Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

All those years, all this time... I had confided in him. Told him about Derfort, about what I was made to do. He pretended not to know. Pretended to care, and yet all along, he was my owner’s competitor. The catalyst to the night I finally fled.

My steps are rooted to the floor. There’s no turning away from the truth that he spews like a gloat.

“In a way, you leaving was the offense I needed. I decided to follow you so I could drag you right back to Derfort, rub it in Zakir’s face, and set an example to others who’d run.”

I stare at him, but I don’t even know this man standing in front of me. It’s like he’s peeled away a layer and exposed the infection within, something that has festered in its own corruption that I somehow overlooked.

“You disappeared for a while, so it took some effort to catch your trail. But eventually, I heard curious talk amongst other vagabonds along the road. Talk of a raid finding a king’s fortune in a tiny village called Carnith...and of a girl who shone against the desert sands like a nugget of gold.”

My breath gets knotted up like a rope stuck in my throat. “You followed me to Carnith?”

“Of course I did. The gods smiled down on me, too, because that’s when your power manifested. That’s when it was clear that you weren’t just a painted girl perfect for the business of flesh trading. You were so much more.”

Tears fill my eyes as his verbal jabs stab me through, hollow me out. All a lie. Right from the very beginning.

He played the part of a crime lord, then a rescuer, then a king. I shared my body with him, when he used the bodies of others for profit. Just thinking of all the times he touched me and I touched him makes my skin crawl.

“I’m a planner, Auren,” Midas says as he watches me drown in the shadows, my fingers snagging at my hair. “You were exactly what I needed to get more. To get ahead. It was fated by the great Divine.”

He sets his wine glass down, and I whirl around, my world whirling with me.

“I finally caught up to you when you were in that backwoods village after you’d fled Carnith,” he tells me offhandedly. “I made the men I’d brought split up, so some of them could pose as raiders. Half of us attacked, the other protected the villagers. I had them all kill each other after that, instigated in-fighting over the spoils,” he adds with a shrug. “Couldn’t have any of them speaking of your magic or connecting me to Derfort as Barden East. Not when I intended to shed that name. Not when I realized that Princess Malina was in possession of a throne and yet lacked magic to keep it. Sixth Kingdom was in debt and in need of a king, so I gave it one. It was meant to be. I’ve always been partial to the number six,” he adds with twisted arrogance.

My head swims like I might pass out, but I manage to fall into the chair instead and pull in a choked breath. “You never rescued me.” I say it aloud, but it’s really just affirmation for myself, a crack that rents down the foundation of my life, splitting my past into something unrecognizable.

Midas looks pleased with himself, and maybe that’s what bothers me the most. The smug look on his face. As if he’s been waiting ten years to shove it in mine.

That moment of him rescuing me was what made me trust him. It created the base for my shaken footsteps. I viewed him as some sort of savior. But he orchestrated even that. He manipulated me right from the start, before we even spoke face-to-face.

He made me trust him, love him. He made me think he was my hero, when all along, he was my villain.

He walks nearer, standing over me like he’s relishing in this moment, like he wants to soak it up and wring me back out. “I owned half a shipping port and an incredibly lucrative business. But when I realized you had magic to go with that gold skin, I knew right then that I could own a whole damn kingdom.” Midas’s eyes gleam with the greed that consumes him. “And now...I don’t just own half of a city, I own half of Orea.”

An ugly, twisting grip tightens around my stomach. “Not yet.”

His eyes flash. “You won’t be saying that after tonight.”

I have no idea what he means by that, and I don’t get a chance to ask. Midas leans over, head poised in front of mine as he looks me over with detached assessment. “You know, we could’ve kept going on as we were, you could’ve had your semblance of freedom, but you ruined it.”

His tone is definitive, full of

the authority he’s stolen. Full of something cruel, too.

“You won’t just be locked in a cage anymore, Auren, I’ll lock you up in your own mind. I’ll keep you on dew and drain your magic forever until the day you die, and even then, I’ll pluck every gilded hair from your head and scrape the gold from your skin, because you are mine to use as I will.” His exhale condenses against my face, the scent of wine heavy on his breath, and I wonder how I ever thought this evil man loved me.

As if everything he’s saying and doing isn’t awful enough, Midas then straightens up and slips his hand into his pocket. When he pulls it out again, a thick strip of gold is bunched in his palm.

My entire body freezes in place. A gush of tears well up in my eyes as I take in the sight of my mangled ribbon, at the little beads of golden blood stuck to one end like the cooled drips of candle wax from a jagged wick.

A sob takes the place of my breath while I stare at its length, stare at the piece of me now ruined in Midas’s grasp. My eyes sting with a burn that seeps straight into my spine, and twinges of pain erupt down the length of my back as if each chopped root there can feel the pain of our separation all over again.

I watch numbly as he wraps it around my wrists like I’m prey caught in his snare, and I can’t struggle, because it’s...me. It’s not just some meaningless strand he roped me with. It’s the ultimate mind game and perversion of control.

He ties it off with a thick knot, the satin-like strand digging into my skin painfully like a penance for losing them in the first place. For not being strong enough to stay whole beneath the might of this man who has hacked away at me, drained me, stole every piece of me.

How much more of me is he going to take?

“Everything, Auren. I’m going to take everything.”