“I missed you too,” I reply.
He sits us up, keeping me on his lap, my hands coming up to his shoulders to steady myself. With hunger in his eyes, he pulls off my dress, lets me undo the laces at his pants. “So pretty, Precious. So damned pretty.”
My heart beats fast, my stomach knotting and unknotting as his lips once again caress my throat, travel up my jaw. And then his hard length is pushing into me, his groan a taste in my mouth that I swallow down and try to keep.
He possesses me like this, hips pushing up, driving himself deeper, even as his arms tighten around me, squeezing, telling me he won’t ever let me go. And when I moan, my eyes fluttering closed, his tongue comes in to claim me, to rule me. He takes and takes, and I give. I give it all.
My heart swells when he sucks at my tongue and plunges deeper into my core, and I move with him, my spine like a wave as I work to bring him pleasure, to give him what he needs. To make him happy.
And when he pulls from my body and spills his seed against my stomach with a groan, I lie back down against his sweat-slicked chest with a sigh and a soft smile.
But the traitorous tear that falls from my eye tells a different story as it lands on my lip. It brines my happiness and rinses the smile away, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Midas leaves before dawn with a kiss, but his lips don’t take the taste away. And there in the dark, alone, I cry.
And that, that secret sob I let drain into my pillow, is an ugly truth. But it’s not one I’m ready to face yet.
So I let the satin soak it up, and then I fall asleep, the candor hidden beneath my head and shoved away by the time the morning dawns.
Chapter Fifteen
I watch the guards amble around my bedroom, carrying out the last of the trunks that I filled earlier.
My space looks emptier than usual, my dressing room with noticeable gaps from where some of the gowns and shoes have been taken and packed away. Outside, dusk has fallen.
It’s nearly time to leave.
It doesn’t appear to be snowing out right now, but snow never stays away for very long here, which is why I’m dressed in a heavy woolen gown, complete with fur trim and sheepskin-lined boots. Everything is shiny gold, of course, right down to my thick leather gloves.
My hair is coiled tightly against my head in countless braids so that the wind won’t thrash it around, kept out of the way so that my hood can conceal both my hair and my face.
“It’s time.”
I turn away from the window to see Digby standing ready on the other side of my cage. He looks gruff and quiet as usual, no hint of the man who ran a sword through a foreign king. No expression of worry, like when he carried me up six flights of stairs while covered in blood. But then, I appreciate that about him. His complete unruffled manner, his steadfastness.
Unconsciously, I lift a hand and run my fingers against the newly formed scar at my throat where King Fulke tried to slit it three weeks ago. Digby notices the movement, his eyes flicking down to my fingers, and I immediately drop my hand, trying to stop myself from that nervous fidget I’ve developed.
Sometimes, my mind forces me to relive that moment in my nightmares, and I wake up screaming and clutching my throat, convinced that I’m suffocating on my own blood.
Other times, my mind decides it would be a good idea to imagine what would’ve happened if that messenger had never shown up, if Fulke had dragged me all the way to his bedroom instead, and Midas never came to stop it.
Neither nightmare lets me get much sleep. That’s probably why I have circles under my eyes like bronzed bruises shaded above my cheeks.
I wish Midas were here.
Three days. He could only stay for three days after the incident, and then he had to leave—he and a regiment of soldiers to travel to Fifth Kingdom.
I stood beside him in the throne room the night after Fulke was killed. Watched Midas’s plan play out as he wove a tale of what had happened. The people know about Midas’s Golden Touch. But his golden tongue? To me, that’s his true power.
“We were deceived.”
The room was quiet, the gathered nobles watching Midas with rapt attention as the king and queen sat on their thrones with somber but determined faces, looking out over the gathered crowd.
“My ally, King Fulke, is dead.”
Shock rippled through the people, wide eyes and open mouths spanning across the room.
Midas waits a beat for the news to sink in, but not long enough for the whispers to start.