There is one question that’s burned into the back of my mind. I’ve carried the taste of its ash on my tongue, felt the char of its presence seeping down my throat.
Everything between us becomes so heavy. So stretched. A perilous point where there is no soft side to fall on. The longer I stay silent, the more misery saturates Slade’s face. But the question continues to burn. Smoking up my head, raking flames down my spirit.
“Ask. Me.”
One tear. One tear leaks out of me, so hot that I wouldn’t be surprised if it steamed against my cheek.
But I ask.
Looking him in the eye, my own anguish now matching his, I ask the one question I haven’t wanted to. “Where were you?”
When I was drugged.
When I was shoved into that room with Digby.
When my ribbons were slashed, right along with my soul.
When I was propped up on that mezzanine, confused and lost.
“I thought you were going to come. But you didn’t.” My voice is choked, shaken, and every word I say lands a flinch across his face. “So where were you?”
CHAPTER 27
SLADE
Where were you?
It’s the way she says it. The smallest warble in her throat, so tiny that anyone else would miss it. But not me.
When it comes to Auren, I make it a point to notice everything.
So I hear it—the pain. And I know that by initiating her to ask this question, I’m leading her down the path of that night. A night I’m sure she doesn’t want to think about, much less talk about. But we need to.
She looks at me steadily, golden eyes shining almost as much as the blue veins running through the cave. “I thought you were going to come,” she tells me, and the confession bleeds like a wound from her tongue. “But you didn’t.”
I have been beaten. Stabbed. Head held beneath water until my lungs burned. I have been ripped apart by the fury of my power to the point where it felt like my skin was flayed from my body.
But none of that is as painful as hearing those words out of Auren’s mouth.
It’s a physical thing, this culpability. Guilt isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel, for what I carry.
As if it wasn’t enough that I fucking rotted her, I let her down. And somehow, that’s far worse.
All her damn life, people have let her down. Over and over again, she has put her faith in them, and they have failed her. And then the night when she needed me, that’s exactly what I did.
Failed her.
My mind flashes to that night. The night before it all went to shit. She left my tent, a secret smile curving her plush lips, and all I wanted to do was drag her back in and devour her all over again.
I wish I had.
If only I’d taken her hand and asked her to stay. If only I hadn’t let her go back into that castle.
When Hojat tended to her, and I saw the state of her back…
A tightness punches me right in the sternum. Her ribbons. Her charming, unprecedented, beautiful ribbons. Gone. Hacked away. Left in a frayed and bloody ruin.
I don’t think I’ll ever get that sight out of my mind.
It’s no wonder that she can’t bear for me to look.
“So where were you?” she asks me, and even though I wanted her to ask, I still flinch.
“I fucked up. In every possible way.”
Scenarios keep running through my head. If only I’d done one thing differently, maybe I could have stopped it.
“Lu told me that Queen Kaila had overheard you two when she walked you back from camp. She doubled back after the queen was gone, had to bypass countless guards. By the time she made it to your room, you were sleeping. She stayed waiting in the halls until dawn and then saw that you went down to gild for Midas. She waited to make sure it was all okay before she came back to camp and told me what happened. I ordered her to get some sleep first, because she was about to fall over. I knew she needed rest before she could search for Digby. So I sent Judd in her stead, but he turned up empty.”
Auren listens intently, and it’s as if I can see her mind merging her timeline with mine.
“I tried to warn Mist—the saddle who’s carrying Midas’s baby,” she tells me. “Tried to warn her about Queen Kaila, but she didn’t want to listen to me. And then I was going to try and sneak out and tell you what happened, but Midas came, wanting me to use my magic. So I made him a deal.”
I guess it immediately. “Digby.”
She nods. “I was a fool.”
“No, Midas was just a fucking monster.”
She glances down. “I used my magic all day. Thought he was going to actually let me have Digby back. I’d say that’s the definition of a fool.”