I don’t know how long it takes.
Seconds? Minutes? Hours? I black out, become a convulsing mass of wailing stupor whose only cognizance is misery.
And then…
He cuts off the last one, and I shatter.
Right there on the floor, pieces of me left like bits of useless rags. Like the strings of a harp that can no longer play. Like the strands that once wove me together.
I’m dropped, body left in a heap to lie on the hard stone floor, but I don’t feel it. I don’t notice the blurred forms of the guards as they start to file out. I only see my ribbons, lifeless and lackluster. Just like me.
“You did this to yourself.”
My eyes roll up to Midas’s towering figure, to the hard set of his jaw. To the cruelty in his eyes.
He passes off the sword, straightens his tunic. “Disobedience has consequences, Auren. I needed to cut away this disobedient disease I’ve let fester in you. This was what you led me to do,” he tells me, peeling me raw.
The tears that fall down my cheeks cut me open, drip by drip, hot gashes that slice through my face and sting all the way to my essence. Midas’s mouth thins, eyes flickering with some unknown emotion that’s probably as close to softening as they can get.
“Don’t disobey me anymore, Precious. I hate seeing you like this.” His gaze shifts over the inert ribbons, down my throbbing spine. “This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”
Infuriated outrage flares in the mouth of my beast, but I’m far too numb to spew it. He didn’t just chop off meaningless streams like trimming off a bit of fabric. My ribbons weren’t just attached to my back, they were attached to my fucking soul.
The moment he sliced them away, he took something integral. He gouged in and ripped a part of me away, and now…
I’m empty. Mangled. Nothing but a radiation of agony.
The maimed edges along my spine are choppy and blunt, short and twitching with spasms I can’t control. Each mutilated end pokes out from my back like snapped wings plucked bare of feathers.
With a shake of his head, Midas straightens himself up, already convinced that his every action was justified. “I’ll have a mender tend to you later. Take some time to rest, Precious,” he says softly before he turns and walks out, and I flinch when his shoes step on my ribbons, as if I can feel the phantom pain of their massacred lengths as they’re crushed under his heel.
When the door slams shut, the sound tips me over the edge, and my consciousness casts me into a cold oblivion.
I fall willingly into the darkness with a plea for escape, while twenty-four pieces of me are left to wilt and wither in gilded grief. I shudder as my back drips and my eyes weep, knowing I’ll never be whole again.
Chapter 42
AUREN
The pain doesn’t let me stay unconscious for very long. I’d gladly lie here on the cold floor where I can dream instead of wake, but I’m not that lucky.
That’s the thing about escapism. In whatever form, it always ends, and then we’re forced back into a reality that’s not nearly as satisfying.
A whimper precedes my vision, lips parting before my lids can. When I blink blearily, I note how dark the room is, the high window showing me a single star.
This too? I ask the goddess in her twinkling watch. I had to endure this too?
My eyes blur from a soul-deep pain that stems from the stolen threads of my back. With my cheek pressed against the rough stone floor, an exhale rattles out of me.
Numb. That’s how I feel when I stare at the pieces of me lying listlessly on the ground. Their gold seems duller, long lengths looking like a puddle of fabric, lacking all of their personality and liveliness.
My palm scrapes against the floor, arm stretching to reach for the one closest to me. I manage to drag it toward me, holding it in front of my face. I stare at the jaggedly cut edge, swipe along the curdled blood that’s dried like clumps of gold paint.
The ribbon droops between my fingers, a weary vine ripped from its roots. I try to move one of them on instinct, but…nothing. Nothing except an endless throb of pain from each snipped stem.
“Miss Auren.”
I jolt from the voice, but it makes my back tighten, which causes a frenzy of sharp pain to run up and down my spine. A curse flies from my mouth before I suck in enough air to breathe through it.
“Steady.”
My eyes fly up to him, and it just goes to show my state of mind, because I forgot we were in the same room. “Digby.” My voice cracks, throat ruined from my screams.
He’s still lying on his cot that’s attached to the wall, but he’s managed to roll over onto his side so that he’s facing me. Just seeing him looking at me, alive, makes me crumple all over again, and I’m wracked with emotion too full to contain.