I’ve never been so close to mortal danger before, and my body knows it. Which is why my pulse is still racing, why the tempo of it is pounding in my ears.
Why I can’t stop shaking.
“I think so,” Manu finally answers as he turns around.
His husband still watches the castle, as if he doesn’t trust taking his eyes off it. As if he expects the violence of the liquid metal to lash back to life.
“Damned Divine,” I hear him say beneath his breath.
Perhaps his murmured curse has pulled the stopper from the bottled-up crowd, because a flurry of voices starts to pour through the courtyard. Automatically, my power sweeps out, pulling their words to me. My magic sweeps down, catching what they’re saying and stringing them up in my mind.
“What’s happened?”
“This is King Midas’s gold-touch.”
“Where’s King Midas? Where’s King Rot?”
“Our prince is dead.”
“Did Midas do this on purpose?”
“But what happened?”
The words flow from their mouths to my ears, where they gather like threads in a web for me to spin. Yet soon, I don’t even need my power to hear them, because the crowd begins to shout, demanding answers in frenzied cries loud enough for all.
“Shit,” Manu hisses, turning toward me. “Maybe you should—”
Someone suddenly shouts, “I know what happened!”
All eyes slam onto the woman, who staggers to the front. She points a shaky finger toward the doors, gold bleeding from their depths like a gaping wound.
“This wasn’t King Midas’s doing!” she spits out, a long curtain of black hair hanging down her back, her dress looking like part of it melted off. “It was his gold-touched pet! She stole his magic!”
I rear back in surprise, her words tangling up in my head.
“Who is that?” Manu murmurs.
A man from the crowd shoves forward. “What are you talking about, woman?”
She straightens up, sweeping a proud look over the crowd. “I am one of King Midas’s royal saddles, and I can tell you all right now that this was all because of Auren. She did this! The gilded whore stole his magic when he gold-touched her, and she figured out she could use it for herself. She lied to him, and now she’s attacked him. I saw it with my own eyes when I was running out!”
Shock cuts like an oar through a surf.
“What the fuck?” Manu hisses beneath his breath as he turns to me.
When the woman places a hand on her stomach, it occurs to me who exactly this is.
Mist. The saddle Midas impregnated.
As her words sink in, I start to shake my head in denial at first, and yet, it must be true, because what I saw in that room… It was like the gold wasn’t in Midas’s control at all, like someone else was doing it…
How did I not discover this secret sooner?
“Look!” someone shouts. “Timberwings! Someone’s fleeing on timberwings!”
“It’s her! The gilded murderer!”
My head angles in the direction of the man who spoke, my gaze following where he’s pointing. I only get a split second before the view is swallowed by the darkness of night, a flash of feathers and talons disappearing into the clouds.
Was that King Rot with Lady Auren?
“I told you!” Mist cries out. “She’s a deceiver. A cheat. She seduced Midas and took his power, and now she’s going to do the same to King Rot!”
A crescendo of voices surges, and within moments, the rumor is caught up in a current too forceful to stop.
How in the Divine-damned could I have missed something like this? How could I not have known?
“You’re trembling,” my brother says, yanking me out of my flooding thoughts. His gaze casts over my shoulder. “Your queen is cold. Find something for her.”
There’s shuffling behind me and then the weight of a cloak being draped over my shoulders. “Here you are, Queen Kaila.”
My fingers grip the front of the cloak, pulling it tight around my chest, though it does nothing to ward off the chill, because it’s seeped all the way through to my bones. I need to be back in Third, walking along the beach at the height of day in order to feel any sort of warmth again after being stuck here for so long.
However, I can’t go home yet. Not when everything I’ve worked so hard for is falling through my fingers. I can feel the eyes of the crowd glancing at me, waiting to see what I’ll do.
“Manu, have someone confirm that Ravinger just fled with Lady Auren.”