CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

AUREN

I don’t wake up somuch as a hammer slams against my skull so hard that it knocks me into consciousness against my will.

My breasts are smashed against the mattress from lying on my stomach, and I feel tickling fur on my cheek. Cracking open an eye isn’t as painful as I anticipated though, because the room is blessedly dark. I suppose there are some perks to having a house inside of a cave.

I roll over, but the tug against my back makes a grimace pull at my lips and a pained groan slip free. That small noise in this quiet room seems to be amplified, and when I look up, my heart sinks.

Slade is sitting in a chair beside the bed, watching me.

There’s a book on his lap, its pages fanned out like he wasn’t really reading at all. His legs are spread before him, one elbow bent and leaning against the armrest, finger and thumb cocked against his jaw.

I sit up the rest of the way, forcing the grimace off of my face, though I immediately notice that nothing is gilded. Not the blankets, not the pillow, not my clothes. Is it still night?

“How long was I asleep?”

“I’m not certain,” he tells me. “But you needed the rest to sleep off the wine. Plus, your body is still recovering from the power drain, among other things.”

I let out a noncommittal noise because the “power drain” and “other things” are firmly in the I’m not talking about this yet territory.

“I was hoping you could show me the cave today,” I tell him as I get to my feet and look around the room. The only light is coming from the low-burning fire and glowing blue just outside the window. “Are there any shoes I can borrow? Do you think Lu has anything?”

When he doesn’t answer, I risk a glance at him, just to find that he’s still watching me steadily, the greens of his eyes pitched in something heady and attentive. The silence of his study makes my skin crawl. Because somehow, despite not knowing him for long, he has always been able to sift beneath my surface and find truths I thought were long-buried.

“...Is that a no on the shoes?”

He carefully tosses the book on the floor and gets to his feet, and I find myself backing up a step. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, because I don’t want him to get closer. I don’t want him to start to dig in my depths.

The second he sees me back up, he jerks to a stop and something unsettled flashes through his expression before he shutters it.

I hate that I’m standing here, putting distance between us. But distance is the footpath of avoidance, and it’s the track I have to cling to for my own sanity.

Because if he gets close, he’ll see the truth. He’ll see how the ground at my feet is riddled with potholes and bumps. He’ll see the stark fear in my trembling lip and the guilt in my eyes as I try to keep backing away. He’ll see the reality of the destruction that surrounds me, while I desperately try not to trip. Distance is all I have between me and having to come to terms with the carnage that’s piling up to my knees.

But leave it to Slade, because I swear, he can see this too.

“We need to talk.”

Just four words from his lips, and heat presses against the backs of my eyes and makes my nose burn. Shoving them back, I shake my head at him, try to straighten my shoulders. But I can’t. I can’t, because it hurts, because—

“No.”

The word wrenches out of a cinched throat, lashed from a whipping tongue.

His lips press together in a thin line, and I see the first peeks of his roots moving beneath the collar of his shirt.

“I want to go see the cave,” I say, my voice stronger this time.

But what is the value of strength when it’s just a facade?

After a long moment that stretches between us, Slade tips his head. “Alright, Goldfinch. I’ll show you the cave.”

Relief pilfers through the stack of my anxiety, stowing some of it away for later.

“I have some boots for you in my closet, so we’ll need to go into my room first.”

I look around in surprise. “This isn’t your room?”

He shakes his head. “Your gold has taken up residence there for the time being, so we’re staying in here.”

My gold—what? But then the other part of his answer snags my attention. We’re staying in here. We.

“You slept in here with me?”

To say I’m taken aback is putting it mildly. The idea that he would stay with me makes me feel oddly vulnerable.

He cocks his head. “Where else would I be if not with you?”

My breath catches, heart twisting.

“But the daytime…”

“I was up before dawn,” he assures me, the shadows cast in the room making the sharp angles of his bearded jaw more pronounced. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

I look down, eyes skating over the rough threads of the thick socks I have on my feet. They’re not gilded either, and something uneasy tempers in my chest.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

My ears perk with the sound of him taking a single step forward. My body wants to sway toward him, to move with the force of his approach, because his nearness has always been a force of its own. One that’s always held power over me.

I feel the heat of his body in front of me, the shadows cast from his body mingling with mine. “I claimed you that night in Ranhold,” he tells me, his tone so full of unfaltering fire that it draws my gaze back up. Heat flushes my face, as if he really were ablaze, his words igniting the packed-down snow of my spirit. “And then you claimed me right back, in the middle of a ballroom for everyone to hear. Or don’t you remember?”

Flashes.

A crowd of faces.

Lines of armored guards.

Cruel, angry eyes beneath a golden crown.

The heat of a body at my back.

And then my own clear, unshakable voice. He’s mine.

It wasn’t just a claiming, it was a challenge. As if I was ready to destroy anyone who tried to refute it or take him away from me.

Do I remember? Of course I do. I remember every single encounter with him. I walked off a pirate ship and fell at his feet in the snow, and ever since then, it’s like I’ve just kept on falling.

“I want to go see the cave.”

“You want to keep avoiding everything,” he counters.

A barbed laugh scrapes past my lips. “And if I do? That’s my prerogative. I have been controlled and owned for over twenty years of my life,” I say, eyes flashing. “So if I want to avoid something and see a damned cave, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

The muscle in his jaw jumps, but he doesn’t argue, doesn’t try to talk me into anything else, and I’m grateful for that, because my head is pounding and my back is twinging, and I just need to get out.

Turning around, I head for the door, but right as I reach for the knob, I jerk to a stop, snatching my palm away in hesitation.

There’s a moment’s pause, but then Slade says, “It’s nighttime.”

Because he knows without me saying anything. He somehow understood my sudden spike of anxiety that I was going to gild the whole damn door.

I hesitate. “So, I only slept a few hours, or…?” My question is pregnant with pause, with another question that I’m not voicing yet.

“No, you slept the day away.”

My eyes flick down to my black and brown clothes, and then I give a jerky nod.

Swallowing hard, I turn the knob and walk out in the hallway. It’s just as dark as the bedroom was, the wood paneled walls broken up by sconces. They’re made up of rough, clear crystals that seem like they were plucked from a mine and hung here, their basins full of oil to feed the flickering flames.

My shadow casts along the walls as I walk, but Slade’s voice stops me. “You’ll need those shoes, Auren.”

Stopping, I turn around to see him heading in the opposite direction. He disappears into the last doorway in the hall, returning several seconds later with a pair of boots and a leather coat.

When he reaches me, I expect him to hand them both over. He doesn’t.

My eyes go wide as he drops to one knee in front of me. I watch as he picks up my left foot and slips on the boot, lacing it up one row at a time. Each deft movement of his fingers has me entranced, and my heart beats so hard in my chest that I worry he’ll feel the pulse all the way down my leg.

Setting my foot down, he picks up the other to do the same thing, his hand gripping my calf with steady surety. Heat bursts from the spot of his touch, and my skin tingles despite the layer of clothing between us.

Finished, he stands up, so close now that I can see every fleck in his eyes, from the dappling of a summer’s lush green pasture to the onyx shadows lurking just behind it.

Without saying a word, he moves around me and, with excruciating gentleness, helps me into the coat. It’s entirely too big, but it hangs loosely around my shoulders, the fabric warm without the oppressive weight.

I feel his breath against the side of my neck, his hands gently skimming the collar to make sure my skin is protected from the cold. He moves reverently, and it’s these moments of surprising intimacy that burn into my heart.

I’ve always been treated like treasure, but with Slade, I’m simply treasured.

I bury my nose deeper into the coat so I can breathe in his scent that’s covering it. The smell of damp earth and sunned bark, of the sweetness of chocolate charred by bitter richness.

Almost reluctantly, his hands drop away, and I feel more than hear him take a step back. “Ready?”

With a silent nod, I follow as he leads the way to the front door. The living room is empty, so we don’t pass by anyone else, and then Slade pulls open the door, stepping aside for me to go first.

I look up as I take my first step out, mouth dropping open at the giant stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The cave itself is massive, so much bigger than I could’ve envisioned, with so many pockets and crevices and cracks that it would take years to map it all. But what’s most enchanting of all are the veins of blue that run throughout the rock, like frozen waves of a glowing sea.

I pass beneath an archway of stalactites, their points wet with gathered water, the slick ground reflecting the cerulean fluorescence. It’s almost hard to blink in a place like this, because I don’t want to miss anything. My head swivels and my body turns, and I keep myself as quiet as I can, because the cave seems so ancient and apart—a hallowed wonder in the middle of a village that shouldn’t exist.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

Soundlessly, Slade comes up to stand beside me, though I don’t move my craned neck. “What the Grotto lacks in daylight, it makes up for tenfold with this.”

Nodding in agreement, I let my lungs wash through the air that somehow feels both fresh and timeworn. “It’s peaceful.”

I’m not sure how long Slade walks around with me, but I eat up every moment of it. Everything—from the darkness of the cave to the veins running through it, from the mysteriousness of the endless crevices to the stark reveal of each hanging point—reminds me of him. There is a depth here that feels fathomless and untouchable, and all I want to do is stay here beneath its shadowed glow.

But then Slade steps beneath one of the brightest fluorescent fissures in the cave, the underbelly of the mountain glowing so brilliantly that it lights up his face, illuminating his eyes.

“We need to talk, Goldfinch.”

My chest instantly goes tight. “No.”

I start to turn away, but he reaches out and grabs my hand, stopping me. “We have to speak about this.”

I jerk my palm away. “I want to go back inside.”

He shakes his head in frustration. “You want to cook dinner, you want to see the cave, you want to go back inside...you can’t keep running from this, Auren.”

“I’m not running.”

“You are, and you’re stronger than this,” he says firmly, the dark green of his eyes hidden beneath the illuminating blue.

“Oh, so you think I’m being weak, now?”

He runs a hand down his face. “No, that’s not what I’m saying, but I—”

“I’m not talking about it yet.”

His jaw muscle jumps. “Yes. We are.”

My anger is so thick I can taste it burning on the back of my tongue. “Go ahead and talk then, but I’m going inside.” I turn on my heel and start to walk away, tossing my next words over my shoulder. “You can think I’m a coward all you want, but I’m not going to stand here and talk about how thoroughly I fucked up.”

I can’t.

Not yet.

Already my body is shaking, but not from anger—from fear. Fear to face what I did, fear over how spectacularly I lost control. It’s like getting black-out drunk and having no recollection of what you did except for jumpy fragments that pop up unwanted, none of the memories good.

“You didn’t fuck up,” Slade calls behind me. “I did.”

I whirl around, stopping just beneath the tail-end of the mountain’s blue vein. “If you’re going to try to make some male chauvinistic claim that everything I did was really somehow your doing, then you can save it, because that was all me. I don’t care if you’re trying to say that to be noble or because you think it will help assuage my guilt, but—”

He gives me a tortured look and bites out, “I fucking rotted you, okay?”

His words don’t just cut me off—they splice right down my middle, making me sway. My mouth opens and closes as I try to come to terms with what he just said.

“What?”

He stalks forward, booted steps echoing on the rock, while cold air presses up against my back like a frigid bystander. When he’s right in front of me again, one side of his face is lit up with blue, the other cast into shadows.

“I rotted you,” he repeats, but hearing it again doesn’t help. “What do you remember?”

My brows pull together and I shake my head, glancing away, eyes locked on the rifts in the cave. “I...”

What do I remember? It’s hard to tell since I’ve been actively trying not to.

I remember I snapped. I remember that this depth of pure, unmitigated power suddenly coursed through me. I remember killing. It was so easy—I think that’s what gets me the most. That, and this sense that I wasn’t wholly me. There was a beast inside me, famished and furious, ready to devour the world.

But before I could go on that rampage, someone stepped in front of me.

I see it now, flashes of fragments, like torn bits of paper held briefly under the candlelight. The way he begged me to let the power go, the chokehold that terror had on me.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, because without the beast to control the magic, I was incapable. I didn’t know how to stop it. All I could do was hold onto the reins, hoping Slade could get out before it snapped. But of course, he didn’t. Of course he refused to leave me.

The ashen kiss he placed against my gilded lips was all I felt before an invasive breeze slipped down my throat. And then a whisper, echoing in my ear, Forgive me.

My eyes flick back to Slade, and he must sense that I’m remembering, because he nods.

“You rotted me?”

Images spring up in my head, none of them pleasant. Rotten corpses of soldiers left at Sixth Kingdom’s border, their bodies puffed up and reeking in the snow. Then, Midas’s guards barring me from getting out of the room, Slade coming in and rotting them where they stood until their faces went sunken and hearts decayed. And another, of him walking toward Ranhold, leaving roots of rot in every step’s wake, poisoning the snowy ground.

Was I like one of those sunken-in corpses? Lips peeling back, organs decayed into husks? I look down at my skin, as if I’m going to see evidence, but everything looks normal.

“The rot wasn’t visible like that,” he tells me, once again so in tune with my train of thought that he seems to always anticipate what I’m thinking.

His expression turns agonized. “You were…dying.” The words choke out, his shoulders bent with blame. “I didn’t fucking know what to do, but I couldn’t just stand there and let you drain yourself. So I used my power against you.”

I let his words settle in, slowly shaking my head. “No. You used your power on me, not against me. Because you’re right, I was dying.”

He flinches—so subtly that I barely catch it. “I… You’re not angry?”

A frown plants itself between my brows. “Why would I be angry?”

Now he looks positively bewildered. “I fucking rotted you, Auren. Stole into your body and shut it down, putting you in a stasis of spoiled decay.”

My nose wrinkles. “Well, I could do without the visual of stasis of spoiled decay,” I mutter.

“I risked your life,” he goes on, and I realize these are the words that have been running through his head since the moment he used his magic on me, that he’s been tormenting himself with self-proclaimed blame. “I used my power against you, and then I kept you like that when I took you and got you as far away from your gold as I could, risking your life again with every minute that I waited.” He pulls at his hair in frustration, glancing around the darkness like he’s looking into the crevices of his own guilt. “What if I’d waited too long? What if I hadn’t been able to reverse it?”

“You’ve been hating yourself this whole time.” It’s not a question—I can see the truth plainly, can hear it in the way he’s talking. Gently, I take his hand in mine, squeezing his fingers. “You saved me,” I say quietly, and he looks at me like he’s desperate to see me, like he can’t bear to look away or else be swallowed by those shadows of fault.

He slumps slightly, head tilted up at the ceiling as he lets out a breath. “There’s something else.”

My stomach tightens. “What is it?”

He tips his head back down to look at me. “When I reversed the effects of the rot and removed my power from your body...a piece of it stayed behind.”

A piece of it stayed behind.

My eyes widen, and my stomach gives an involuntary roll. “What do you mean it stayed?” I press a hand against my chest like I’m trying to feel it. “Are you sure?”

He gives a terse nod. “Positive. Even now, I can sense it, but it’s rooted into you. No matter how many times I’ve tried, it won’t come out.”

Uneasiness shuffles down my spine, and I swallow hard. “Should I be worried?”

“No,” he says with such decisive confidence that I’m not sure if it’s actually true or if he’s just willing it to be so. “I’ve checked you countless times, sometimes for hours on end, but the rot isn’t doing anything harmful. It’s just...there.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

“Never.”

I’m still pressing a hand to my sternum, so I let my hand drop. “You’ll keep checking?” I ask, unable to keep the worry from my tone. “You’ll tell me if anything changes?”

“I promise.”

I nod slowly, trying to acclimate to this new fact, though I have a feeling I won’t be able to for a while. “I want to go inside now.”

Slade looks like he wants to say something else, but he stops himself. “Okay, Goldfinch.”

On near silent steps, I follow him back through the cave to the Grotto, passing by its stone walls, all the more appreciative of its shadowed haven. Of all its secret splits and nooks, because I feel like I have just as many crannies hidden in myself.

But even a haven stops being a refuge at some point.

So when we walk back inside and the door closes behind me, I shouldn’t be surprised at the sudden chill that spreads over my skin. It’s a warning that the first knot in the string I’ve been trying to ignore has been pulled out, and now, everything in me feels looser. Unsteady.

And I have a feeling that no matter how much I try to bunch it back up, all of me is going to come unbound anyway.