Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

Hate is a visceral thing, a bloom unearthed in the background. I see it in his eyes, and maybe he sees it in mine too.

“You drugged me.” The accusation falls from a flat tone, as dry as prostrated plains. Even now, I can taste the viscid petal speckled with crimson dewdrops. It bled saccharine sweetness on my tongue. Saturated my mind. Syruped my limbs. Made me forget.

Even though it’s water that fills my eyes, it feels like fire.

“You drugged me,” I say again, stomach churning with an angry eddy. I want him to get swept up in it, to be pulled under. “You hurt Digby.” My second accusation tosses and seethes, like the sea beneath a storm, and I sail right into it with a brutalized back. “You cut off my ribbons!”

My voice cracks and crashes, the words grinding like the crush of gravel under a heel. My limbs tremble with rage.

Midas stares at me, and I can see his surprise that I’m so coherent, but my coherency is the least of his problems.

After a second, he crosses his arms and spreads his legs, plants his feet. “Yes, I did,” he admits with a terse tone. “You disobeyed me. Every punishment was deserved.”

Deserved.

Something prods in my chest, pounds against my ribs. The hammer of a blacksmith against an anvil, red-hot metal ready to be forged.

Midas lifts a shoulder. “Stop fighting me, Auren. This is your life. It’s time for you to settle back into it. You will take dew daily, and you will do your duty to your king.”

“It terrifies you, doesn’t it?” I ask. “Knowing that everything you are, hinges on me.”

Something dark flickers across his face.

“You speak about my punishment, but how about we consider what you deserve?”

I take a step closer to him, leaving just a foot of distance between us. To show him that I’m not afraid. To show him that even though he split me down the middle and stole pieces from my soul, he’ll never win.

My golden eyes burn as I look him dead in the eye. “I’m going to leave you, Midas,” I declare ruthlessly, enjoying it when his entire body stiffens. “I’m going to go where you can never find me again. You’ll search the ends of Orea for me. You’ll hear rumors, whispers of where I am, but every single time, I’ll slip through your fingers.”

At his sides, his hands tighten into fists, as if he’s already trying to close up the cracks.

“I’ll drag you along to every decrepit corner of the world, but you won’t ever find me. You’ll go months, years, decades searching in wild desperation.”

Chills scatter over my arms, like the goddesses are listening, a shiver of an omen kissed upon my skin.

“Your golden trinkets will dwindle. Your fame will turn to ridicule as your people turn against you. Your betrothed will abandon you, and the laws of this world will force the crown off your head, and still, you won’t find me. No matter how tirelessly you look. No matter how furious your search. And it will make you go mad.”

He can’t even blink, he stares so wildly at me, and I revel in it.

“You thought gold and power was your ascension, but it’ll be your downfall. You thought you could hoard me forever, but I’ll disappear right out from under your nose.” That pounding against my ribs hammers louder, shoots sparks off my soul. “You’ll be a laughingstock. Hated. Destitute.”

Midas flinches at that word. Physically jerks back, body rocking with the shock of my speech, and my beast and I preen beneath the delivered threat, celebrate the discovery of his worst fear.

“You will have no one and nothing to comfort you. You’ll die alone and poor, ruined by you

r own greed, and it will be exactly what you deserve.”

I land the last blow, watch him ring with it. Feel the reverberations as they tremble the air. As he trembles with it.

His fists unclench and clench again. His head shakes, like he’s trying to argue away my words or rattle them out of his skull.

“No,” he denies, though it comes out like an order. “You think you’ll get away from me? You think your monster commander will help you?”

“The only monster in this castle is you.”

Midas laughs, a cruel sound to poison the air. “I already have him, you know,” he tells me smugly, waiting to see how I take the news. “So if you think Commander Rip is going to come up here and rescue you, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

“I don’t need anyone to rescue me.”