Hearing Midas’s voice makes me flinch. Makes my grip on the poles tighten.
He’s dead, I tell myself. He’s gone. But hearing him again, so real, his whole voice bottled up and poured right out for me to hear, makes me want to pitch forward and vomit.
“Come to me,” his voice commands.
Then my reply. Enraged and biting. “Never.”
The crowd was silent and still before, but this disembodied display of impassioned voices has charged the air.
“Lower your swords away from my favored!” Midas’s voice shouts out. It makes him sound protective. Like he’s safeguarding me.
“I’m not your favored.” My reply sounds heated. Crushed out between gnashing teeth.
“Clear the room!” Midas’s shout rings out.
She purposely left out what I’d said before he gave that order. When I told everyone that he was the one who killed Prince Niven, not Slade.
Kaila puffs out more magic. Streams out more words.
But this time, it’s my voice, Lu’s voice, from an entirely different night.
“Thanks for sneaking me in and out. It was nice to spend time with Ravinger.”
I’d said Rip that night. Not Ravinger. Which means Queen Kaila’s power can not only store words, but manipulate them. Cut them off and paste others on to her liking. My stomach twists and curdles, saliva flooding my mouth.
“I’m sure. Better company than the golden prick, huh?” Lu’s voice echoes out.
“Much better.”
Now, the crowd can’t keep quiet. There’s a shuffle of noise through the masses, gathering, collecting, passing their judgments.
“It was him?” Midas’s accusation now makes it seem like the perfect scorned lover.
“We’re leaving.”
People stare daggers at me, faces twisted into sneers.
Another exhale, and this time, it’s Queen Kaila’s voice herself from that night. “It’s clear that her loyalty lies with Fourth Kingdom. Let her lose her favor. It’s what she deserves.”
Then Midas’s voice sounding pleading. “Auren, come here right now.”
“Never.”
Another word out of context, used to her narrative’s benefit.
“You want to leave? To be the whore of King Rot?” Midas’s voice spits.
“Better the whore to the man at my back than the favored to you,” comes my reply. “We’re leaving. You’d be wise to do the same.”
The way she’s reenacting this makes it very clear that I meant it as a threat.
“You want to leave, Auren? Then go. Let Ravinger’s pollution leave this kingdom.”
The poor, rejected king, giving up his favored.
Kaila doesn’t make it known what really happened next, doesn’t make it clear that we did try to leave. No. Instead, she makes it sound like Midas was this spurned, betrayed king who was letting me walk away.
Which of course, isn’t true at all.
Queen Kaila pauses, looks out at the crowd. “Lady Auren refused to leave. She attacked Midas right in front of me, and when he tried to use his gold to protect himself, he couldn’t.” Her head shakes and she makes a somber sniff, gathering more and more sympathy from the watchful faces. “Lady Auren was jealous he had announced his engagement to me. In her rage to get back at him, she seduced King Ravinger, and then she attacked.”
My teeth grind together. Heart pounding against my skull. I don’t know what’s more prevalent, my anger, fear, or exhaustion.
“This next part is violent,” she goes on. “I caution anyone with young children or sensitive dispositions to cover their ears.”
Then she blows out another breath.
This time, there aren’t voices that she feeds out, but screams. They rend out across the square, clacking against the walls, making the people balk and cringe and look at me with horror. The noises ring in my ears, my memories lining up with each one. I can see the guards swallowed by gold, melted through, sliced and slashed and smothered.
I did that.
Just like I was responsible for the carnage at Carnith.
Then there’s Midas’s voice. Tinged with the timbre of his plea. “Auren.”
I can feel it—how the crowd turns on me. The pity they feel for King Midas. I’m already the villain in their eyes. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that being the villain isn’t always a bad thing.
“Thank you, Queen Kaila,” the king announces. “But one must ask, were you in the room while King Midas was killed? Did you witness it firsthand?”