My heart drops, shatters, a million shards of ice left to temper the heat of my anger.
Something unfamiliar lifts behind his kingly mask, something insipid and seedy. I suddenly have the scent of iron and fish stuck in my nose, making my stomach roil as he fixes a glare on me. “You were the painted girl who cut into my profits, and then had the nerve to run.”
Realization batters my chest and corrupts the air enough to make me choke on it. “Barden East,” I whisper in shocked horror. “You were Barden East.”
His smile is an accumulation of every sharpened edge piled in my chest. “And you’re ten years too late.”
Chapter 46
AUREN
No.
His declaration quakes beneath my feet. It makes bells of alarm ring in my ears louder than Highbell’s ever did.
Midas can’t be Barden East. He just can’t. Because that would mean that I ran right into the arms of the man I tried to escape. I willingly gave myself to someone who took others. Who used them, sold them, treated them like a commodity for his own selfish gain.
My head is shaking with denial, even as my gut tells me it’s true. “You can’t have been.”
“I was.”
Something tears in my throat, a grievous noise spilling from a gaping mouth—a gaping soul.
“How?”
Midas swirls his wine around, taps the front of his collar six times. “It wasn’t too difficult to earn my place as the crime lord in Derfort. There were small-time criminals there who were in sore need of a true leader—which I became. I saw an opportunity, and I took it,” he adds with a shrug. “So many shipments came in and out of that port, and once I took over the territory, I had access to resources from nearly every kingdom. I accumulated a lot of wealth and notoriety, had people at my beck and call.”
I’m hearing him, but his words are spoken into a hollow cave of my own emptying emotions. I’m numb, reeling, in too much shock to even react.
“But after years of that, I grew bored. Plus, I was sick and tired of always smelling fish,” he admits, the slight lift of his lip belying his distaste. “I wanted more—more power, more wealth, more opportunity, and a more palatable territory.”
All those years, all this time… I had confided in him. Told him about Derfort, about what I was made to do. He pretended not to know. Pretended to care, and yet all along, he was my owner’s competitor. The catalyst to the night I finally fled.
My steps are rooted to the floor. There’s no turning away from the truth that he spews like a gloat.
“In a way, you leaving was the offense I needed. I decided to follow you so I could drag you right back to Derfort, rub it in Zakir’s face, and set an example to others who’d run.”
I stare at him, but I don’t even know this man standing in front of me. It’s like he’s peeled away a layer and exposed the infection within, something that has festered in its own corruption that I somehow overlooked.
“You disappeared for a while, so it took some effort to catch your trail. But eventually, I heard curious talk amongst other vagabonds along the road. Talk of a raid finding a king’s fortune in a tiny village called Carnith…and of a girl who shone against the desert sands like a nugget of gold.”
My breath gets knotted up like a rope stuck in my throat. “You followed me to Carnith?”
“Of course I did. The gods smiled down on me, too, because that’s when your power manifested. That’s when it was clear that you weren’t just a painted girl perfect for the business of flesh trading. You were so much more.”
Tears fill my eyes as his verbal jabs stab me through, hollow me out. All a lie. Right from the very beginning.
He played the part of a crime lord, then a rescuer, then a king. I shared my body with him, when he used the bodies of others for profit. Just thinking of all the times he touched me and I touched him makes my skin crawl.
“I’m a planner, Auren,” Midas says as he watches me drown in the shadows, my fingers snagging at my hair. “You were exactly what I needed to get more. To get ahead. It was fated by the great Divine.”
He sets his wine glass down, and I whirl around, my world whirling with me.
“I finally caught up to you when you were in that backwoods village after you’d fled Carnith,” he tells me offhandedly. “I made the men I’d brought split up, so some of them could pose as raiders. Half of us attacked, the other protected the villagers. I had them all kill each other after that, instigated in-fighting over the spoils,” he adds with a shrug. “Couldn’t have any of them speaking of your magic or connecting me to Derfort as Barden East. Not when I intended to shed that name. Not when I realized that Princess Malina was in possession of a throne and yet lacked magic to keep it. Sixth Kingdom was in debt and in need of a king, so I gave it one. It was meant to be. I’ve always been partial to the number six,” he adds with twisted arrogance.