“Everything okay?” I ask, looking to Slade.
“Of course,” he replies easily. “Shall we?”
He already starts leading the way again before I can say anything more. I hesitate for a moment, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to assuage my curiosity and outright ask what the letter said, but I stop myself when a thought occurs to me.
Do I even have a right to ask him something like that?
Surely he’d have offered up the information about it if he’d wanted me to know. My feelings shouldn’t be hurt that he didn’t.
He probably has a lot of letters that he receives and sends every day as part of being a king. I shouldn’t feel so sensitive about it. Like we said, we still have a lot of work to do in peeling back each other’s layers.
I follow after him, my eyes latched onto his back while I try to shrug off these swirling scruples. After all, he’s a king, and that’s something I keep forgetting. He’s a king, and I’m…
I’m about to fail miserably at using my magic.
Therein lies the heart of my troubled thoughts. I haven’t said anything to anyone, haven’t even let myself really face it. But the fact of the matter is, my gold isn’t working right. Not only that, but I murdered people with it left and right, without a single thought of hesitation.
What if I do that again?
When Slade finally leads me off the path and brings us into a cave, I’m in my own head so much that I don’t even take in the space until I nearly walk right onto the gold-stained floor.
I suck in a breath, eyes sprinting from one end of the cave to the other. I recognize it immediately. It’s where I first woke up. Where I blinked and I was already moving, power already coursing through my veins.
Too late, I realize I’m staring at the hardened gold that’s splashed and splattered over the walls and floor, lost in its shallow depths while Slade watches me.
Blinking, I shake myself, pasting on an unaffected expression.
“We’re training here?” I ask, and though I try to keep it steady, my voice sounds heavy with the weight of the implications.
Slade continues to study me for a moment before he dips his head. “We are,” he tells me, his tone heeding something I can’t quite catch.
Those anxious nerves, those curled and twisted strings I’m all tied up in, they pull taut, making even my throat too tight to swallow.
He walks a few feet away and kneels down, right where a wave of gold has frozen, and he drags a finger over the hardened crest.
I don’t know why, but I shiver.
He cocks a brow. “Cold?”
“No.”
He stands again and removes his coat, but just as I try to insist that I’m not cold, he places it on the ground. “Come sit.”
I hesitate for a moment, but my feet lead me to him, and then I lower myself onto his coat, tucking my legs beneath me.
He sits down too, and even though we’re two feet apart, the distance feels inconsequential. Slade’s presence—his attention on me—it’s always eaten up the space between us.
“It’s daytime,” he says, motioning toward the cave’s opening where daylight still spills in. “Your power has always been uncontrollable during the day, right?”
“Right. Normally, as soon as something touches my skin during the day, my gold comes rushing out.” My eyes fall to the black leggings and gloves on my body. “But ever since I woke up, it’s different. Nothing is being gold-touched.”
“What do you feel?”
Worry bombards me, and I lift my hand as if I can see what lurks inside while flashes of memory of that night in Ranhold ping against the backs of my eyes, shooting scene after scene through my vision.
I quickly bury my hand beneath my leg. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”
“Try to gild the rock.”
With wary weight, I slip off my glove and press my palm to the jutting stone just to my left. It should be instantaneous. Gold should immediately spill out of me.
But it doesn’t.
Slade cocks his head. “Are you trying?”
My eyes slash up. “What’s that supposed to mean? Yes, I’m trying.”
“Are you sure? Because you say your gold-touch was always uncontrollable during the day, but you could control it, to an extent.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I couldn’t.”
“But you did,” he argues. “You could gild things so they were only plated in gold. Or you could make things completely solid gold. Remember the coat you wore? You managed to keep your magic only gilding the inner lining so it didn’t spread. That was you controlling it.”