CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 61

AUREN

I’ve learned that the stripson their robes represent the amount of sins the Temperance Matrons still have left to expel from their souls.

For a pious bunch, they’re talkative, jabbering at me about their righteous order, about how so many of them sinned until they were brought in and shown the light. They tell me how blessed I am to be here and how it’s a calling from the Divine, that my mortal soul is in danger and only they can help me.

They think very highly of themselves.

“We are joyful to have you here,” one of them says. “To perform the Cleansing is a favor of the gods, and they deem us to be worthy of the task. It is a gift that helps our own internal purification too.”

When they start closing in on me, I scramble back on my heels and hands until my back hits the wall. “Don’t touch me.”

The one nearest me widens her blue eyes. “Oh, my lady, we are not allowed to sully our skin in such a way,” she says, a pitying look of misguided tenderness over her face. “The sleeves of our robes will keep us pure. Our skin will not touch.”

I blink at her, and that split-second distraction is all they need to grab hold and drag me to the other end of the room. Although they’re manhandling me, the woman was right—their bare hands don’t touch me.

I don’t know if I should feel insulted or not.

My body still feels like I’ve been crushed from the inside out, but I try to fight them anyway, try to kick out of their grasps. But it’s like a baby bird trying to deter a hawk, and I accomplish nothing but making myself dizzy with echoes of pain.

They shove me into a narrow tub that’s so thin that I can’t rest both my legs down. Instead, I have to prop one leg over the other, and because it’s not long enough either, my knees are forced to bend. The back of the tub is narrow too, so I’m cocked to the side, only one shoulder able to rest against the grains of the rough wood.

No matter how much I splutter and struggle, they have plenty of hands to hold me down. The water is tepid, and the lack of a temperature gives me the creeps, makes me cringe as I’m held in its depths.

My clothes soak through immediately, the end of my ragged braid plastered against my chest. As if it weren’t bad enough to be restrained in the most uncomfortable tub ever made, the Matrons start to pour pitchers of lukewarm water over my head. A trio of them do so one after the other, while the others start to grab my clothed limbs and scrub me with painfully firm bristled brushes.

I cry out, trying to wrench myself away, trying to appeal to their righteous attitudes with the facts of my capture, but it’s no use. I’m surrounded by white veils and devout insanity.

Bright side? At least they’re so against touching that they’re using these awful scrub brushes over my clothes. I think my skin would be peeling off in raw strips otherwise.

The soap they use smells sharply astringent, burning my scalp and cutting into my pores. And all while I’m being roughly handled, they preach to me about their gods. The ones who reward purity of the flesh and obedience of the mind. The ones who demand self-restraint and sacrifice.

They say nothing of the goddesses. Of matronly love or female fortitude.

When they haul me out of the tub, I get dumped beside the huge bowl of burning flame, clothes dripping all over until I’m given a scratchy blanket to soak up some of the water.

Someone combs my hair, doing it so gently that it makes the rough scrubbing of my skin seem even more of a shock. I try to shove her away anyway, but one of the other Matrons snaps a paddle against the back of my hand, making me hiss in pain. “Sit, my lady, and be still. Take this time to prepare for prayer.”

“I’ll take this time to prepare to flood this room with power, soaking you all through and then scrubbing at your skin until it’s raw,” I snarl back.

If they want to make me a villain, then I’ll fucking be one.

She sucks in a breath, and I feel a small sense of victory at having shocked her. After being drugged and kidnapped, tortured and dragged here, my sense of control is slipping and making me feel like a cornered animal. I want nothing more than to tap into my fae nature, to wrench out the beast inside of me and melt down the world beneath a vat of gold, but Queen Isolte’s magic is absolutely crippling.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to try. I just need a little bit longer to recover. Just need to bide my time and pretend I’m powerless. I don’t need much gold. All I’d need to do is take out this bitch of a queen. Maybe I’ll make my gold squeeze her between a metallic vise. I bet she wouldn’t be so smug then.

Speaking of...

“Lady Cheat will do nothing of the sort,” Queen Isolte announces as she comes into my line of vision. She stands with her back against a mural of a priest in all white presiding over a dozen Matrons kneeling at his feet. The gray strips of sins on their robes match the number of lashes against a supposed “sinner’s” back as he slumps against a pole. There’s light shining on the priest, glinting off the whip as if he’s the gods’ gift to the world and his meted out punishment is something to be revered.

My stomach churns.

“She will submit to the rest of her Cleansing with grace,” the queen goes on. “These threats hold no merit in this room, for they are spoken by the wickedness inside of her that we must help rid her of.”

The other Matrons murmur their agreement.

My eyes narrow on her. “And tell me, how do you rid yourself of your wickedness, Queen Isolte?”

I feel more than see the others go still. The Matron at my back pauses in her brushing.

“My sins have been absconded already,” the queen replies brusquely. “We too go through the ritual of a Cleansing. Though we endure many of them, as well as perform our services to the Divine, and to our priests. It is why no strips mar my robes, why I have risen up past my soul’s deficiencies. I have been chosen to lead the Guardians of Temperance.”

“But you don’t really lead it, do you?” I ask, notching my chin up toward the mural. “Women can’t be priests, isn’t that right?” I ask, going out on a limb.

Her jaw clenches, and I get a little thrill at pissing her off. I don’t care that she’s queen. I don’t care that she has the magic to pinch my body to death. She’s a cruel fanatic who thrives on lording over others and calling her acts of cruelty holy.

“The Matrons serve a fundamental part in the Temperance,” she replies, and it’s so rehearsed I know she’s heard and spoken that saintly slogan hundreds of times before.

I smirk. “Sure they do.”

She turns to the others. “Witness, sisters. Her acerbic attitude is only the wickedness revolting against the Cleansing.”

“Nope,” I retort, wiping water off my face. “My attitude solely comes from the way you seem to think you can treat me. The golden whore? Isn’t that what you called me?” I don’t give her a chance to respond. “You don’t need to be following some made-up ritual and worrying about gods who don’t give a shit about you. What you should be worrying about is me. Because this golden whore can purify you far quicker than any Cleansing can. And trust me, you’ll come out golden and shining.”

She levels me with a look, and the faintest of pressure appears at my stomach, pinching me down, making me want to vomit. But I don’t wince. I refuse to.

Her jaw cricks as she bites out, “You know what would truly be golden? Your silence.” Despite the pain, a snort escapes me. She releases her hold on me a second later. “This is all normal, Lady Cheat. You are not the first woman to come into this room with corruption engrained in her spirit. Evil never wants to be cast out. It’s up to us to compel it.”

I nod toward the wall of whips. “Is that what those are for? Is that how you and your Matrons abscond themselves and compel others? By being beaten? Being whipped or Cleansed or tortured or made to live uncomfortable lives without touch in awful tubs and uncomfortable blankets? Is that what your lives have been reduced to? I feel sorry for all of you,” I say, gaze sweeping around the room. Because I might not be able to bring out my magic, but I can bring out words that can fester doubt in their minds.

Her hairless eyebrow arches up. “We keep ourselves pure. Pain makes us focus on our inner wrongs, and bleeding is a way for those wrongs to be released. We do not expect such a worldly woman to understand. Your touch is besmirched, your soul wicked. We will do what we can to Cleanse you before you face your superiors and your gods, but if you do not capitulate, then perhaps the teachings of the Temperance will heal you.”

“Temperance save you,” the other Matrons mumble.

I lean forward, not caring that my hair tugs painfully against the other woman’s hold. “I don’t want the Temperance to save me.”

She cocks her head, that stupid, serene smile back on her face. “Then what, pray tell, do you think will?”

I smile. More teeth, more bite to add to my answer. “I’ll save myself,” I tell her before my eyes move across the wide-eyed faces of the others. “And even if I don’t, King Rot will.”

Despite her colorless face, she somehow pales even more, and a telling hush falls over the room.

“Did you forget about him?” I ask with a smirk. “Because when he gets here, not even your gods will be able to save you.”

My outburst led me to another pinch of pain that made me pass out for a few minutes. I came to while oil was being dumped onto my feet to “expunge the vessels on which I touch holy ground.” Then, clothing is tossed at me. I debate fighting them on changing, but the queen’s obviously looking for any reason to use her power on me. I have no hope of recovering unless I can play nice.

So, I groggily strip out of my sopping wet clothes to pull them on, and as soon as my old clothing lands on the floor with a plop, one of the Matrons hurries over to gather them up and then tosses them into the fire, making it hiss and steam.

There’s gauze-like material to bind my breasts, but I ignore that. There’s also not one, but three layers of different kinds of underwear. I go with one, much to their chagrin. Then I pull on a dark gray cowled dress that covers me from neck to ankle, the sleeves cinched unpleasantly at the wrists, the color apparently signifying the taint of my spirit.

Lovely.

I should probably be more afraid, but I’m more angry than anything else. I’m really tired of monarchs using me for their own narratives, when all I’ve ever wanted was to be left the fuck alone.

Now that I’m dressed, the Matrons surround me and start herding me out of the room. The residual soreness throughout my body makes me shuffle forward, hunched and wavering. I won’t deny the fact that the queen did a number on me. The well of my magic feels like it’s been stretched and squeezed, gummed up in a too-narrow tube. Yet I have to do something. Have to hope I can recover enough that my gold-touch will work. I probably shouldn’t have talked back so thoroughly, but I couldn’t help myself.

I tell myself not to open my mouth again. To bide my time so I can recover. Yet as soon as I pass through the archway to the outdoors, the queen’s magic crushes back into me.

As if she somehow knew what I was planning, she suddenly attacks. Her power cinches me like a too-tight corset, cutting off my ability to breathe, making my heart feel like it’s being fisted in someone’s cruel hand.

I gasp, falling over into the Matrons to my right, their robed bodies staying straight and firm, a knock of elbows and shoulder bones smacking me back in my tiny circle between them. It’s a wonder I stay on my feet, taking gasping, short breaths that make me feel like I’m going to hyperventilate. It’s just enough pinching pain to make my body panic, to make it difficult to focus, yet it’s also subtle enough to not knock me down into unconsciousness.

Pain is a pyramid, she said. And she’s stacking more on top of me, brick by brick, like she sees my suffering as some shrine to her own power.

The oppressive heat doesn’t help. It presses down on my wet hair and prickled body, my bare feet burning against the tile as we walk along the outdoor path. I don’t pay attention to where I’m being led. I simply follow the white and gray striped sheep, trying to focus through the pain.

Although the heat is almost oppressive, the sunlight seems to invigorate me. Like it’s tapping into something deeper, sinking into my skin and shining on that beast inside of me.

Because for me, the sun has always equaled power.

And in this world, if you don’t have power, you don’t survive.

I was shut away from it for ten years. Blocked away, kept apart in a snow-doomed kingdom where the sky was always covered with oppressive clouds. Before that, I lived at a harbor that dumped out rainwater and flooded the streets. Yet here...this is where my magic came out. Here is where my gold first came and my ribbons first sprouted. This is where it all began. So even though my time in Second Kingdom was traumatic then, maybe there was a reason why my fae power ignited while I was baking beneath its sun.

Despite the queen’s leash of pain, I channel into the sunlight instead. Think only of that, of it soaking into me and giving strength. Then I try to muster up enough gold, try to tap into it and ignore everything else.

To my elation, a few droplets gather against my fingertips, and I roll the thick beads between my thumb and fingers, finding comfort in its presence, no matter how little the amount, no matter how thick and gunky it seems.

All of my concentration is on my gold, gathering painfully slow drops. I’m hoping the Matrons are taking me back to my room or to continue their gods-awful rituals somewhere else, something to give me more time to gather myself and my power.

But instead, we veer further outside, down the tiled path that’s patched with intermittent shadows cast off from the plants, while an unbroken cacophony of cicadas buzzes through the air. Sweat starts gathering at the back of my neck as I’m herded, my frizzy strands of wet hair sticking to my skin, my cinched sleeves dampened at my wrists.

My feet are on fire. The only saving grace is that the stickiness of the oil has made the fine sand stick to them, giving the only protective layer I have. I try to focus my magic to my soles next, urging the gold to coat the undersides. Yet I can’t get a thick enough layer to do much, though I hope I’m leaving stained footprints behind me to taint their way.

The queen apparently gets bored with my suffering in silence, because she releases the pinch on my heart and changes it until it feels like something has latched onto my spine and dug in its nails, tipped ends pressing sharply into me.

This time, I have no choice but to whimper, back arched slightly, feet faltering. I’m pushed from behind, urged incessantly forward, while every step makes my spine bite and needle.

I know the queen is behind me, watching my every move, probably getting some sick satisfaction from the noise I made. I transfer the small ball of gold from my left hand and add it to the collection in my right, and while it’s only the size of a blueberry, it’s something.

But with all my concentration focused on enduring the pain and keeping my small clump safe in my hand, I realize belatedly that I’m not walking on sandy tiles anymore. I’m walking on clay stairs, and the noise I’m hearing isn’t just cicadas anymore.

It’s people.

A lotof people.

I look behind me, seeing the single-level castle draped across the feather-soft sand dunes and blended with a bounty of vegetation hugged around the sparkling water of an oasis.

But before me, down this steep outdoor staircase, is a sprawling metropolis. Far off in the horizon, I can see just a sliver of the sea. It streaks across the edge, separating the land and sky. All the way from here to there, there are blocks of flat-roofed buildings spread out in such a vast collection that I can’t even fathom how many people must live here.

The buildings are the same color as the sand they’re surrounded by, yet with pops of bright yellow and blue paint. The streets look like copper rivers woven through, and there are flags with their yellow sun emblem, as well as the official sigil of Second Kingdom—two concentric circles, one inside another, representing the great Divine overlapping all of life.

But the building nearest us, the one this path leads to, is surrounded by a sea of people collected beneath giant canvases stretched between pillars. Just in front is a circular building, and from my vantage point up here, I can see a short wall that circles around it all, its joined architecture clearly reminiscent of the kingdom’s sigil.

I can’t go a single step now without grimacing and hissing out breath. The oil and sand is no match for the brutal heat of the sunbaked tiles. I can’t even rush, because the Matrons are setting the pace, and they either don’t care about my feet or it’s all part of my burning walk of shame.

By the time I make it to the bottom steps, I don’t even care about the people who are staring and shouting incomprehensible words. It feels as if layers of skin have scalded right off my feet, leaving them raw and agonizing, as if I’ve been walking over a mile of fiery coals.

And the queen’s pain continues. Steady. Punishing. So constant that I can’t take in a full breath, my heart feeling like it can’t complete a full beat.

I’m sweating buckets. Everything inside of me shakes and reverberates with echoing agony that’s sapped all my strength as I’m led down a narrow path. The bodies of the Matrons close in on me as we get closer to the building. I can see a sea of people gathered, shouting, hands in the air as if this is some kind of frenzied event.

Then I’m led up the charring steps of the domed building. When I get to the top, the women part like waves, and I see I’m on some kind of outdoor stage. The building is at my back and the canvas-covered city square in front, so full of people that I can’t even see the ends of the crowd. They’re not wasting any time. There will be no waiting in my room, no other ritualistic Cleansing.

This is it.

I’m shoved inside a circle of thin pillars on the stage, and as soon as I am, the queen’s magic is suddenly removed. In their haste to shove me inside, my shoulder and arm smack against the poles, and the gold ball drops from my hand. I don’t dare draw attention to it though.

I can’t enjoy the release of the queen’s pinched pain, because I’m trapped. Trapped and on display, reeling from pain and forcing myself not to pass out.

I try to shake the poles that surround me, but they don’t move a bit, and I’m far too weakened anyway. They stretch up at least ten feet, and they’re no thicker than my wrist, leaving the same measure of gap between them. The space inside the enclosure is a small circle, the same pillared door slammed shut at my back. The only relief I have is the fact that I’m in the shade now from the building’s overhang, so the tile floor of the stage is blessedly cool against my scorched feet.

But then I look up and see the seven chairs set just beyond me, facing both the crowd and my enclosure, all filled with the monarchs of Orea.

They must be in order, from First to Sixth Kingdom.

The chair for Fourth is noticeably empty.

At the end, in First Kingdom’s chair, sits King Euden Thold, a man with dark skin and a serpent crown on his head that glitters with gems of green and black. The moment I see him, I remember his power, because it’s wrapped all over him, tame under his control. There’s a viper draped around his shoulders. A cobra coiling the length of his arm. Another snake with a rattle at his ankle, and a bright green snake looped in his lap.

As if she’s not bothered in the slightest by their serpentine presence, Queen Isolte sits poised beside him, while another man who must be her mustached and blotchy-faced husband sits at her other side. King Neale Merewen.

And to the right of him sits Queen Kaila.

My stomach twists like I’ve grabbed it with two fists and wrung it out like a rag. Beside her is the empty chair meant for Slade, which makes my stomach twist in an entirely different way.

Where is he?

Next to that, in Fifth Kingdom’s spot, sits a man I’ve never seen before. He looks far too young and nervous to be in charge of an entire kingdom. But I suppose that’s the point. This is the newly crowned King Hagan Fulke.

One of King Thold’s snakes is on the new king’s armrest. Hagan tries and fails to hold in his grimace, clearly uncomfortable with the serpent’s presence, though too nervous to do anything about it.

He should have though, because in a blink, the snake suddenly sinks its teeth into his hand in a lightning-quick move, making him jerk back. King Thold chuckles and calls the snake back, but while King Hagan should have a bleeding, punctured hand, instead, there’s nothing there at all. He may be a timid sort of person, but apparently, his skin is impervious to fangs.

Beside King Hagan, the chair is empty, the last one in the lineup, meant for Sixth Kingdom. Meant for Midas. Yet he’s not here, and at least I can get some satisfaction from that.

But the scraps of that meager satisfaction disintegrate when King Neale Merewen stands, voice booming across the square, reverberating off the circular wall behind to amplify his speech. “The monarchs of Orea join here together to assess the accused and uphold the integrity of Orean Law.” He turns to me, eyes disapproving, flat hair tucked back in thinning strands. “As King of Second Kingdom and upholder of the royal decree, I now declare that the royal Conflux has commenced.”