Midas’s voice rises, competing with my own internal noise, and the crowd is eating up his announcement like sheep eating grain right from his hand. They don’t see that he’s no shepherd. They don’t see the predatory teeth. “I will bring the prosperity of my power, not only to Sixth and Fifth Kingdoms, but to Third as well. With the union of Fifth Kingdom and now my betrothal to Queen Kaila, we will take care of our people, and as the Golden King, I will bring Orea into a Golden Age!”
A clamor of applause breaks out, and Midas drops his hand at his side, pointing his finger covertly. His signal. The one for me to put on a demonstration to perfectly end his pretty little golden speech.
But I don’t move.
At the lapse of a second, his eyes cut over to me. “Gold-touch the railing,” he orders, speaking from the side of his mouth, but I still don’t do it.
Maybe it’s my fae heritage that allowed me to burn off the dew, or maybe it’s something else, but either way, I’ve cut through the last of the haze with a billowing breath.
Midas’s face darkens for a split second before he flicks a look back down at the crowd. He says something to finish the speech, making up for his lack of a flashy presentation of turning the mezzanine gold. They laugh at whatever he said, not noticing anything is amiss, but then, he’s always been good at charming a crowd. At charming me.
He used a silver tongue against a golden heart, and the glint of his lies dimmed every truth I knew.
Midas steps away from the railing, away from the crowd’s eyes. It’s only in private that he ever shows his true color, and it sure as hell isn’t gold.
The music starts up again, going along with the mingling voices and clinking glasses. There are hundreds of people down there. Slade is down there. But up here, in the shadows of the mezzanine, it’s just Midas and me.
Creases of anger line his forehead as he bears down on me. “What the hell was that, Auren? I explained what I needed you to do. It was fucking simple. You’ve completely ruined my golden speech!” he exclaims, brown eyes gone as dark as flooded dirt.
Hate is a visceral thing, a bloom unearthed in the background. I see it in his eyes, and maybe he sees it in mine too.
“You drugged me.” The accusation falls from a flat tone, as dry as prostrated plains. Even now, I can taste the viscid petal speckled with crimson dewdrops. It bled saccharine sweetness on my tongue. Saturated my mind. Syruped my limbs. Made me forget.
Even though it’s water that fills my eyes, it feels like fire.
“You drugged me,” I say again, stomach churning with an angry eddy. I want him to get swept up in it, to be pulled under. “You hurt Digby.” My second accusation tosses and seethes, like the sea beneath a storm, and I sail right into it with a brutalized back. “You cut off my ribbons!”
My voice cracks and crashes, the words grinding like the crush of gravel under a heel. My limbs tremble with rage.
Midas stares at me, and I can see his surprise that I’m so coherent, but my coherency is the least of his problems.
After a second, he crosses his arms and spreads his legs, plants his feet. “Yes, I did,” he admits with a terse tone. “You disobeyed me. Every punishment was deserved.”
Deserved.
Something prods in my chest, pounds against my ribs. The hammer of a blacksmith against an anvil, red-hot metal ready to be forged.
Midas lifts a shoulder. “Stop fighting me, Auren. This is your life. It’s time for you to settle back into it. You will take dew daily, and you will do your duty to your king.”
“It terrifies you, doesn’t it?” I ask. “Knowing that everything you are, hinges on me.”
Something dark flickers across his face.
“You speak about my punishment, but how about we consider what you deserve?”
I take a step closer to him, leaving just a foot of distance between us. To show him that I’m not afraid. To show him that even though he split me down the middle and stole pieces from my soul, he’ll never win.
My golden eyes burn as I look him dead in the eye. “I’m going to leave you, Midas,” I declare ruthlessly, enjoying it when his entire body stiffens. “I’m going to go where you can never find me again. You’ll search the ends of Orea for me. You’ll hear rumors, whispers of where I am, but every single time, I’ll slip through your fingers.”
At his sides, his hands tighten into fists, as if he’s already trying to close up the cracks.
“I’ll drag you along to every decrepit corner of the world, but you won’t ever find me. You’ll go months, years, decades searching in wild desperation.”