, thousands of footsteps worn into the malleable metal. The walls gleam with a servant’s touch, the banister to the stairs smelling slightly of vinegar and salt, the abrasive varnish used to polish its every surface.
My rooms are on the very top floor, so that means we have six grand staircases to walk down. My legs begin to burn by the second, telling me I’ve been confined for too long.
Painted portraits of long-dead royals watch me as I pass by, the number of sconces growing in number with every level we descend to banish the night away with their flames. My pulse pounds in my ears as I’m led down to the first floor, where I hear music drifting out of the ballroom.
My escorts stop outside a pair of carved doors. The guard standing beside it opens it, stepping aside for us. “You may go inside.”
“Yeah, I just don’t really want to,” I mutter back.
Digby clears his throat, and I inhale a tight breath as I take in the flood of light, heat, and sound coming from the room.
I can’t scurry off to hide, because I’m not a mouse.
My ribbons squeeze around me, just slightly, a prompt to brace myself as I walk inside. The moment I step through the threshold, my eyes sweep around the space.
Musicians are playing in the very center of the room, instruments a lull of pretty composition. They’re surrounded by people dancing, the notes encouraging sensuality, the tune dipping into a heated croon. It’s a collection of fabric and skin, of limbs weaving through an impalpable melody.
The whole space is lit up with three huge chandeliers that cast sparkles against the floor. There must be at least two hundred people here, all of them basking in King Midas’s ostentatious wealth, their clothes a splash of lavish color.
The scent of their collective sweat and perfume is enough to overwhelm me. Despite the blizzard raging outside and the massive size of the room, the collective heat from all of these bodies makes the back of my neck prickle with beads of perspiration. Or maybe it’s from nerves.
Along both sides of the walls, there’s more reverie. Long tables are set up where guests are drinking, alcohol-faces gone ruddy and open. There are saddles everywhere, making the party far more licentious than it already is, which tells me that this gathering started a while ago.
I can see two groups slaking their desires against the wall, pretending that they have privacy inside shallow alcoves. Two men are even sharing a female saddle right in the middle of the dance floor, the woman held between them, hands sweeping inside a loosened bodice and up a draping skirt. She’s moaning loud enough that her throaty vocals mix with the music like it’s her own version of a serenade.
And past it all, on the very far end of the room on the raised dais, is my king.
Right now, he looks every inch the notorious Golden King that the people dubbed him. From his shined boots to his sparkling crown, everyone looks at him and knows that he’s the marvel of riches, the master of fortune, the ruler of wealth.
And the moment I move further into the room, his russet eyes find me.
He’s sitting on his throne, the queen noticeably absent, but that’s not surprising given the type of celebration this seems to be. He has three royal saddles draped around him; two of them sitting on the armrests of his throne, and one at his feet, her head resting against his knee in adoring submission.