So if I can learn to use my anger in a way that moves me forward rather than keeps me here, pinned to a painful past, then that’s what I want to do.
When I look up at Slade, my resolve looks with me. “I do want you to teach me how to use my anger,” I tell him. “But the truth remains that my gold isn’t working right.” Shrugging, I look down at my hands. “I could see myself using the gold as this beast—this fae side of me—but I can’t call to it like that. I don’t have control over it in that form. And now, it’s not working at all.”
My gold-touch has never been something I had to put much effort into using. In fact, it’s always been the exact opposite. I had to be more careful, to work harder for it not to come out.
When I unleashed in that ballroom, it could’ve been cataclysmic. I’m lucky Slade stopped me when he did, because my rational mind had no control. I could’ve killed Slade or the Wrath or Digby. My gold could’ve seeped through the rest of the castle and down into the city, killing innocents.
“My gold can’t be trusted. I can’t be trusted.” I finally say the words aloud, the same ones that have been churning in my gut, making me swallow them down again and again.
Slade frowns. “You unleashing like that, defending yourself while your magic unfurled with another layer you’d never been able to utilize before, it’s not a bad thing, Auren.”
I’m not sure how he can say that. Then again, he rots people. Probably not the best judge of good versus bad.
“Regardless, I haven’t gilded anything,” I say, picking at my leggings. “Not a single thing since I woke up. My gold-touch has always happened involuntarily. Always. If the sun’s up, my gold would come whether I wanted it to or not. But since I woke up…nothing.”
He looks contemplative for a moment, eyes skimming around me. “Your aura looks strong. But physical magic like ours can be finicky. It’s why training is so important.”
“I think my magic is broken,” I confess on a thick tongue. “I think when I somehow called the gold to me that night, when I snapped and my fae nature came out, I did something with my magic that I’m not supposed to be able to do. I corrupted it in some way, and now it doesn’t work right. At least, not without me going full-fae, and I can’t keep letting myself snap like that. Because what I did…”
My voice plugs up. Tongue parched from the memories that torment me.
I see the flashes playing in my head in fragments. The rush of power I called. The things I destroyed.
The people I killed.
I can hear the screams, too.
Because of what I did. Because I lost control.
Look at what you did.
That sudden voice pops in my head like a shrill whistle flung from a combative hand, calloused fingers shoved between teeth, the blown blare tossed against my ears like a slap.
Look at what you did.
I jerk away from it, as though the person saying that is in front of me rather than in my head.
“Auren?” My eyes spring to Slade, to the concerned line between his brows. “What just happened? Where’d you go?”
“Nothing. Nowhere.”
His eyes narrow. Watch. Observe me like he’s not just looking at my eyes but looking right through them. Looking into my head where these memories swirl.
“I see.”
My shoulders tense. “You see what?”
Rip leans forward. “You know what I think?” he says instead of answering me. “I think you already explained why your gold isn’t working.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said that both you and your gold can’t be trusted.”
“It’s true.”
He raises a finger and points at me. “And that right there explains it. Because our emotions are tied to our power, Auren. That includes fear of our own magic.”
My pulse spikes. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I swear his gaze drops down to the vein in my neck as if he’s observing me that closely.
“You’re afraid of what you did in Ranhold,” he says, and my heart bangs against my ribs, my eyes forgetting to blink.
“Of course I am.”
He leans closer to me, and I want to lean away, want to hold up a hand in front of my face so he can’t read me so thoroughly.
Defensiveness rises up in me like a sudden tide. “I shouldn’t have been able to control the gold like that, but I did, and because of that, I killed people. I lost control.”
“You aren’t just afraid of what you did that night. You’re afraid of your gold, aren’t you?”