As soon my mouth opens, gold slithers past my lips, coating my tongue and teeth. A strangled cry pops out of me, the sound like bursting bubbles of magma as the liquid clogs my throat.
It slinks down to my gut, rises up to my eyes, vision tinted, the sharp metallic scent filling my nose. It ensnares my bones, sheathes my heart, takes over my mind.
The next moment, I’m completely solid from the inside out.
Unable to breathe, or blink, or think. I’m like Coin—the bird in the atrium, never again to sing, to fly, stuck in place on my perch.
Midas’s hand comes up to cup my cheek, fingernails tapping against the metal. “You’re so perfect, Precious,” he says before leaning in, placing a whisper of a kiss against my lips that I can no longer feel. I want to cry, but I can’t, because my tear ducts have solidified too.
The steam in the room is so thick now that I can’t see anymore. The gold in my ears makes it so I can’t hear either.
But I scream. I scream and scream and scream, though no one can hear me, because my throat is plugged with gold. I’m going to choke on it, be trapped in it for all eternity.
Something against my chest pinches, and my eyes fling open wide from the pain.
I come awake with a thrash, flailing arms and gasping breath like I’ve just broken through the surface of that solid gold sea.
Sweat has soaked through my shift and leggings, and my hair is plastered against my scalp in damp tangles.
Around me, my ribbons are flapping and snapping with unease, some of them wrapped around my body and constricting around me in a painful squeeze.
I jerk upright and halt their frenzied pulls, make them loosen around
me. I start to tear them away from my limbs and torso, untangling myself with shaking hands, trying to escape the hold of the nightmare.
The way Midas had looked at me… My eyes burn as I try to shove the vision away. Not real, I tell myself. It wasn’t real.
It’s not until I extricate myself from the last of my ribbons that I’m finally able to take in a full breath.
“Bad dream?”
I jerk on my pallet and look over, finding Rip getting dressed. I wonder if he’s what woke me or if it was just the pinch of my ribbons.
A glance at the front of the tent shows me it’s still dark, my internal clock telling me that dawn is still an hour or two away.
“Umm, yeah,” I say with some embarrassment, my mind still trying to shove the dream away. “You’re up early,” I note, then feel immediately stupid for saying such an inane thing, considering what happened between us just a handful of hours ago.
I wonder when he came back to the tent to sleep after I passed out, or if he ever slept at all.
“I want to get the army moving,” he says, strapping a belt around his waist. “We’ve been going the long way, but I’m anxious to get to Fifth Kingdom now.”
Something that tastes like remorse sits on the back of my throat. My tongue is poised with an apology, but something holds me back. Pride? Embarrassment? An argument to defend what I did? I don’t know.
I sit up, keeping the furs tucked around me as I look at him.
He kissed me, and I still don’t think my mind has fully processed it. My body, on the other hand, seems to have memorized every single moment.
But why did he do it?
Just like last night, before I managed to fall into a fitful sleep, my mind spins with warring emotions. I feel like every single thought I have argues with itself, and I don’t know which side is right.
Because that kiss, that soft, somber kiss, it didn’t feel like the machinations of an enemy commander.
It felt like deep-seated want.
“Rip...”
He cuts me off, tone cold, eyes not looking anywhere near me. “I suggest you get up and get ready. We move out as soon as dawn breaks.”