My head swims like I might pass out, but I manage to fall into the chair instead and pull in a choked breath. “You never rescued me.” I say it aloud, but it’s really just affirmation for myself, a crack that rents down the foundation of my life, splitting my past into something unrecognizable.
Midas looks pleased with himself, and maybe that’s what bothers me the most. The smug look on his face. As if he’s been waiting ten years to shove it in mine.
That moment of him rescuing me was what made me trust him. It created the base for my shaken footsteps. I viewed him as some sort of savior. But he orchestrated even that. He manipulated me right from the start, before we even spoke face-to-face.
He made me trust him, love him. He made me think he was my hero, when all along, he was my villain.
He walks nearer, standing over me like he’s relishing in this moment, like he wants to soak it up and wring me back out. “I owned half a shipping port and an incredibly lucrative business. But when I realized you had magic to go with that gold skin, I knew right then that I could own a whole damn kingdom.” Midas’s eyes gleam with the greed that consumes him. “And now…I don’t just own half of a city, I own half of Orea.”
An ugly, twisting grip tightens around my stomach. “Not yet.”
His eyes flash. “You won’t be saying that after tonight.”
I have no idea what he means by that, and I don’t get a chance to ask. Midas leans over, head poised in front of mine as he looks me over with detached assessment. “You know, we could’ve kept going on as we were, you could’ve had your semblance of freedom, but you ruined it.”
His tone is definitive, full of the authority he’s stolen. Full of something cruel, too.
“You won’t just be locked in a cage anymore, Auren, I’ll lock you up in your own mind. I’ll keep you on dew and drain your magic forever until the day you die, and even then, I’ll pluck every gilded hair from your head and scrape the gold from your skin, because you are mine to use as I will.” His exhale condenses against my face, the scent of wine heavy on his breath, and I wonder how I ever thought this evil man loved me.
As if everything he’s saying and doing isn’t awful enough, Midas then straightens up and slips his hand into his pocket. When he pulls it out again, a thick strip of gold is bunched in his palm.
My entire body freezes in place. A gush of tears well up in my eyes as I take in the sight of my mangled ribbon, at the little beads of golden blood stuck to one end like the cooled drips of candle wax from a jagged wick.
A sob takes the place of my breath while I stare at its length, stare at the piece of me now ruined in Midas’s grasp. My eyes sting with a burn that seeps straight into my spine, and twinges of pain erupt down the length of my back as if each chopped root there can feel the pain of our separation all over again.
I watch numbly as he wraps it around my wrists like I’m prey caught in his snare, and I can’t struggle, because it’s…me. It’s not just some meaningless strand he roped me with. It’s the ultimate mind game and perversion of control.
He ties it off with a thick knot, the satin-like strand digging into my skin painfully like a penance for losing them in the first place. For not being strong enough to stay whole beneath the might of this man who has hacked away at me, drained me, stole every piece of me.
How much more of me is he going to take?
“Everything, Auren. I’m going to take everything.”
My wet eyes look up at him, because I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken aloud.
Midas straightens up, fixes the crown atop his head so it’s perfectly aligned as he gives an impassive inspection over the tears that land on the binds around my wrists.
“Stay here, or I’ll drag your lover up from the dungeon and kill him in front of you,” he purrs, the threat kept soft in the lurk of his tone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a toast to make. Enjoy the show, Precious.”
My gaze stays fixed on the ribbon after Midas leaves the mezzanine. There’s a ballad playing below, though I don’t hear it. I just stare and stare at the gold that Midas has used to ensnare me. As the truth of who he really is—then and now—builds in my head like the squall of a tempestuous force.
When I fled Derfort Harbor and sailed across the Weywick Sea in the ship with cerulean sails, there was a single storm on the journey.
Just one.
It didn’t happen at night. There was no darkness that swallowed the sea and made it look like we were sailing on starlight and storm clouds.