I hate the bitterness in her tone, because it’s directed at herself.
“Auren—”
“Keep going,” she tells me.
I swallow back my other words with a nod. If she wants me to keep going, then that’s what I’ll do. “The night you and I were supposed to meet at the library, I went through Ranhold’s gate to get inside. Lu was with me, ready to search for Digby.”
I force myself to dive straight in, without inflection, without pause. Because while I haven’t spoken it aloud, in my head, I’ve gone over the events leading up to finding Auren too many times to count.
“Ryatt was supposed to be waiting there for us, but he never showed up. We didn’t think too much of it, because him being late isn’t out of character. We went inside, but instead of us going our separate ways, we were headed off by Midas at the entry.”
“What did he want?”
My jaw jumps as I grind my teeth. “He pulled me into a fucking meeting. He was stalling me. I just didn’t know it at the time. What I also didn’t know was that there were problems with villagers coming too close to our army’s camp, so Judd and Osrik were dealing with that. Meanwhile, Lu wasn’t having any luck finding Digby, and then I found out Midas had detained Ryatt.”
Her brows jump up in surprise. “He arrested him?”
“I didn’t find out until later.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes. “Ryatt was detained because of me. Because Midas thought that he and I…”
“He told Ryatt that he’d wrongfully touched what didn’t belong to him,” I tell her, my jaw gone tight. “By the time we got out of this pointless meeting about our fake fucking alliance and trade deals, it was very late, and with the ball happening the next day, the castle was busy. There were servants and guards everywhere. It took some time, and we had to go up to my room first, but then Lu finally left to start her search for Digby, while I went up to the library. I knew you wouldn’t be there since it was much too late by then, but I looked for a note or any indication that you’d been there.”
I hear her swallow.
“I didn’t see any,” I say, and then I wait, on edge. Because I have pieced together what happened as best I could with the others, but now I’m finally going to hear it from her own lips.
“I never made it to the library,” she says quietly, and when she looks back up, her eyes are far away, all the way back in Ranhold.
“I tried to go up to your room, but there were too many guards. I didn’t want to tip off Midas. I already knew things were precarious with Queen Kaila,” I add.
“I wasn’t there anyway,” she tells me. “Or maybe I was back there by that point, I have no idea. If I’m piecing the timeline together correctly, Midas had already…” She chokes on emotion, has to clear her throat before she can get the rest out. “It had already happened. Maybe I was already stuffed back into my room by then, I don’t know. I was pretty muddled.”
My ribs feel like they’ve been chained together. Not a single link allowing any give to breathe.
“I didn’t listen to my fucking instincts,” I tell her, anger at myself practically spitting out of me. “I tried to go see you again. I could feel that something just wasn’t right, but Midas kept me too distracted. Before I could get to your room, he called all of us into more damn meetings before the ball was set to start. I was so tied up that I didn’t even realize the shit happening all around me. It was only when Lu showed up and signaled to me that I realized she’d found him.”
“Digby?” Auren asks.
“No. Ryatt,” I tell her. “Lu was looking for Digby, but she found my brother in a holding cell instead. Ryatt told her that he saw Digby being handed off to another set of guards. We had to wait for the ball to start before she could go back down to get Ryatt out, and then while she distracted the guards and led them back to the ball, Ryatt got Digby.”
She processes it all with a slow nod of her head, tipping like a buoy in the sea.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I ask, though I fucking hate the pain that it causes her.
“He drugged me.”
Her declaration makes my eyes flare. My entire fucking chest feels like it splits open, chains be damned. “He fucking what?”
She pauses at the seething horror in my tone, her gaze flicking down to where my spikes have all torn through my shirt, like the black fangs of a snarling beast.
“Like I said, I was a fool,” she goes on, a single shoulder lifting. “I let him lead me downstairs, and he did bring me to Digby. That was the only honest thing he ever did.” Tears start to fall down her cheeks, her brow pulled into pain. “He was beaten. I thought he was dead at first. And I was furious. I wanted to hurt Midas. Make him hurt as much as Digby was hurting. But then he had me held against the wall and he…he…”