“Where are you going?” Osrik calls behind me.
“Need to go rot something,” I reply over my shoulder. I hear him grumble something under his breath, but he leaves me to it.
It’s time to face facts. Like I told Auren, I’ve been away from my kingdom for too long. She’s made her choice, and I have to accept that, no matter how strongly my instincts try to convince me otherwise. No matter how much my magic rebels.
I abhor the politics that Midas plays, so perhaps it’s time to cut ties and just let it all play out. I’ll return to Fourth, shore up my borders, and go back to not caring about the other kingdoms, so long as they don’t try to fuck with mine. Since Midas is big on appearances, it’ll piss him off immensely if I leave early and skip his celebration, so that’s one bit of silver lining I have.
I’d really only been staying here for one reason anyway, and it certainly wasn’t for a fucking ball.
Chapter 27
AUREN
I toss and turn in bed, twisted up in both my blankets and my thoughts. Only after the sun comes up do I finally fall into an exhausted sleep, but even that doesn’t bring much rest.
Every single word Slade spoke to me replays over and over. Not just what he said earlier in the library, or when he carried me upstairs and sat on my balcony, but even further back too. When we were together in a coal-lit tent, or fighting in a snowy circle, or walking along the edge of his army’s camp.
Small, stolen moments.
Dangerous, forbidden moments.
Tell me.
I can’t.
I’m a once-clear pond gone all murky, like Slade dove in and splashed around in my depths. Without me realizing it, he slipped into my veins and now swims through my every thought, steeped into every drop.
When I drag my eyes open again, it’s late in the day, although I feel as if I haven’t gotten any rest at all. How could I, when even in sleep, Slade seems to have soaked into every inch of me?
You’ve chosen to sit back and wither.
Sometimes, things need first to be ruined in order to then be remade.
Listen to your instincts and stop holding back.
The silence of the room only makes his voice louder in my skull. Ripping back the blankets, I get up with a restlessness that prickles my skin. Liquid gold bleeds from the soles of my feet as I begin to pace, covering the parts of the stone floor that my power hadn’t yet reached. But even that use of magic doesn’t help moor me. I’m drifting in a sea of my own tangled thoughts, caught up in the swell.
Hitching my body against the wall, I let my forehead rest on the gilded wallpaper and squeeze my eyes closed. Taking steadying breaths, I lean there for a moment, palms pressed to the doorframe and a war crowding my chest.
Three more days until the ball. Three days until I’m supposed to leave. Somehow, the sum of those days seems to equate to the missing pieces inside of me.
Right or wrong, trust or doubt, mind or heart.
I’m at a fork in the road, and I can’t linger at its point anymore. I have to choose a path.
With the sudden clarity of a cloudless sky, my eyes spring open and my body lurches upright. I cross into the dressing room and pull on a long-sleeved gown, the silk molding with gold the minute I tug it over my body. For once, I leave the corset be and don’t cut or break it, but I don’t bother to do up the back either.
My ribbons plait my hair as I tug on undergarments, stockings, gloves, boots, and a coat, and then I tear out of the room and through the balcony doors. The dogs are already back from their daily hunt, most of them out in the pen and sniffing around in the snow.
The sky is as broody as I am, with simmering gray clouds dropping lazy flakes of snow to float in the air. I do a quick check to make sure no one is near before I climb up onto the railing. I loop my ribbons around the banister before letting them drop like ropes that I then use to climb down. My arm and leg muscles are sore from my exercise sessions, but I hold on tight as I lower myself.
I keep a steady grip and manage to curl the ends of my ribbons like a hook to solidify them enough to hold my weight. Looking d
own, I judge the distance of the balcony a floor below to my left. I know I have to time this just right and jump with enough distance so that I don’t break a damn ankle. But I did it before, and I can do it again.
So without giving myself time to overthink, I swing my body forward, once, twice, three times, and then I release my ribbons and jump.
I land hard onto the balcony floor, and a jolt of impact shoots up both of my legs, but I smile in victory that I made it. Below, the dogs whip themselves into a frenzy and start to yip and howl at me. The last thing I want is for someone to come investigate why they’re making such a racket and find me up here. I wave my hands at the dogs below, but they just start barking louder.