CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

AUREN

I’m being nudged.

Nudged in the arm while I’m trying to sleep. I don’t want to be nudged while I’m trying to sleep. I say exactly that, but it comes out as a mashed-up grumble while my face is still stuffed against the pillow.

I hear a chuckle in reply, which makes my eyes squint open. Slade is standing beside the bed, his nudging hand nowhere to be found. Smart male.

“Is it night already?” I ask groggily as I stretch my legs out and start to sit up.

“No, it’s about midday.”

My eyes flick over to him just as I set my feet on the ground. “Oh good, I still have time then.” I start to lower myself back down again.

A damn nudging hand at my arm stops me.

“Actually, I’d like you to get up now.”

I stop and look up at him. “For what?”

“Training.”

I frown. “I train with Judd at night.”

His expression is unreadable. “You’re not training with Judd.”

My attention snares, our eyes tangling together. “I’m training with you.” It’s not a question, but his head tips down in a nod nonetheless, while mine shakes. “I can’t yet.”

He arches a brow. “Why not?”

Excuses clog up in the back of my throat like a newly formed dam until I’m running dry. I automatically resist, anxiety sloshing against my internal barrier. But then my determined words come leaking through the cracks to my ear.

The next time someone wants to try and use me, control me, I want to be ready.

That’s what I said to Judd.

I want to master my own strength—physically and magically.

That’s what I told Slade.

I can’t do those things if I don’t learn to control my magic. So I swallow hard, trying to dam up the flooding fear.

“Okay.”

Pride flashes over his face. “Get ready, and then we’ll go.”

Every step I take from the Grotto is made with tightly strung nerves. They’re braided around my bones, twined around my chest, woven so thoroughly throughout my body that every step is stiff with apprehension.

This is my first time being out of the Grotto. My eyes sting as we step out of the cave and into the veiled daylight, my hand a shield above my eyes as I take in the wintry landscape. The mouth of the cave has been shoveled, with the barest scrap of a stone pathway visible below a layer of sand and salt.

“This way.”

I follow Slade out and to the right where we trudge up another shoveled path. Although the storm has broken, the sky is still cloaked with clouds, a slight wind chafing my cheeks. This strip of Deadwell has a shore of flat snowfall and a rising tide of mountains at my right. One of them bends over slightly like a comber wave, and there’s a shelf protruding from its belly, keeping us in perpetual shade.

I tighten my arms around myself, hands buried in my pockets as we travel up a slight incline around the mountain’s base.

“We’re almost there,” he tells me when he notices me starting to breathe harder. “It’s far enough away from everything.”

That gives me some peace of mind, but even so, I’m too nervous about the training to get any real comfort. We could walk to the very peak of this mountain and I’m not sure it would be far enough.

He nudges my arm. “It will be fine, Auren.”

I appreciate the reassurance, but I don’t have the same certainty.

“You saw me in the ballroom,” I say, more harshly than I mean to.

“I did,” he replies. “And it showed me how incredibly powerful and strong you are. Which means you can master it.”

Pressing my lips together, I keep my eyes on my feet, while my anxiety twists and twines.

“Watch your step. The path will be a bit steeper from here.”

The snow is piled higher here, and there is no discernible path, but it’s not as stacked up as it is to the left of us. We only make it a few more paces when someone calls out behind us. “Your Majesty!”

We stop, both of us turning to see a man hurrying forward. He’s wearing a thick coat with a deep fur collar stretching all the way up his throat, and on his arm is a large messenger hawk, its chest dotted with brown and white speckles. “Believe this is for you, Sire.”

The man flicks his gaze to me, eyes widening as he takes me in. I try to give him a smile, but he quickly looks away.

As soon as Slade reaches him, the bird instantly lets out a shrill purr before holding out its leg to him. Slade strokes its neck and then takes the vial from its leg. He unrolls the scroll, eyes flicking back and forth over the paper. He’s turned slightly away from me, but from his profile, I see a frown appear on his brow. I walk over, a sense of unease building in my gut.

“What’s wrong?” I ask when I’m right behind him.

His shoulders tense up, but only for a moment. “Nothing,” he says before he takes the scroll and shoves it into his pocket. He looks back up at the man while giving the bird another pet. “Thanks, Selby.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. What should I do with him?”

“Let him rest in the Perch. I’ve no need for him.”

The man nods and then turns away with the bird in tow, disappearing down the incline.

“Everything okay?” I ask, looking to Slade.

“Of course,” he replies easily. “Shall we?”

He already starts leading the way again before I can say anything more. I hesitate for a moment, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to assuage my curiosity and outright ask what the letter said, but I stop myself when a thought occurs to me.

Do I even have a right to ask him something like that?

Surely he’d have offered up the information about it if he’d wanted me to know. My feelings shouldn’t be hurt that he didn’t.

He probably has a lot of letters that he receives and sends every day as part of being a king. I shouldn’t feel so sensitive about it. Like we said, we still have a lot of work to do in peeling back each other’s layers.

I follow after him, my eyes latched onto his back while I try to shrug off these swirling scruples. After all, he’s a king, and that’s something I keep forgetting. He’s a king, and I’m…

I’m about to fail miserably at using my magic.

Therein lies the heart of my troubled thoughts. I haven’t said anything to anyone, haven’t even let myself really face it. But the fact of the matter is, my gold isn’t working right. Not only that, but I murdered people with it left and right, without a single thought of hesitation.

What if I do that again?

When Slade finally leads me off the path and brings us into a cave, I’m in my own head so much that I don’t even take in the space until I nearly walk right onto the gold-stained floor.

I suck in a breath, eyes sprinting from one end of the cave to the other. I recognize it immediately. It’s where I first woke up. Where I blinked and I was already moving, power already coursing through my veins.

Too late, I realize I’m staring at the hardened gold that’s splashed and splattered over the walls and floor, lost in its shallow depths while Slade watches me.

Blinking, I shake myself, pasting on an unaffected expression.

“We’re training here?” I ask, and though I try to keep it steady, my voice sounds heavy with the weight of the implications.

Slade continues to study me for a moment before he dips his head. “We are,” he tells me, his tone heeding something I can’t quite catch.

Those anxious nerves, those curled and twisted strings I’m all tied up in, they pull taut, making even my throat too tight to swallow.

He walks a few feet away and kneels down, right where a wave of gold has frozen, and he drags a finger over the hardened crest.

I don’t know why, but I shiver.

He cocks a brow. “Cold?”

“No.”

He stands again and removes his coat, but just as I try to insist that I’m not cold, he places it on the ground. “Come sit.”

I hesitate for a moment, but my feet lead me to him, and then I lower myself onto his coat, tucking my legs beneath me.

He sits down too, and even though we’re two feet apart, the distance feels inconsequential. Slade’s presence—his attention on me—it’s always eaten up the space between us.

“It’s daytime,” he says, motioning toward the cave’s opening where daylight still spills in. “Your power has always been uncontrollable during the day, right?”

“Right. Normally, as soon as something touches my skin during the day, my gold comes rushing out.” My eyes fall to the black leggings and gloves on my body. “But ever since I woke up, it’s different. Nothing is being gold-touched.”

“What do you feel?”

Worry bombards me, and I lift my hand as if I can see what lurks inside while flashes of memory of that night in Ranhold ping against the backs of my eyes, shooting scene after scene through my vision.

I quickly bury my hand beneath my leg. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”

“Try to gild the rock.”

With wary weight, I slip off my glove and press my palm to the jutting stone just to my left. It should be instantaneous. Gold should immediately spill out of me.

But it doesn’t.

Slade cocks his head. “Are you trying?”

My eyes slash up. “What’s that supposed to mean? Yes, I’m trying.”

“Are you sure? Because you say your gold-touch was always uncontrollable during the day, but you could control it, to an extent.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I couldn’t.”

“But you did,” he argues. “You could gild things so they were only plated in gold. Or you could make things completely solid gold. Remember the coat you wore? You managed to keep your magic only gilding the inner lining so it didn’t spread. That was you controlling it.”

I blink. “I’ve…I’ve never thought about it that way.”

“You’ve always had control. You just need to learn how to wield it. I think you’re scared. I think you’re holding yourself back, and that’s why your gold isn’t coming—because you’re blocking it.”

Anger trips up through my veins, making my mind stumble. “I’m not.”

“Auren…” I don’t care how persistently calm he still is, that tone rattles me down to my bones. “I know you.”

“Maybe you don’t,” I spit back with far more vitriol than I intended. I’ve gone as stiff and as cold as the frozen gold, caught in my own momentum. I steel myself, readying for the backlash, preparing for the fight.

But he doesn’t give it to me.

Instead, Slade watches me with that unerring green gaze, face betraying nothing.

“Maybe you’re wrong,” I go on, wanting to break that shuttered expression, wanting to crack open the eggshell view that he has of me and show him the rottenness inside. Prove that he didn’t put it there. “Snippets and unanswered questions—that’s what we have. So don’t sit there all superior and act like you know everything, because you don’t.”

Idon’t even know all of me.

And that’s the splinter that’s caught in my chest, unable to be plucked free.

My magic changed—so wholly that I’m terrified of it. My ribbons are gone. Like leaves stripped from a vine. And I…

“I am not the same person I was when I walked into Ranhold.”

“That’s true,” he concedes. “But I still know you.”

A balking, frustrated laugh tumbles out of me. “Are you out of—”

“Let’s talk about that night.”

My words lurch to a halt. My heart does too. I feel it snag against my throat. “We don’t need to talk about that night. We were both there.”

A look of frustrated sadness lines his face. “Talk to me, Auren.”

“What do you want me to say?” I demand. I’m up and on my feet before I even realize I’ve moved. “This.” I gesture around the room, at all the gold that doesn’t feel like me. “This doesn’t make any sense. That night at Ranhold doesn’t make any sense. My gold isn’t working right, and what I did that night…I never should’ve been able to do that.”

“And what did you do?” he presses, and I curl my hands into fists because I—

“I killed.”

That’s the thing that nobody is saying. The thing that I haven’t been able to face.

“How did I even do that? I felt my power leave me when the sun set,” I say as I begin to pace around the cave, skirting the solidified splotches. “I shouldn’t have been able to use any part of my power, but that...” I stop, looking down at the ground. “There was something inside of me that just snapped open.”

“It needed to happen.”

My head shakes, voice cracking, and my anger cracks with it.

Because I’m not angry at him. I’m angry at me. And it’s easier to hold that anger than to feel anything else, because I don’t know how to navigate these other emotional landscapes. They’re dark and terrifying and rocky, and I feel lost as I try to cross them.

I hate my snappish tone. Hate how the first thing I do is try to push him away because of some internal feeling like I’m going to lose him anyway.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. Sincerity fills my tone, and I drop my guard, drop my snappishness that he doesn’t deserve, and I tell him the truth.

“I became a beast. I killed a lot of people that night, and I could do it again. What if I go full fae here?” I ask. “What if I lose control and gild all of Deadwell, and you can’t stop me? I remember what I did that night, just like I remember what happened leading up to it. How I was on that mezzanine. How confused and helpless. I felt angry and alone, and then I finally found you…”

Slade’s eyes are an empty, starless night. “I want you to ask me, Auren.”

My brows scrunch up in confusion. “Ask you what?”

“I want you to ask me those questions that have been on your mind since you woke up. I deserve to hear them. You deserve to voice them. One in particular. So ask me.” His gaze is dark, his tone hard. But not with the fight that I was trying to pick. Not with anger at all. With anguish.

I suck in a breath. Because right away, I know what he’s referring to.

There is one question that’s burned into the back of my mind. I’ve carried the taste of its ash on my tongue, felt the char of its presence seeping down my throat.

Everything between us becomes so heavy. So stretched. A perilous point where there is no soft side to fall on. The longer I stay silent, the more misery saturates Slade’s face. But the question continues to burn. Smoking up my head, raking flames down my spirit.

“Ask. Me.”

One tear. One tear leaks out of me, so hot that I wouldn’t be surprised if it steamed against my cheek.

But I ask.

Looking him in the eye, my own anguish now matching his, I ask the one question I haven’t wanted to. “Where were you?”

When I was drugged.

When I was shoved into that room with Digby.

When my ribbons were slashed, right along with my soul.

When I was propped up on that mezzanine, confused and lost.

“I thought you were going to come. But you didn’t.” My voice is choked, shaken, and every word I say lands a flinch across his face. “So where were you?”