I blink in surprise. “What?”
“You heard me.” His tone is the low rumbling of a shaken ground, possessive fury coiling through every word. “Did. You. Fuck. Him.”
A churning, bitter hate coats my eyes, glossing it with a golden haze, and my angry beast roars in my ears. “No.”
Back and forth, his eyes flick between mine, fatal jealousy boring through them and snapping past his teeth. “Do you want him, Auren?” he croons with loathing. “Do you want that grotesque, ugly, spiked-up, magic-tainted monstrosity to bend you over and fuck you like a whore?”
The air decompresses, collapsing in on me like it’s broken up into shards that slice my lungs. I can’t think past the clamor in my skull, not with my outrage blaring so loudly.
How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
“You were watching him. I saw you.”
“Yeah?” I bite out. “Well, I saw you fucking your royal saddles all the time in front of me, so I think you can handle a glance.”
“Watch it,” he warns.
My tone drips with snarky disdain when I answer, “I did.”
It happens so fast.
One second, I’m standing there mouthing off, and the next, Midas’s hand connects with my face hard enough to rattle my brain.
I stagger back, head snapped to the right, my cheek flaming from the punishing blow. Tears drip unbidden down the aching flesh, like my eyes want to caress the spot he just smacked.
Time seems to stop.
A line forms between us, a fissure of cracked earth broken through from the force of a single hit.
He’s never struck me before. Never.
The pinching he did earlier was a shock in itself, but even so, that was a controlled punishment. A pointed reminder to stay in line, like a master yanking on a leashed collar, and very in-line with his usual temper.
But this is different. This was Midas losing control in a wave of anger, and he prides himself on his control.
Stunned silence stains the room in a void of dark shadows as I take in what just happened. The roaring creature inside of me takes it all in too, her beak bared to flash a row of razor-sharp teeth.
There seems to be a crashing sea of fury rising up, and my anger relishes in it, ready to swim beneath its depths. My entire body trembles with the force to hold her back. I can feel those waters closing in on me, a whirlpool ready to pull me under.
That love-stained girl inside of me is gone. The one whose heart was broken with the pieces used to pin her up like a bug to a board. She was burned down with the force of his palm. Her ashes are now nothing but soil to sprout the stems of the wickedness that seems to suddenly bloom brighter.
I take a fortifying inhale and turn back to look at Midas. At the man whose greed has so ruined him that he doesn’t even realize it. He’s swam out so far in a gilded sea and doesn’t even see it’s drowning him.
I hate him. I hate him so much that I know the truth gleams from my eyes.
A pregnant pause billows between us like a roiling cloud.
Midas’s eyes are wide, face pale as he looks at me in shock. Abruptly, his breath shatters the air. “Shit...”
Hands come up to my face, and his palm cups my jaw, thumbs stroking down my throbbing cheek. “Precious...I...I didn’t mean that. I was angry. I didn’t… Shit!”
Anguish bleeds through his tone, and my stomach tightens at the thundering noise. I try to jerk out of his hold, but his grip tightens, like he’s afraid to let me go. Afraid I’ll disappear into thin air.
That’s exactly what I intend to do.
He tips my head up, forcing me to look at him. “You make me so crazy, Auren.” I nearly scoff. Those are words to lay fault at my feet. “I’m not used to you behaving this way, but that was wrong of me. I lost my temper, but you know how much I love you. How much I need you.”