CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 21

AUREN

There’s a glint of agolden blade. A blade I gilded with my own hands. Everything else has gone drab in gray and white—even King Fulke, who pins me against his chest with that very blade and slices into my neck.

I scream and struggle, but the sharp sting of the edge just sinks in more, slicing through me and making blood drip down to my chest. Yet when the king leans in against my ear, it’s not Fulke’s voice at all. It’s not his pudgy body at my back.

It’s a clean-shaven face and gilded sleeves and carob-pod eyes. It’s deceit and abuse and golden reins clutched in his hands. Reins that he’s tied around my wrist, holding me still. Keeping me where he wants me.

“If I can’t have her, no one can. Isn’t that right, Precious?” His voice is vile, pressed against my ear with an offensive purr, trying to wind around me just as much as his words always did.

We’re in Ranhold again now, with so much gold in the room it’s blinding. As if it’s glaring at me—glaring at him. We’re right here, stuck in the middle of the ballroom, reliving it all.

Slade is in front of me with his Wrath, while my wrath burns deep in my gut. Churning like magma ready to spew.

“Auren, use your ribbons.”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you? She lost that privilege.”

The dagger changes now, and I’m no longer pinned against Midas’s back, but pinned against a wall. It’s not gilded reins tied around my wrist, it’s my ribbon.

And then there’s a sound that the sword makes as it comes swinging down. It’s not a slice in the air, it’s not a whispered whistle. It shatters. Like a body being flung out a window, or a fist slamming into a mirror.

Or the shattering of a soul.

With it, comes the pain.

Pain and pain and pain again. Pain as I fracture into a million pieces. Pieces that look like strips of satin falling frayed and bloody to the floor.

“This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”

I can’t hear my screams. Can’t hear myself wail or beg or grieve. It’s just an endless cracking of crystalline glass.

And then, it’s suddenly over. Jarring in the ringing silence, caught with daggers and ribbons and splintered shards beneath my feet.

Broken. I feel so broken.

“You did this to yourself.”

I just stare at the shards of mirror, seeing my face in a thousand different pieces. Seeing my ribbons in a thousand more.

Seeing him.

Hearing him.

Over and over again.

“Don’t disobey me anymore, Precious.”

“If I can’t have her, no one can.”

“This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”

“You did this to yourself.”

My reflection in these mirrors shows every range of emotion looking back at me. Judgment, disappointment, pity, anger, numbness, anguish. My broken faces surround me as I drop to the floor and start digging through the shards with frantic desperation.

I snatch up the ribbons, but the mirrors make it confusing, and just when I try to grab hold of the satin strips, my hands hit the glass instead. I slice open my palms, my fingers, my knees.

Still, I dig through it desperately, tears and blood dripping down simultaneously, while the cut-away ribbons evade me at every turn. But I can’t give up.

I need them back.

I need them back I need them back I need them back

My grip comes away bloody, mangled, not a single scrap of ribbon safe in my hold. Then, I start to sink. Tied at the ankles and dragged under, so the glass starts cutting into my stomach, my arms, my chest.

No matter how hard I try to dig my way back up, I get pulled further down, dragged by a million shards of myself that broke, tangled in the lengths of ribbons I’ll never get back.

And a single gilded dagger, sharper than all the rest, digging right into my throat.

“You did this to yourself.”

My eyes burst open, lids rimmed with the dampness of tears. My hand is already at my throat, frantic movements checking for blood that isn’t there. I take several gasping breaths, sitting up in the otherwise empty bed. I’m shaking all over, covered in sweat, and I fling the covers off the bed, because it feels like the walls are closing in on me.

I pace around the room.

Back and forth, socks gathering static with every quick tread. My back feels battered and aching, as if the dream implanted it with phantom pain. With another particularly nasty twinge, I grab the lantern from the bedside table and pass through the bathroom before heading into the closet. I hang the lantern on the doorknob and then lift my shirt, standing there in front of the floor-length mirror.

When another stitch of pain jumps at my lower back, I turn around and carefully lift the wrapping Hojat keeps bound around my back.

My breath has gone rickety, nearly creaking from my throat in derelict protest. And when I look over my shoulder at my reflection, gaze zeroed in on the spot that’s hurting me, this time I do make a noise that scrapes past my lips.

The pair of my ribbons at the very bottom of my back are hanging on by a thread. Like skin that’s started to peel, left attached to harden and shrivel. My fingers barely skim over them, but even that faintest touch has them both falling off.

Just like that.

Like browned leaves on a stem, dead and brittle they fall. Swaying to the floor in near weightlessness until they land on the rug, two sorry pieces of shrunken and emaciated ribbons that have lost their gleam.

My eyes burn as I look down at them, and they fill when I press my fingers to the indents in my back. Nothing there but a pair of thin scratches on either side of my spine.

As if my ribbons were never there at all.

The sob that comes out of me is cut off as I slap a hand to my mouth. Muffled more when I lean against the closet wall, shoving my face against the spare coat hanging up.

My ribbons are going to flake off like that, one by one, until my back is bare and there’s nothing left.

I think a part of me believed that they were going to heal. Grow back. But all hope of that has flaked off, left to wither and wilt with the pieces at my feet.

So that’s it. That’s it now.

They’re gone, and I’m not going to get them back, and I just have to deal with that.

I breathe against the coat, trying to exhale out this chiseled-in mourning, though it’s carved too deep for me to get rid of. So when I’ve steadied myself again, I swipe away the tears that have leaked down my cheeks, and then methodically replace my bandages and pull down my shirt.

I pick up the dried, disintegrating ends. Hold them carefully in my palm. My mourning melds with my anger, stoked fresh with prodding and sparks.

With a shored-up sigh, I grab the lantern and leave the closet, going back into the bedroom where I place the ends and the lantern onto the bedside table. There’s no chance of getting back to sleep now.

Passing the banked fire, I leave the bedroom and walk down the dark hallway, my feet going faster, like they want to break out into a run. When I get to the living room, the flames in the fireplace are burning a bit more brightly, and one look at the clock on the mantel tells me that it’s early evening, though the house is quiet.

Movement from the kitchen catches my eye, and my gaze settles on the lone figure sitting at the table with a cup clutched in his hands and a bottle in front of him. I pause for a brief moment before I drift over, taking a seat directly across from him.

Digby lifts his gaze, settling his steady bark-colored eyes on me. For a moment, we just look at one another. Without bars between us. Without a king who had no business wearing a crown. Without rules or expectations. We look at each other as two people who have a culmination of shock still working through their systems.

I don’t know what Digby can see in my eyes, but I know what I see in his. I see countless hours of torture. Of imprisonment. Punishment. I see racking guilt and bone-deep injury and stark regret. I think that’s what pains me the most. That I can see, despite everything that’s happened to him, that he’s suffering right here, for me. For what I endured and what he was forced to watch.

“It was always you with the power.”

I smile shakily at his words. “I imagine it was a big shock when you saw me in Ranhold. Probably seemed foolish to you once you knew what I could do and how much I let him walk all over me for so many years. You must think I’m very stupid and weak.”

He shakes his head fiercely. “Even the most powerful people can be made to feel powerless. Finding your strength even when you believe you have none is what makes you a true force. Nobody made you into what you are, my lady. You were always strong. You just had to prove it to yourself.”

I swallow hard, still brushing off that awful dream, still feeling those ends fall off my back like petals flaking off a flower. “I wish I hadn’t waited so damn long.”

“And I wish I’d never let the bastard hurt you in the first place. I should’ve been there for you. Should’ve shielded you from what happened.”

With my shaky hand, I reach across the table and grip his fingers still tucked loosely around the cup. “It’s not your fault, Dig.” My words are a hoarse whisper with nothing but crystal-clear truth.

And his face just…buckles.

Haunting exhaustion and crippling wounds are like a hand curling around the parchment of his expressions, crumpling them in one grappled fist.

And then, my stoic, steady, inscrutable guard cries.

Right here at the table, pain etches out of him in unwanted waves. His other hand covers his face, as if he wants to try and smother the grief. His fingers are bruised, his pinky stained permanently black and held at an awkward angle, lost against its battle with frostbite, just as he’s lost the battle with his unflappable disposition.

His outward display shocks me, making tears spring up to my own eyes because seeing someone so indomitable suddenly break down is a shock all on its own. Makes all my own emotions so much sharper.

When he drops his hand, Digby’s face is puffy and mottled, his lips cracked and his body more slumped than I’ve ever seen him.

“I’m sorry,” he utters on a single shaken breath trying to be stable. “I’m sorry.”

“Look at me, Digby,” I say, and his wet eyes lift. “It was not your fault. Not any of it.”

“I was supposed to protect you.”

My fingers squeeze his. “You did,” I tell him. “You always did.”

He takes in another breath, an inhale raked over rubble. He wipes at his eyes. “I’m proud of you. For what you did.”

He means it, too.

I pull my hand back. “You were a Highbell guard for a long time.”

Digby waves dismissively. “I could’ve retired years ago,” he tells me, making my brows shoot up in surprise. “Stayed for you.”

Shock pools at my chest, lapping in warm waves against my heart. “You did?”

He nods, running a hand through his thick gray beard. “You needed someone watching your back. Didn’t trust anyone else to do it.” His mouth twists in disgust. “I should’ve just let you out of that fucking cage. Thought about it. Many times. But I should’ve fucking done it.”

“If you’d done that, you would’ve been tortured and killed. Head on a spike that I would’ve been forced to gild.”

“Or I would’ve gotten you out,” he says stubbornly. “Gotten you free. That’s what matters.”

The fact that he’d even considered it speaks volumes.

He lifts his cup, takes a long draw from it and then says, “Midas wanted to take you along with him on his own caravan to Fifth Kingdom, you know.”

My brow furrows. “Really?”

Digby nods slowly, eyes down in his cup. “I was the one who suggested it would be smarter to send you separately, in case anything happened to the royal envoy. Convinced him that he needed to assess things at Ranhold before he should send for you. To make sure you would be secure there. I gave him a vow that I would protect your travel to Fifth. That you would be safe with the other saddles.”

His face is troubled again, forehead wrinkled in thought, while I just slump against my seat, taking it in.

“But really, I knew after what happened with King Fulke, you just needed time apart from the bastard. He always kept you so fucking tight in his fist.” His own hand curls together as if he’s imagining Midas’s grip around me now. “But I almost got you kidnapped by fucking snow pirates.”

My mind whirls with this information. I had no idea that Digby’s guilt ran this deep.

“If it weren’t for you, I might never have gotten out of that cage. That trip was the catalyst to it all,” I tell him. “And you’re right, I did need time apart. That was my first taste of freedom in a long time, and if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met Rip that night. I wouldn’t have started to question...everything.” I shake my head, my chest feeling tight. “You can’t keep blaming yourself, Digby. Because all the horrible things that happened to me, they led me here.”

Digby watches me steadily, and I let him see the truth in my face. Let him see that I mean exactly what I’ve said.

“And I’m glad I’m here, Dig,” I add on a murmur. “Despite it all, I’m glad I’m here with you.”

I see him swallow hard, his eyes gone glassy just before he sniffs it away. The two of us, we understand the progression, witnessed the journey from there to here over all these years. So I take a deep breath, and then I shrug off my clinging ache. Because we aren’t there anymore. We’re here.

And I want to make the most of it.

I take the bottle, pouring more wine into his cup. “So, what do you say we finally play that drinking game?”

He blinks at me, letting out a husk of a laugh as he drags his cup toward him. “Alright, Lady Auren. You can have your drinking game.”

My lips curve up, and I hold up the bottle in a toast. “No longer live the king.”

His mouth curves in a rare smile that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. “No longer live the fucking king. And may you kick anyone’s ass who ever tries to hurt you again.”

I think it’s the perfect way to start our game.

I clink the bottle against his cup. “My thoughts exactly.”