His touch gentles on my face, thumb wiping away the tear tracks like he wants to erase my every emotion, control everything I do, everything I feel. He wants to wipe me clean like a slate.
I almost feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for me too, that this is how we’ve ended up. However, once I’m gone, I can start over. I can have a life. But him…
By losing me, he loses everything.
“This is getting out of hand,” he says, tone quiet, the last of his vitriol expended and soaked up by my face. “Let’s go to bed. Let me take care of you. Let me show you how much I love you.”
I blink, incredulous horror spiking my pulse as I realize what he’s implying. Does he actually believe I’m going to have sex with him right now?
He either doesn’t see the look on my face, or he’s sure he can turn this around by physically distracting me, because the next thing I know, his mouth is descending, ready to capture mine for a kiss.
My abated anger rushes back like a held-back tide.
As fast as it takes to blink, my ribbons are up, curving around my front like a cocoon of ribs. With a powerful push, they shove him back, and Midas goes stumbling, nearly landing on his ass.
He stares at me with wide-eyed shock, eyes glancing warily at the ribbons poised at my sides, held up in the air with cocked ends. All that’s missing from their stance are fangs dripping with venom and a rattle in their tails.
“Don’t touch me.” My voice singes, landing against his ear and making him twitch with the burn.
Midas recovers by straightening himself, shifting on his feet warily. “You’re worked up,” he says placatingly, and although he’s trying to sound calm, to seem sure of himself, there’s a tremor in his hands as he tugs down his golden tunic, fingers running over the buttons. “It’s understandable.”
I say nothing. I’m too busy breathing shallowly through my nose while my ribbons strain at my back, tugging against my muscles like they want to rip from my skin and tackle the bastard.
“You know I love you, Auren,” he says quietly, shoulders slumping down in a rare show of remorse. “You’re the most precious thing to me in the world, but I let my temper get the better of me. You embarrassed me at the table in front of the queen, and we need her alliance,” he says, as if I care. “And I don’t like the way the commander thinks he’s entitled to touch you without my permission. Make sure it doesn’t happen again, and just...behave, alright? I don’t want this constant tension between us.” It’s nearly a plea, as if I’m causing him strife.
My eyes stay hard as stone. “I want to see Digby.”
“Soon,” he promises, eyes darting to the throbbing spot of my cheek. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk later, alright?”
The moment he leaves, the very second my door is shut with a click of a turning key, I stumble out onto the balcony and slam the door behind me. Then I pick up the snow-sodden pillow left out on the chair, and I scream into it with a pent-up bellow of rage.
It doesn’t seem to come from my own mouth, but from the throat of the beast.
I scream and scream and scream, and the sky thunders back with an answering roar that makes the mountains shudder.
Yet the creature born from a withered heart and suppressed fury isn’t satisfied. My ribbons writhe around me with spitting savagery, so I throw the pillow down and then wrap their lengths around the banister.
I haul myself off the balcony in three simple swings, executed solely by my pent-up rage. Then I’m stalking through the snow, running toward the decrepit stairs that will lead me to that forgotten antechamber with its locked doors and frigid air.
Because I can’t stay still. I can’t stay in that room where he laid his hands on me.
I have to move, or I’m afraid whatever this thing is inside of me will claw out of my skin and devastate everything in its path.
I have to find Digby.
I have to escape before I finally snap and become the monster I’m trying not to be. And the only way I can drown out that demand for violence and bloodthirst is to focus on my plan.
It’s the only thing keeping me from plunging into the flames that burn pure gold.
Chapter 21
QUEEN MALINA
Tensed fingers gripped around my arms make my eyes fly open, body jolting upright.
For a moment, I’m disoriented, mind scrapping between sleep and wakefulness, caught in that groggy, heart-pounding in-between.
With a spewed exhale, my vision adjusts to the darkness of night, and I stare up at Jeo. “What do you think you’re doing?” I bleat, the jarring way he woke me up setting my mood to plummet.