The blush on my cheeks burns hotter at his teasing tone. “Are you angry?”
“Very,” he replies steadily, and my heart drops until he adds, “but not with you.”
I swallow hard, unsure how to respond to that.
“What are you doing here, Auren?”
“Here, as in…Ranhold or…？”
I’m stalling. I know it, he knows it, but I can’t seem to help it. Not now that he’s here in front of me.
Mirth flashes across his face. “Here, as in my personal chambers.”
Our conversation from the library replays in my head again. “I…well, I came here to see you.”
He may look relaxed to others, but I’ve paid enough attention to Slade to know that’s not the case. He’s watching me in that intense way of his, like he’s studying every inch, noting every gesture.
“Why?”
I twist my hands into my skirts in a nervous gesture because this is so much harder than I thought. Or maybe I just didn’t really let myself think it through because I didn’t want to chicken out.
“Auren?” he prompts.
He’s always doing that, isn’t he? Prompting me, pushing me, and it’s exactly what I need. But I’m not only hearing him now, I’m hearing him then. When he gave me words and fight and a choice.
Listen to your instincts and stop holding back.
I can’t wait to see the rest of you.
You’re so much more than what you let yourself be.
Do you want to stay?
My throat thickens like I’ve gulped mud, but I manage to look him in the eye. “I’m here because I wanted to say something to you.”
The only indication that I’ve surprised him is in the way he slides his propped-up foot onto the floor, as if he’s bracing himself for what I have to say. “…Alright.”
Before I can lose my nerve, I take a deep breath. “When I was five years old, war came to Bryol, where I lived in Annwyn. It arrived with fire and smoke and death. My parents tried to sneak me out with the rest of the children on the street, but our escorts didn’t last the hour. We were stolen long before we ever reached safety.”
Slade’s attention intensifies, like this was the last thing he expected. Even a part of me is surprised that this is how I’ve chosen to open up. Then again, maybe this is exactly what I needed to say.
“Even though I didn’t have my magic yet, hadn’t even sprouted ribbons from my back, I was too recognizable to be bought by any fae. So, I was smuggled into Orea—I still to this day don’t know how. All I know is, one night I was in Annwyn, and the next, I was here in this world where I didn’t belong, where the sky didn’t sing and the sun wasn’t right. I was bought by a man in Derfort Harbor who smelled like alcohol and pipe smoke. A man who taught me how to steal and to beg. That same man who later made me into a street rat saddle, who made sure I opened my legs for any paying customer who wanted a night with the painted girl.”
Slade goes entirely still.
His eyes are trained on me as fierce as a hawk, and that intrusive power of his seems to tremble the air while it cloys forward to press against my skin. Like a feline’s rough tongue come to lick against invisible wounds.
“I didn’t run away until I was fifteen, and then…” My eyes drop down to my gloved hands. “Well. It doesn’t matter. Things didn’t go well for me.”
The first teardrop falls from my eye, the brined water of old hurts turning gilded the moment it slides down my cheek, though I dash it quickly away.
“I’m telling you this so that you can understand. When Midas came along, I was broken. I’d never known a kind touch by a man. I’d never known what love was or even real friendship. I didn’t even know myself yet. I may not have been innocent, but I was naive—unsure of who I was, who I could be.”
Vulnerability pierces me right in my chest, but I know I can’t stop now. Even though I’ve run out of breath, I have to keep on exhaling, keep on purging, or else I’m going to suffocate in my own poison.
I lift a shoulder. “I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. For a long time, I convinced myself that was what love and friendship was, because I didn’t know any better.”
From across the room, I see Slade’s pale throat bob with a hard swallow, the roots of his power twisting around his neck. “And now?” he rumbles.
“Now, I know that I was a girl clinging to my own stagnancy, because I was terrified of being thrown back into the world that had abused me. I couldn’t face the truth that Midas was abusing me too, just in a different way.” My admission is a heavy burden lifting from my tongue, every word weighed down. “If Midas ever loved me at all, he buried it beneath his love for gold and the love for himself. Buried it so deep that he doesn’t even remember what he covered.”