“No, but I’ll ensure it doesn’t ever happen again.”
With his fierce promise, he moves and goes around the desk where there are a pile of rolled up messages. I wander closer. “Did you get my hawk?” I ask.
“What hawk?”
I blink for a moment. “You...I sent you a letter. I found the army’s messenger hawks and managed to sneak out a message to you. To warn you that Fourth’s army was coming. You didn’t get it?”
He shakes his head and grabs a golden-fur monarch robe from the back of the chair. Slipping it on, he then picks up his crown that I hadn’t noticed was sitting on the desk.
“I received a message from King Ravinger himself. The bastard was gloating that he had you, that he rescued you from the Red Raids,” Midas scoffs angrily. “As if you were in any better company with his soldiers.”
“Actually, they treated me well. Much better than the pirates,” I explain, and I can’t suppress the shudder just thinking about them. I don’t even feel a lick of remorse for killing a man. The world is better off without Captain Fane.
Midas places the crown on his head and shoots me a dark look. “I will deal with the Red Raids,” he says, the promise darkening his eyes. “I’ll skewer their wretched bodies on solid gold spikes, letting their screams echo from the ramparts. If they so much as touched a hair on your head, I’ll peel the fingertips from their hands. I’ll cut out their eyes for even daring to look at what’s mine.”
The threat brings a chill to my skin.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” I say, hoping to redirect his thoughts.
I don’t want our reunion to be tainted with his fury. I want to hold on for a little bit longer, to just bask in his nearness. I’m also desperate to talk to him. To really talk, the way we used to, when we wandered from Second Kingdom to Sixth, traveling by day and talking by night, wrapped in each other’s arms beneath the stars.
“Soon,” he promises. “For now, I have to meet with that bastard, King Ravinger. But I have a gift for you first.”
“A gift?”
He tilts his head. “Come.”
Intrigued, I follow him as he leads me through two rooms—a sitting room of some kind and then a bedroom. I look around, briefly noting the coat flung over a chair, the fireplace, the large bed. Both rooms are built with black iron and gray bricks, lush whites and purples to decorate every inch.
“It’s so nice in here,” I muse, looking around. I start walking toward the balcony so that I can check the view while he grabs a candlestick from his bedside table.
Before I can reach the doors, he lights the candle and gestures to me. “This way.”
I give a longing look at the balcony before I turn around and trail after him into the next room. I come to a stop just inside the doorway, immediately understanding the need for the candle. There aren’t any windows in here—it’s nearly pitch black except for a lantern flickering at the back of the room, but it’s obscured slightly by something.
Midas strides confidently forward while I hover at the door, trying to get my eyes to adjust. “What’s this?”
He stops by a spot at the wall to the left and fiddles with something with his lit candle, and I realize he’s lighting a wall sconce. A soft orangish glow flares to life.
“This is technically my dressing room, but I’ve made some adjustments.”
A fingertip of unease prickles on the back of my neck as Midas goes to the opposite end of the dark room and lights another sconce.
As soon as he does, my blood runs cold.
Because there, built into the middle of the room, is a beautiful wrought iron cage.
Chapter 37
AUREN
It’s strange how your body reacts to certain things. For me, when I see the cage, there’s a roaring in my ears. It howls, gusting over my skin and whipping against my bones.
I wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with a new cage so soon.
Midas turns to face me with a smile. “I had this made for you,” he says, motioning over to it with clear approval. “I know it’s small. This one is temporary for now, and not gold yet, of course,” he adds with a wink in my direction.
That roaring wind starts blowing hard enough to batter my lungs, making it hard to breathe.