My eyes lift of their own volition to steal a look at his profile. I glance over the cut of his jaw, the reaching power barely visible behind the high collar of his shirt. Like he feels my attention, deep green eyes flash over to me, and I snatch my gaze away, trying to keep still as I stir my food around.
I shouldn’t look at him. Not with the way my heart is pounding, not with the observant eyes at this table.
And yet, the moment I look away, I swear I feel a brush of his gaze against my cheek again, as if he feels the pull too, the crave to collide. Instead of falling into that trap, I let my eyes rove over his Wrath.
Osrik stands like part-giant against the wall, more pillar than man, like he could hold up the entire ceiling if it came down. To be honest, he probably could.
Judd is next to him, head scanning left and right, while Lu stands perfectly still, hand resting on the sword at her hip, perhaps to remind people that she might be the smallest of the four, but she’s just as deadly.
If any of them notice me sitting here, they don’t let on.
As for the Rip look-alike…
My eyes fall to him the most.
I can’t help it. I keep trying to pick his appearance apart, as if I can spot all the differences. Yet apart from the empty space where his aura should be pulsing, there’s nothing I can see that gives me any hint as to who he really is.
“King Midas, I don’t think I complimented you on the throne room yet. It was positively stunning,” Queen Kaila gushes.
“A gift to Prince Niven,” Midas says smoothly, as if he did it for anyone other than himself.
“It was very generous,” the boy murmurs in monotone.
Queen Kaila’s lips pull up in a smile. “You know, I have always been captivated by your power, King Midas.”
“It’s nothing,” he replies with an easy smile.
I bristle. My ribbons sharpen like bared fangs.
It’s nothing.
Nothing.
My fingers clamp tightly around my spoon. So many times I’ve drained myself for this man, just for him to pretend that it’s his power and it’s nothing.
That angry creature prods my ribs, rapping to get out. Coils of ribbons slither down my legs like serpents searching to pierce a vein and tear into sinewy muscle, but I hold them back.
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that your power comes so easily to you,” Kaila replies. “Magic can be a fickle thing.”
“It can,” he readily agrees. “But I mastered it long ago.”
Mastered it.
It feels like my stomach turns to ash, burnt down by the flare of fire erupting from the throat of my cloying fury.
Mastered me, he means, this complete and utter piece of shit—
“So magnificent,” Queen Kaila says. “Could you show us?”
The hand on his goblet goes still, his eyes locking onto her. “Show you?”
The queen nods with excitement, her eyes glittering. “You wouldn’t mind, would you? I’ve heard so many stories of how awe-inspiring it is, and I would love a demonstration. I assumed since you’ve mastered it so completely, it isn’t such a terrible imposition? My brother and I would adore seeing it.”
Midas may look at her with that courtly smile still plastered on his face, but I see the tightness in his jaw. Feel the six taps of his heel on the floor.
In just a few short sentences, Kaila has trapped him. If he were to deny her, it would make him appear either weak or disagreeable. Neither of those things are what Midas is trying to prove.
After a silence that stretches on a few beats too long, he tips his head. “Of course, Queen Kaila. I would be happy to.”
She beams at him, looking so young and pretty, and yet there’s a thread of cunning that gleams in her gaze, as if this is a test.
“Auren, pass me your goblet, would you?” Midas turns to me, eyes flickering with pointed demand. We’ve played this game so many times. We’ve fooled so many people.
But right now, the fuming anger is in control, and the only person I want the fool to be is him.
With a saccharine smile on my face, I pick up the goblet and hold it out to him. In the past, I’d make sure to do a quick sleight of hand to make my skin touch the object at just the right moment as I passed it over, so that by the time my gold was spreading, it was firmly in his grasp.
But I do nothing.
Midas’s carob-pod eyes darken and deaden, falling off a branch to land down at my gloved hand. When he lifts that gaze again, we stay in limbo, both of us holding the cup, staring at each other in equal challenge.
His gaze is an order.