CHAPTER 64
AUREN
There’s a recoil that happens in your brain when something shocking occurs. Something so violently harrowing that your thoughts blanch and withdraw. As if your mind becomes a protective mother, shielding its child’s eyes and muffling the frightening noises while the massacre occurs and she knows they’re next. Subduing the receptors, mentally numbing the fallout—it’s the last thing it can do to offer protection.
The last thing it can do to soften the impending blow.
So I hear the crowd continue their chant.
Guilty.
I see the shouting faces, the movement of the monarchs, the spill of my stained gold.
Yet all of it is dulled. Soft. Monotone. Slow like I’m in a dream. As if this is only a nightmare, and my mind is reminding me to keep me calm.
Except I know this isn’t a dream. The worst things that have happened in my life have always been while I was awake. This is no different.
Where were you?
I asked Slade that question back in Deadwell, back in the sheltered protection of the cave. It seems so long ago. What I told him then will always hold true for me. That I was glad I saved myself.
But this time, I thought he was going to be here.
I thought he was going to come.
Where are you?
I’m strong. I’ve come a long way with my magic and my control. With my emotions and thoughts. Even my physical body has gotten stronger with the intermittent training. Yet none of that is going to help me break out of this enclosure.
I need help this time.
And I don’t have it.
I don’t know where he is or why he hasn’t come, but whatever it is must be something terrible, because I know without a doubt, he’d do anything in his power to be here. To track me down and save me. Yet he isn’t here, so I can only think the worst.
Something happened to him.
Did Queen Kaila have a hand in this? Did they do something to Slade? They had to have, or he would’ve come already. He wouldn’t have let them even take me out of Fourth Kingdom in the first place.
This realization sinks in like a boulder crashing into an ocean. It bottoms out, leaving the ground beneath my feet to shake, silt lifted up to muddy my vision.
“The Conflux execution must be carried out at once.”
My eyes rock to the king.
“You have been judged culpable for your crimes in killing King Midas and stealing not one power but two.”
“I didn’t steal anything!” I scream out. “Gold-touch is mine.”
No one believes me. No one even hears me. I search the other monarchs, but they look at me as if I’m a leech they need to burn, like they don’t want me anywhere near them in case I steal their magic, too. The spectators in the square don’t hold any sympathy for me either, their expressions pure hate.
To them, I’m nothing but a lying, murdering, thieving saddle who deserves this judgment.
“Please!”
My hands grip the poles again, wet with a gold that won’t harden. The puddle at my feet is so much deeper now, reaching the middle of my shins. Black, liquid roots slink in its depths, the tipped ends stretching toward all sides of the enclosure as if they’re trying to dig their way out but can’t.
I can’t get out.
Can’t control my magic.
My back is barren.
And he’s not coming.
My soundless sob is what breaks through the haze of my mind, snapping me back into full awareness. Without the buffer of my mental shield, I’m clutched in the chaos of my own condemnation.
The monarchs are all standing now, and there are guards surrounding my enclosure. Guards I didn’t even notice approach. They wear no armor, but their uniforms are starch-white with belts of gray to hold the sins of their blades.
“Arm!” King Merewen orders.
Every single guard pulls out his sword. There are six of them in total—three in front of me, three in back, surrounding my small circle.
It seems like some sort of cruel irony for there to be six.
“Please!” I scream again, but no one cares to hear my plea.
My heart pounds like it’s trying to break a hole through my chest and escape, but no part of me is leaving this enclosure.
Is this truly it? After everything. After fucking everything, is this my end? Condemned to death because of Midas?
Another cruel irony, that I should be executed because they think I stole gold-touch from him.
“Raise!”
The guards lift their swords. All six blades notched between the poles, their sharp tips pointed at me with lethal intent.
This enclosure is so small that the moment they stick these blades in, I’ll be stabbed through on all sides. There is no escaping this.