Gold, page 47
When I get to the door, I rap my knuckles on the wood, and the guard instantly swings it open. As soon as I file out, he slams it shut behind me, key turning in place.
“Took you long enough,” he says through his scowl. “You having a good look at the traitors?”
My brow dips into a frown before I catch myself. “Traitors?”
“Haven’t you heard?” he asks around the pick dangling against his sharp canine. “They left. Now, Lord Cull’s got them back. He’s gonna break them.” His lips pull into a delighted sneer as he sucks on his sliver of wood.
A flash of a memory explodes behind my eyes. Of a Red Raid pirate captain standing in the snow, with cruelty in his gaze and threats on his tongue.
I’m going to use her. Break her.
Hot anger burns down my spine—a tingle that seems to strike against the base of my ribbons.
“Hope I can watch,” the guard snickers as he munches on his stick. “I do love when Oreans are reminded that they’re inferior to our species.”
I don’t trust myself to talk—to keep my false subservient tone. So I force myself to dip into a curtsy instead. When I turn to walk away, I skim my hand against his sleeve and leave the disgusting fae behind to delight in his cruelty.
But I can delight in cruelty too.
I’ll delight in the little drop of my magic that’s now slithering its way up the threads of his shirt. As I walk across the parlor, it dribbles off his collar and starts prowling over his skin, no bigger than a bead of sweat. The thinnest, smallest drip to track up his jaw, slink over his toothpick, and then slip into his mouth.
I glance over my shoulder just as he jabs a stumpy finger against his tongue like he’s trying to wipe away the fetid metal he suddenly tastes. But the droplet is already sliding down his throat, already sinking down into his gut. There, the gilt rot will slowly spread over time, eating away the lining with heavy roots that twist and dig.
Just before I turn the corner, his hand jerks down to his stomach, probably feeling the first pinch there, and then, I’m out of sight.
Out of mind.
But my magic won’t be out of his body anytime soon.
It’ll be slow.
Painful.
Instead of watching someone else break, he can watch his own body spoil from the inside out.
Maybe I should feel regret for that. But I don’t. The gold-touch, the rot, the fae and Orean heritage that I have—it makes me feel gruesome satisfaction.
Yet that satisfaction is cut short when I suddenly hear rushing footsteps. A lot of footsteps—and heading in this direction. I quickly dart down the corridor and jerk open the first bedroom door I get to and slip inside.
I leave the door cracked, gaze peeking out just in time to see more guards stomping their way down the corridor. “Hurry up,” one of them barks.
Four of them pass, heading down the same way I just came. I hold my breath to listen to the muffled voices, but when I can’t pick up on their words, I creep out of the bedroom and hurry back to the corner wall and cock my head.
I hear the tail end of the rotten gut guard’s words. “Supposed to stay here?”
Someone else answers, his voice clearer. “Yeah. We don’t know what he’ll want to do with them, so stay at your post for now.”
“When’s he coming?”
“Just arrived at the other house. Wants them gathered up here.”
My heart leaps into my throat.
He’s back. Lord Cull is already here—
I hear movement, so I quickly dart back into the bedroom, peering through the sliver of the closed door. My pulse pounds hard, a racket that clangs against my hollow bones. I wait seconds.
Minutes.
It sucks the life out of me to have to stay frozen, waiting, when everything in me screams to hurry. To run.
Then, sound picks back up, drowning out my own anxious thrumming, and I go still when I see two of the guards round the corner and head away from me.
Behind them is a stream of hunching, shuffling Oreans being led down the corridor two-by-two.
Fuck.
The guard’s voice repeats in my head. He’s going to break them.
I need to get them out. I need to help them before it’s too late.
Belatedly, I wish I’d thought to ask what kind of magic Cull has, so at least I could have the upper hand with that knowledge. But maybe I can just deal with the guards. Maybe I can get the Oreans out before Cull comes into this manor.
Steeling myself, my every muscle goes taut with anticipation as I wait to spring.
I see the last two guards take up the rear of the group, and one of them shoves at an Orean’s back. “Hurry up!”
The other guard laughs as the person stumbles.
With lips pressed tight, I dart out from the room and rush up behind them, and then I call to my magic.
It’s more than ready to answer.
I reach up, hands splayed behind both of their heads, and ropes of veined gold whip out from my palms and hook around their necks like nooses. The solidifying metal cinches them so tight that the only noises they’re able to make are cut-off gasps.
The ropes jerk them back, stealing their voices, their air.
One of them falls to his knees, the worn carpet muffling his fall as he grapples at the rope, though it’s already hardening, tightening, his gaze flying around wildly.
My power sings.
The second one topples toward the wall, ready to smack into it, but that’ll be far too loud, and I don’t want to alert the others.
Quick as a blink, I jerk his noose backwards, making the dangled end behind him bend to catch him. His body doesn’t make a sound as the gilded rope slowly lowers him to the floor.
I stand over both guards, panic blotting their eyes, wheezes coming from their constricted throats as their faces turn purple.
Ahead of us, the group still files forward, no one the wiser.
Quietly, I reach out and open the nearest bedroom door. Then, I send another stream pouring from my hands to wrap around the strangled guards’ ankles and drag them into the room. I shut the door just as quickly, leaving them to writhe.
Two down.
The Oreans at the end of the line don’t even realize there’s no one herding their backs anymore. They’re also much farther ahead, so I race to catch up without stomping down the corridor.
But before I can reach them, the group veers. Instead of continuing straight down the main stairwell, they’re going through a panel in the wall I hadn’t noticed before.
A hidden door.
Everyone is heading through it and down the cramped stairs that must’ve served as a servant’s passage at one time.
I hesitate, and then make a split-second decision. Yanking off my apron, I toss it into the corridor and then follow the Oreans into the enclosed stairwell that spirals down.
When I catch up to the back of the group, I slow my steps and quickly muss my hair to cover my glamoured pointed ears and make it look like I’m as bedraggled as the others.
But with every step I take, I feel that fast thud in my veins return, feel my heart get bloody and beaten as it trills behind the rungs of my chest. High-pitched ringing starts to toll within my skull.
What is happening?
When I reach the bottom and into a tight corridor, I glance down at my slick palms. Rot has overrun my gold almost completely. The usually thin veins are more like a mass of tree roots. It’s lifting up and off my palm, stretching, reaching—
“Where are the others?”
I jump, head slashing up, and barely stop myself in time before running into the Oreans in front of me. Everyone’s halted in the cramped corridor, and the two guards at the front are glaring at me, their gazes tossing over my shoulder, obviously looking for the other two missing guards. I make a show of cowering, chin tucked against my chest. The guards share a look, but then they yank open the door and start shoving the Oreans through.
I nearly stumble as I walk, hands shaking as I contain the writhing rot between my fingers. My pulse races so fast I worry my blood will beat its way right out of my veins and spill onto the floor.
As soon as I’m inside the room, the guard slams the door shut behind me and then shoves me against the wall, but I barely feel it. Because power is swelling beneath my palms, roots lifting, wrapping around my fingers like rings. My whole body feels charged.
The rot is flexing, and there’s an excited urgency to it that goes all the way down to my chest. It hisses and prods, like it wants to rip through my body.
When I glance to my right, I see that wall—that iron-clad stone wall.
Except this time, I’m on the other side.
I look around at the grand entry hall, and panic spreads its wings and takes flight, leaving me to be whipped in its back current. Because a magnetism of wrongness pounds through me, even as a rightness calls me forward.
wrong, right
wrong, right
wrong, right
wrong, right…
The wallpaper is red like blood. Not as bright as the marble floor in the new manor, but a deep, dark red, like a murderous secret done in the dark. But what hooks my attention is the crack in the floor that divides the room, and a broken roof that seems to snarl up at the sky.
Chunks of walls have formed boulders on the floor, and the boarded-up windows are shattered, their glass still littering the stained marble. But…no. It’s not stained. It’s…
My eyes trace the path, back to the large crack in the floor that spreads and then gapes wide open.
There’s a buzzing, a thundering. Or maybe it’s only in my ears. Shadows dot my tunneled vision, but I see…I see…
A commotion has my eyes jerking upward. To watch someone stalk out from the other side of the room.
And then all the breath steals from my lungs. Ripped out of me like hands clutching my hair and tearing it from my scalp.
My hand flies to my mouth, rot cloying against me as my eyes refuse to blink.
“Slade…”
The whisper splits from my lips.
He walks past a pillar, the open doorway spilling in grayed light behind him, making me squint. He’s dressed in all black, save for a red wrap of fabric tucked into his collar like blood spilling from a slit throat.
I start to go forward, to get to him, my mouth opening to call his name, because he’s here. He’s here, and he found me somehow and he can help me and—
And.
One heartbeat, I flew.
The next, I plummet.
Or maybe it’s the world that crashes around me. Because when he comes into better view, so does everything else.
His stature was similar, but…
He has a slightly different stride. Differences in his muscular frame. His black hair is trimmed so short it’s not even half an inch past his scalp, and his beard is thick. The look of threat on his face is familiar though…except the fact that he only has one eye.
The other socket is covered. Leather strap hooked from his forehead to pointed ear, an onyx stone set over the spot where his eye should be. Lines in his pale face disappear beneath the eyepatch, the skin around it a dull gray color.
Not Slade, not Slade, not Slade…
The relief I felt turns into horrible, churning anguish.
Because everything clicks into place with shattering, dizzying, terrifying awareness.
The room. The broken floor. The rumbling noise. The wrongness of it all, and…
“Lord Cull,” a guard greets.
The other Oreans are lined up against the tattered wall beside me, the guards at attention, more of them filing in from the opposite end of the room.
Something screams inside of me as all the shattered pieces of realization swirl like a cyclone.
Can’t breathe. Can’t blink.
My gaze follows him across the cracked floor that cinches together under his steps, closing the gap without a thought. He walks over it, boots echoing in the broken room that seems to meld around his presence.
But there’s one spot that doesn’t close.
Doesn’t meld.
The widest part of the cracked floor. The part where shadows seem to hover over it.
My eyes snap back to him, but he’s staring at one Orean in particular, and when I follow his gaze, my knees threaten to buckle.
There, standing with the rest of the bedraggled Oreans, is a woman.
She has black hair tied loose and crooked over her shoulder. Pale skin. Scared, green eyes. Her petite figure trembles against the wall she cowers against.
Recognition slams through me like a hammer to my gut.
No.
No.
My eyes fly to the other Oreans, all of them dressed in their furs and heavy cloaks. Shaking beneath their wintry clothes.
I want to heave. To scream.
They’re all here. All of them.
Great Divine…
Every single villager that should be tucked away in Drollard, hidden in their frozen village. They’re here, in Annwyn.
And that crack in the floor, that rumbling that gurgles out of it, the shadows that hover overhead…
It’s the rip.
The rip in the world that tore through the air when Slade and his father’s magic collided. The rip they all got sucked into.
The group we’ve come to rescue are the villagers from Orea. And the woman that Lord Cull is stalking toward?
Slade’s mother.
Because…I’m not just at a random nobleman’s house.
And these aren’t random Oreans I’ve come to help save.
My attention locks on to the person stalking toward Elore, and bile rises into my throat.
I thought he was Slade.
But he’s not.
Not at all.
Lord Cull is Slade’s father.
The bright morning sun filters in from the window, catching fragments of dust in its glare. I’m behind my desk, while Isalee and Warken are in the middle of the office, sitting across from each other in wingback chairs, talking finances. I toss down a report about the collapsed mine and rub at my aching chest.
It hurts like a son of a bitch.
Even through my shirt, I can feel the raised veins of rot protruding, the swollen shell of my blackened heart.
Probably not fucking good.
When I glance up, I notice Isalee staring at me, so I quickly drop my hand. “I’m fine,” I assure her before she can fuss, but there’s a frown pulled between her brows that doesn’t go away.
There’s a frown on my face that doesn’t go away either.
Even with all the sleep I was able to get, I couldn’t open a rip. I fucking tried. For hours, despite Ryatt’s protests. And now, the spot at the center of my heart that’s a sickly brown color has started to spread. It’s peeling back in deadened flakes.
I can’t heal that, Your Majesty.
A knock at the door yanks me from my thoughts. “Enter.”
In strides King Thold. His green viper is draped around the back of his neck, tail hanging down his chest like a scarf. He’s not wearing his crown today, but he doesn’t have to. His very demeanor screams authority. His gaze sweeps around the room, while two of his guards stand at his back.
“You’ve been a difficult man to find,” he tells me.
“King Thold, how are you today?” Warken greets politely as he and Isalee get to their feet.
“It’s been three days, Ravinger,” he says, ignoring Warken as he pins me with his stare. “How much longer are you going to make me wait for your answer?”
From the corner of my eye, I see Isalee smirk as her prediction about making Thold wait comes to fruition. Smart woman.
I get to my feet and come around the desk. “We were just finishing our discussion.”
He looks between the three of us with impatience. “And?”
“We have decided to accept the treaty of our realliance,” I tell him, and I watch relief wash over his face. “But…we have terms.”
His snake flicks out its tongue. “What terms?” he grits out.
“The oil in exchange for your food imports,” Warken interjects. “It is no longer part of the deal.”
Anger fills Thold’s eyes. “That is unacceptable. It was part of the agreement.”
“And now it’s not,” I say with a shrug.
His jaw clenches. “I want the oil at the new cost I was quoted by Sir Judd.”
“You’re not getting it.”
I don’t tell him it’s because the mine collapsed and we can’t get him the oil.
“This is madness, Ravinger,” he says with a jerk of his head. “Your kingdom needs my food.”
“Yes, and so does your kingdom,” I counter. “Consider this my generosity. I am leaving you and yours undisturbed, despite you breaking our previous treaties as well as your participation in the Conflux. I will remind you that I have retaliated against all other kingdoms involved.”
Thold tenses his hands like he wants to wring my neck. His snake hisses like he wants to sink his fangs in. If it weren’t for my magic, he’d probably let it.
“This is our proposed alternative,” Isalee says, drawing his attention. “We all know that King Ravinger could very well take First Kingdom under his own rule. Yet despite your broken treaties and the Conflux debacle, all he requests is that you send your imports to Fourth as previously done in the original agreement, as proof to us of your dedication to this alliance. Trust was broken, King Thold,” she tells him firmly. “And that takes time to repair. The issue of the oil can be readdressed when we’ve had that time to mend the fractures between our kingdoms.”
He’s quiet for a moment, chewing on our proposal, and I’m sure it’s a bitter lump to swallow, but swallow it he does. “Fine. But I want the next shipment of oil solely sent to First.”
Not like I’m going to be sending any to any of the other kingdoms anyway. Even when we do get our mine up and running again.
I glance at my Premiers, pretending to consider. Warken looks downright pensive before he and Isalee give a nod to me.
“Done,” I tell him before reaching out a hand.
Thold eyes it, and the snake hisses. “I think you’ll forgive me if I don’t shake, King Rot.”
I smirk and slip my hands into my pockets. “We’ll dine tonight instead,” I tell him. “Before you leave Fourth tomorrow.”
