But I only take a couple steps before I’m tripping over something on the floor. I manage to catch myself before I faceplant, only to realize that the thing I tripped over is a body.
“Great Divine…” My hand flies to my mouth as I look down in horror at the person sprawled at my feet.
The guard’s eyes are closed, and his mouth is left gaping. The golden chest plate he’s wearing gleams, but beneath it, his skin has gone wilted and gray. A grape picked off the stem and tossed on the ground for the sun to shrivel.
My gaze jumps from him to a second body, another guard in the same condition. And then another, and another, and another.
A strangled sound scrapes out of my throat, and my ears ring with chilling alarm. But I can’t look away from the prone corpses, from the dried out eyes staring in shock. Can’t turn away from the lips that have cracked and peeled, or the cheeks that have sunken in.
This…this is what Ravinger is capable of.
One second, all of these guards were alive, and the next, they’re nothing but dehydrated husks.
I feel my chest rising and falling with rapid breaths, but no matter how quickly I seem to be breathing, I’m not getting enough air, because one thought blares through my head.
Would I have done the same thing?
If the sun hadn’t gone down and my gold-touch power was still active, if I’d been able to break down that door, would I have been the one who’d killed them instead of Ravinger?
I feel tears burn my eyes. Maybe it’s my body’s only defense, attempting to blur the vision in front of me, though it doesn’t work.
What does work though, is when Ravinger steps in front of me, blocking my view. My eyes trail up his body until I meet his gaze. Green eyes skate over my face like steam stroking over fevered water.
“You need to breathe, Auren.”
“I am breathing,” I snap.
“You’re panting and going to hyperventilate if you keep it up,” he replies calmly. “Have you only ever seen death gilt in your own power?”
I almost laugh bitterly. “I’ve seen plenty of death.”
Old, creased memories tear open one after the other. I met death the night I was stolen from home, and it’s been stalking me ever since.
“These men didn’t deserve this,” I say, dashing a tear away angrily when it falls from my lashes.
“I disagree. They were holding you against your will.”
My eyes flash. “They were just following orders. Doing what they were told.” My mind floods with the things I’ve been told to do. “I didn’t want—” I hate that my voice breaks off. “This.”
I’m choked with a guilt that seems to grow in the silence.
“Those golden eyes of yours, so expressive,” Ravinger murmurs. “There’s hate one second and heart the next.”
With his forest-green gaze locked on me, he lifts a hand, and I flinch on instinct. He pauses, face darkening at my reaction. “I won’t hurt you, Goldfinch.”
My expression tells him he already did.
With a tightening jaw, he turns his hand, as if he’s turning an invisible handle. Slowly, the dark lines of his power swivel around the skin of his palm, wrapping around his fingers like creeping vines.
Like a breeze, I feel his power brush over me again. I brace myself for the nauseating impact, but it doesn’t come. This time, there is no pulse of putrid wrongness. Magic tugs in the air like a wraith’s grasp on an inhale, pulling breath into lungs.
Nothing makes me shudder or gag or keel over. I don’t become sick. Instead, energy thrums around us, and the base of each of my ribbons stretches, my back prickling with goose bumps.
Coughing suddenly erupts in the room, and I jump in alarm, whirling around at the noise. “What—” All around me, the sprawled guards are rolling over or sitting up, hacking on dry coughs like sandpaper against their throats, gasping in breaths through flaking lips.
My wide eyes snap to Ravinger. “How did you—I thought they were dead!”
He lowers his hand again, the lines gone from his palm. “They would’ve been had I waited much longer. A rotting body can only be reversed after so long.”
I blink, shaking my head while the soldiers get to their feet. They’re confused, looking like they just looked Death in the eye and aren’t sure how they were able to cross the line back into living.
“You just…you…why?” I ask breathlessly, because I don’t understand him at all.
Ravinger doesn’t get a chance to answer me though. The bedroom door is suddenly tossed open, interrupting us.