My brows pull together and I shake my head, glancing away, eyes locked on the rifts in the cave. “I…”
What do I remember? It’s hard to tell since I’ve been actively trying not to.
I remember I snapped. I remember that this depth of pure, unmitigated power suddenly coursed through me. I remember killing. It was so easy—I think that’s what gets me the most. That, and this sense that I wasn’t wholly me. There was a beast inside me, famished and furious, ready to devour the world.
But before I could go on that rampage, someone stepped in front of me.
I see it now, flashes of fragments, like torn bits of paper held briefly under the candlelight. The way he begged me to let the power go, the chokehold that terror had on me.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, because without the beast to control the magic, I was incapable. I didn’t know how to stop it. All I could do was hold onto the reins, hoping Slade could get out before it snapped. But of course, he didn’t. Of course he refused to leave me.
The ashen kiss he placed against my gilded lips was all I felt before an invasive breeze slipped down my throat. And then a whisper, echoing in my ear, Forgive me.
My eyes flick back to Slade, and he must sense that I’m remembering, because he nods.
“You rotted me?”
Images spring up in my head, none of them pleasant. Rotten corpses of soldiers left at Sixth Kingdom’s border, their bodies puffed up and reeking in the snow. Then, Midas’s guards barring me from getting out of the room, Slade coming in and rotting them where they stood until their faces went sunken and hearts decayed. And another, of him walking toward Ranhold, leaving roots of rot in every step’s wake, poisoning the snowy ground.
Was I like one of those sunken-in corpses? Lips peeling back, organs decayed into husks? I look down at my skin, as if I’m going to see evidence, but everything looks normal.
“The rot wasn’t visible like that,” he tells me, once again so in tune with my train of thought that he seems to always anticipate what I’m thinking.
His expression turns agonized. “You were…dying.” The words choke out, his shoulders bent with blame. “I didn’t fucking know what to do, but I couldn’t just stand there and let you drain yourself. So I used my power against you.”
I let his words settle in, slowly shaking my head. “No. You used your power on me, not against me. Because you’re right, I was dying.”
He flinches—so subtly that I barely catch it. “I… You’re not angry?”
A frown plants itself between my brows. “Why would I be angry?”
Now he looks positively bewildered. “I fucking rotted you, Auren. Stole into your body and shut it down, putting you in a stasis of spoiled decay.”
My nose wrinkles. “Well, I could do without the visual of stasis of spoiled decay,” I mutter.
“I risked your life,” he goes on, and I realize these are the words that have been running through his head since the moment he used his magic on me, that he’s been tormenting himself with self-proclaimed blame. “I used my power against you, and then I kept you like that when I took you and got you as far away from your gold as I could, risking your life again with every minute that I waited.” He pulls at his hair in frustration, glancing around the darkness like he’s looking into the crevices of his own guilt. “What if I’d waited too long? What if I hadn’t been able to reverse it?”
“You’ve been hating yourself this whole time.” It’s not a question—I can see the truth plainly, can hear it in the way he’s talking. Gently, I take his hand in mine, squeezing his fingers. “You saved me,” I say quietly, and he looks at me like he’s desperate to see me, like he can’t bear to look away or else be swallowed by those shadows of fault.
He slumps slightly, head tilted up at the ceiling as he lets out a breath. “There’s something else.”
My stomach tightens. “What is it?”
He tips his head back down to look at me. “When I reversed the effects of the rot and removed my power from your body…a piece of it stayed behind.”
A piece of it stayed behind.
My eyes widen, and my stomach gives an involuntary roll. “What do you mean it stayed?” I press a hand against my chest like I’m trying to feel it. “Are you sure?”
He gives a terse nod. “Positive. Even now, I can sense it, but it’s rooted into you. No matter how many times I’ve tried, it won’t come out.”