I remember the first time I walked through this castle ten years ago. Walking into a palace, after the places I’d been… Surreal. It had been surreal.
I was fifteen years old, but a girl in only one sense of the word. My innocence was lost—that’s how some people would put it. But not me.
I never misplaced my innocence. It wasn’t my own doing from a forgetful lack of care. It was taken from me, one cruel exploit at a time. I remember each piece of it as it broke away from me, until I was raw and bare, exposed to the harsh elements of the world with a chip gouged deep in my shoulder and a bitter taste always at the back of my tongue.
No, I wasn’t innocent anymore when I walked into Highbell with Midas for the first time, but he brought back something I thought I’d never have again.
Trust.
He wasn’t a king yet then, and the castle wasn’t made of gold. It’s difficult, even in my own head, to reconcile what it looks like now with what it looked like then. The walls were the mottled gray stone cut from the frozen mountains that the palace is perched on. It was gloomy even as it was luxuriant, this ashen gray fortress buried in the snow.
And despite the opulence of my surroundings, when I first came here, I was gloomy too, because I knew that our short few months alone together were coming to an end.
“I’m going to offer my hand in marriage to the princess of Sixth Kingdom.”
He’d startled me with his words. There was no mention of any of this before. He had plans and ideas, I knew he did, but I wasn’t interested in hearing them. I was too enraptured with soaking in the peaceful reprieve, the safety, the friendship. But I always knew the other shoe was going to drop.
I looked up at Midas, my handsome nomad with snowflakes in his blond hair. We were camped beside a frozen fissure, icicles formed around its mouth like a geode, diamonds for teeth that glittered beneath a waning moon.
“Why?”
If he heard the heartbreak in my voice, he didn’t say so, but his brown eyes softened as he looked over at me, the campfire crackling between us like tension.
“The kingdom is broke.”
I scrunched up my nose. “How can a kingdom be broke?”
Midas smiled over at me, swiping grease-stained fingers down his pants as he tossed the last of the bones from our meal that he’d caught. “Kingdoms can go broke quite easily, actually. But in this instance, Highbell has struggled for years. They’re little more than a frozen wasteland at the tip of the world. No farming to speak of, no mining lucrative enough to sustain them. They’re crumbling without the proper allied ties and trade. It’s a wonder the other monarchs haven’t struck already.”
I curled my toes inside my fur-lined boots, trying to leap from his words to his intentions. He had the advantage of age over me, being seven years older, but I wasn’t naive.
“What about me?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure how I was able to talk with the lump in my throat.
Midas came in front of me, snow reaching the laces of his boots. “You stay with me. I made a promise, didn’t I?” he asked, and my relief was instant and warm, almost enough to ward away the chill of the night.
“With you by my side, we’ll save Sixth Kingdom from ruin.”
I smiled up at him, appreciating his smooth face that he insisted on shaving every morning, despite the fact that we were weary travelers, oftentimes with no one to look upon but each other. He was meticulous about himself just as he was about everything else.
He didn’t have to spell it all out to me, but he did anyway. He trusted me with his vulnerabilities, his hopes, his dreams. A man with no important bloodline, with no family, no land. He wanted to save a kingdom. To bring back glory to a place that was dying in a frozen tomb.
We talked long into the night as he laid everything out, all his plans, his intentions, my role in his life. It was a brilliant plan, one he’d clearly thought through right down to the smallest of details. I was in awe of him.
Midas pulled me up to my feet, his hands warm, steady. “I’ll put you in a palace, Auren. You’ll be safe. With me.”
“But you’ll marry her.”
He petted my cheek with the edge of his thumb, and I leaned into the touch. The first man I’d ever done that with. It felt like petals opening to soak up the sun.
“Yes, if all goes well, she’ll have my name. But you have my love, Precious.”
And what’s a ring when you have a heart?
He made love to me there, over a puff of snow that somehow felt like clouds, beneath a thick tent made of leather that brined in the salt of our sweat, soaked in the heat of our murmurs. He held me until the last of the stars winked out.
My eyes slowly adjust to the brighter light of the hallway as I begin to walk downstairs with the guards on either side of me. Gone are the weathered browns of wooden floorboards. No more are the walls a solemn weathered gray stone. Scratches are buffed into the gold floors, thousands of footsteps worn into the malleable metal. The walls gleam with a servant’s touch, the banister to the stairs smelling slightly of vinegar and salt, the abrasive varnish used to polish its every surface.
My rooms are on the very top floor, so that means we have six grand staircases to walk down. My legs begin to burn by the second, telling me I’ve been confined for too long.
Painted portraits of long-dead royals watch me as I pass by, the number of sconces growing in number with every level we descend to banish the night away with their flames. My pulse pounds in my ears as I’m led down to the first floor, where I hear music drifting out of the ballroom.
My escorts stop outside a pair of carved doors. The guard standing beside it opens it, stepping aside for us. “You may go inside.”
“Yeah, I just don’t really want to,” I mutter back.
Digby clears his throat, and I inhale a tight breath as I take in the flood of light, heat, and sound coming from the room.
I can’t scurry off to hide, because I’m not a mouse.
My ribbons squeeze around me, just slightly, a prompt to brace myself as I walk inside. The moment I step through the threshold, my eyes sweep around the space.
Musicians are playing in the very center of the room, instruments a lull of pretty composition. They’re surrounded by people dancing, the notes encouraging sensuality, the tune dipping into a heated croon. It’s a collection of fabric and skin, of limbs weaving through an impalpable melody.
The whole space is lit up with three huge chandeliers that cast sparkles against the floor. There must be at least two hundred people here, all of them basking in King Midas’s ostentatious wealth, their clothes a splash of lavish color.
The scent of their collective sweat and perfume is enough to overwhelm me. Despite the blizzard raging outside and the massive size of the room, the collective heat from all of these bodies makes the back of my neck prickle with beads of perspiration. Or maybe it’s from nerves.
Along both sides of the walls, there’s more reverie. Long tables are set up where guests are drinking, alcohol-faces gone ruddy and open. There are saddles everywhere, making the party far more licentious than it already is, which tells me that this gathering started a while ago.
I can see two groups slaking their desires against the wall, pretending that they have privacy inside shallow alcoves. Two men are even sharing a female saddle right in the middle of the dance floor, the woman held between them, hands sweeping inside a loosened bodice and up a draping skirt. She’s moaning loud enough that her throaty vocals mix with the music like it’s her own version of a serenade.
And past it all, on the very far end of the room on the raised dais, is my king.
Right now, he looks every inch the notorious Golden King that the people dubbed him. From his shined boots to his sparkling crown, everyone looks at him and knows that he’s the marvel of riches, the master of fortune, the ruler of wealth.
And the moment I move further into the room, his russet eyes find me.
He’s sitting on his throne, the queen noticeably absent, but that’s not surprising given the type of celebration this seems to be. He has three royal saddles draped around him; two of them sitting on the armrests of his throne, and one at his feet, her head resting against his knee in adoring submission.
All of them are topless, wearing sheer skirts similar to mine, though theirs are black. Behind Midas are several of his guards and King Fulke’s guards standing watch together, two kingdoms’ crests, gold and purple, standing together in a show of alliance.
King Fulke sits on his own throne set beside Midas’s, with Rissa straddling his lap. I can’t help but imagine that it’s me up there, forced to let his bony hands touch me and his yellowed teeth to nip at my flesh.
Behave tonight.
My eyes flick back to Midas as he leans in toward one of his guards, speaking words I’m much too far away to hear. In a moment, the music cuts off, the dancers coming to a dizzying halt, while everyone in the entire room turns to look at the monarch, who sends his saddles scurrying away as he gets to his feet.
“People of Highbell,” Midas announces, his strong voice carrying to every ear. “Tonight we celebrate the strength of Sixth Kingdom.”
People cheer in the crowd, shouting incomprehensible words, but I can’t help the way my lips press together in a thin line, the way my brow furrows. They did it. They attacked Fourth Kingdom, and they were victorious enough to warrant this party.
“Yet none of it would have been possible if it weren’t for King Fulke and our alliance with Fifth,” Midas goes on, gesturing magnanimously to the king beside him.
Fulke’s crown is slightly askew on his bald head, and his cheeks are ruddy and pulled into a grin, but at least he had Rissa get up from his lap.
“King Fulke, as promised, I gift you this night with my gold-touched favored.” Midas looks at me, pinning me in place despite the distance between us, those brown eyes like soil burying me with suffocating weight. “Auren, come forward.”
Two hundred pairs of eyes swivel to me. Frenzied whispers pass from one to another as bodies shift to leave an empty path from where I stand, all the way to where the king awaits.
Midas isn’t just giving me to Fulke tonight. He’s also making it a public spectacle.
“Go on.”
Digby murmurs the words quietly, but loud enough to get me moving. Swallowing hard, I force my feet to take their first steps, my body moving forward despite the fact that I want to turn and run away in the other direction. The other guards hang back, but Digby sticks with me, his stern expression in place as I match his stride.
My eyes skate around the gaping crowd, my ears assaulted with their murmured observations. They talk about everything from the shine of my skin to how much they think my fingernails are worth.
The way they look at me, I can tell that I’m not a woman to them. I’m a trinket that the king usually keeps hidden away. Everyone wants to take advantage of this rare sighting like I’m a nearly extinct animal.
The walk through that room feels miles long.
By the time I stop in front of the dais, everyone has gone quiet. All I hear is my own thudding heart and the howling wind outside.
I curtsy in front of him, knees bending, neck curving down with learned poise.
“Rise, Precious.”
I do, my eyes meeting his as his hand extends. I walk up the steps of the dais, stopping beside him. He’s so handsome that it makes my heart hurt just to look at him. Instead of looking back at me, he addresses the assembled crowd again. “Continue your celebrations.”
As soon as he finishes saying the words, the musicians strike up their instruments again, dancers slowly begin to move, and the crowd converges once more.
“Hmm, you’ve made some adjustments,” King Midas says, his eyes flicking over every place where my ribbons are wrapped around my dress.
There’s no use in denying it. “Yes, my king.”
He clicks his tongue in disapproval but runs a knuckle against my cheek. My entire body reacts, fluttering with the desire to curl against his chest and be wrapped in his arms. To pull me from this madness, to be the dreaming wanderer in the snow drift once more, when we could just talk for hours, lying in each other’s arms.
As if he knows the direction of my nostalgic thoughts, Midas’s knuckle settles beneath my chin and tilts it up so he can look me in the eye. “You’re spectacular, you know that?”
I don’t answer, my tongue tied to the knots in my stomach.
He taps my chin affectionately before dropping his hold. “Be a good girl?”
Behave tonight.
Sit pretty.
A hard swallow pushes bitterness past the tangles of my throat. “Yes, my king.”
He smiles, transforming his face to easygoing handsomeness that makes my heart clench. “Go and sit with King Fulke,” he murmurs. “We owe him a debt that needs to be paid.”
I’ve never felt like a walking coin so much in my entire life as I do right now.
Midas gives me a reassuring nod and then turns away from me, grabbing more wine from a servant as two new saddles surround him with sultry giggles as he takes his place on his throne and is immediately approached by a pair of nobles. I’m officially on my own.
Turning, I walk over to King Fulke with my chin held high. I won’t let him see how much I’m dreading this. I have a feeling that would only amuse him more, when what I really want is for him to lose interest entirely.
When I was tossing and turning last night in my bed, I told myself that no matter what happened tonight, I would handle it. Saddles are forced to give away their bodies to people they don’t like every single day. I’ve endured far worse than this before.
Besides, King Midas is growing his empire, ridding Orea of a rotten king. And he was able to do that because a single night with me was worth an entire army of soldiers.
King Fulke grins at me, showing off his yellowed, rotting teeth. His eyes run over my form greedily with carnal hunger. Despite the way my ribbons are giving me extra coverage, one look seems like he’s peeling away the layers in his head, imagining what lies beneath the wrapping.
“You’re mine for the night, gilded pet. Let’s celebrate.”
The music lifts into a crescendo.
My spirit drops into my shoes.
