No. No way.
I refuse to believe that my king is considering giving me to another man to use. Midas would never let anyone have me. He’s far too possessive of me, loves me, prizes me. He has ever since he rode in and rescued me.
But every second that passes and he doesn’t say anything makes my gut churn.
“Well? What do you say?” Fulke presses. “Name an amount.”
Bile burns the back of my throat at Midas’s cocked head. What the hell is happening?
Finally, Midas lifts his hand and gestures around the room like he’s reminding Fulke of his surroundings. Gold walls, gold ceilings, gold floors. Gold fireplace and portraits and window frames. Gold, gold, gold. “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t need to be paid anything. I have more wealth than all of the other five kingdoms combined, including yours. I’m the richest person alive.”
Thank Divine.
Instead of getting offended, Fulke just waves him off. “Bah. Not money. Something else you desire.”
My eyes bounce between them, my headache coming back full force. It pulses at my temple like an aching war drum. A beat of threat. A rhythm of dread.
How is this happening?
Usually, King Fulke just makes lewd comments about what he’d like to “do to me,” but Midas never entertains him, and it never moves past that, because my king always shuts it down. But this has gone much further than ever before. Fulke is getting bolder, and Midas…Midas is looking at Fulke with that cunning look in his eye that I know all too well. The look that tells me he’s thinking.
Unease swirls in my stomach like a dark tidepool.
One of Fulke’s advisors chances to lean forward, his face anxious. “Your Majesty—”
“Quiet,” Fulke snaps, not even looking at him.
The man promptly shuts his mouth, sharing a look with the others.
When Midas leans forward, my bated breath leans with him.
Midas holds up a single finger, his expression like a hook to a fish. “One night with her, and you give me your army for the attack I’m launching next week. I want them mobilized today so they can catch up with my own armies at Fourth’s borders.”
What?
Shock courses through me. My breath stutters to a stop, and my fingers curl around the strings of the harp like I’m trying to grab hold of reality and pull it apart. I grip them so tightly that the taut threads slice into the pads of my fingers, sending droplets of golden blood dripping down. I don’t even feel the pain.
Fulke scoffs, pushing the saddles off his lap so he can lean forward, while Polly and Rissa hurry to stand behind him. “There isn’t time for that, Midas. My army couldn’t possibly catch up to yours. And I’ve told you my stance on the matter.”
“There is if you send word today and I have my army change course,” Midas counters, as if he already had the cogs turning. My mind churns with the direction of their spin.
He’s going to make me fuck another king so that he can use an army?
“It’s against the Orean Covenant,” Fulke replies.
“Don’t pretend that you haven’t sent soldiers to weaken Fourth’s border.”
Fulke’s nostrils flare. “Fourth was pushing into my lands, spreading his rot. I’m simply defending what’s mine.”
Fulke’s defensive temper rises, while Midas looks like the cat who got the bowl of cream. “And I’m simply being proactive. It’s time to cut Fourth off before he can attempt to encroach on territory that isn’t his.”
I can’t help but stare, appalled. He’s launching an attack on Fourth Kingdom? Nobody launches an attack on Fourth Kingdom. King Ravinger is called King Rot for a reason. He’s powerful and brutal and vicious. What the hell is Midas thinking?
The allied kings look at each other, both of them contemplating, judging, studying. Like a scholar poring over ancient texts of a dead language, trying to thumb through the pages and comprehend the passages without a key.
Seconds tick by, a whistling wind from the blizzard bolstering the moment, the noise a representation of the harrowing gale that’s gusting through my insides.
The same advisor who tried to interrupt before leans forward to King Fulke, speaking quietly into his ear. Fulke’s eyes dart over as he listens, the man pulling back just a moment later.
A meaty hand comes up to trace over the gold goblet in front of him as Fulke gazes contemplatively at Midas. “We’re allies, Midas. I support you in your endeavor toward challenging Fourth Kingdom’s breach. But one night with a whore is hardly worth the might of my army.”
Midas lifts a shoulder in an unimpressed shrug. “You’re wrong about that. A night with my famed favored, one who has never been touched by anyone other than myself, whose body alone is worth more than all the riches in your vault. Trading her for the use of your army is more than fair.”
Fulke’s eyes narrow while my own vision tunnels. My bruising head thrums with a pulse of its own, anxiety whipping it like a cruel horseman, forcing it to go faster and harder with each snap of the lash.
“One month.”
The back of my throat burns with Fulke’s counter offer. My fingers dig in harder to the strings.
“One night,” Midas repeats, unyielding. “One night with her, and you stand with your ally. We share the victory of Fourth and split the land, or I may need to reevaluate your worth to me as an ally.”
A gasp hitches in my throat. The tension in the room spikes up again to an entirely new level. If I weren’t already watching Fulke, I might’ve missed the shocked flash that goes through his eyes, but I catch it. The thought of him not having Midas to add to his own wealth alarms him. The shock makes way for anger, but not quick enough. Midas saw it too, I know he did. He hit Fulke’s mark.
“Are you threatening me?” Fulke growls.
“Not at all. But after an alliance of seven years, and with a common enemy, I’m offering you a way to solidify our collaboration. Having my favored is a gesture of my appreciation.”
My headache inflates, pressure popping behind my eyes with a snap of my mouth. “No.”
Everyone’s eyes slide over to me at my sudden outburst, but my heart is pounding so hard that I can’t focus on anything except the pain that somehow traveled from my head to my chest.
I’m not sure when I jumped to my feet, but I’m suddenly standing, facing Midas with my sliced hands held up in front of me as if I can ward this off. “No, my king. Please…”
Midas ignores me. Fulke’s eyes trail over my body, half of me cast in snowy shadow, the other in firelight.
“One night, no interruptions, to do with her as I wish?” Fulke asks in confirmation.
Midas tips his head. My whole body tips forward.
I catch myself on the bars of my cage, cut fingers curling around the metal, fusing myself to it in a shaky embrace.
“I want half of Fourth.”
“Of course,” Midas agrees, as if it’s a done deal. As if he’d been planning this scenario of negotiation for the entire time Fulke has been here.
One more sweeping glance crawls over my body. “I’ll agree to those terms, Midas.”
My king lifts his chin, a victorious tilt baiting his expression. “Your army?”
Fulke shares a whispering consultation with his advisor for a moment before he nods. “I’ll have them moving by tonight.”
My soul goes as sour as turned grapes, my stomach crashes with tumultuous waves that lick over my organs in bitter, biting acid as denial floods me.
He doesn’t ever let anyone touch me. I’m his. That’s what he always says. I’m precious to him. I’ve been his for ten years, and in all that time, he’s never let anyone near me.
Midas saved me. He pulled me from ruin and put me in a castle. I gave him my heart, and he gave me his protection. One look. He said he took one look at me, and he loved me, and I loved him right back. How could I not? He was the first man to ever treat me with kindness. How can he ruin that and give me to Fulke of all people?
My throat catches as I grip the bars, my vision tilting in unsteady panic. “No, Tyndall, please.”
I hear the gasps from Polly and Rissa at my use of King Midas’s first name. Nobody dares to speak so casually to him. People have been beheaded for less. But the name just flies out, unchecked. He used to let me call him Tyndall once upon a time, when I was just a girl and he was my vigilante knight in shining armor. But that was before.
My slipup is probably my mind’s way of trying to call back his protector role in my life, but I can see from the hard set of his jaw that it was the wrong thing to say.
His brown eyes cut into me like the knife on his place setting. “You would do well to remember your place, Auren. You are my royal saddle to be ridden by whomever I wish.”
Tears burn in my eyes. Don’t cry, I coach myself. Don’t break down.
Fulke tilts his bald head, watching me with unrestrained interest. To him, I’m already his. “I can punish her, if you like. I’ve been very successful at breaking in my own saddles.”
The first tear slips down my cheek even though I try to keep it balanced precariously on my lid. It tracks down like a noose, a rope of remorse falling limp against my cheek.
Midas shakes his head firmly. “No punishing. She’s still my favored.”
I guess that’s my bright side.
Fulke nods immediately, as if he’s nervous Midas will change his mind. “Of course. I won’t lay a hand on her. Just my cock.” He laughs uproariously, his giant belly jiggling while the advisors laugh nervously.
King Midas doesn’t join in, because his attention is locked on me. I’m stuck under his gaze, feeling a mix of hurt, fear, and subservience. I could kick myself for whining last night about how lonely I was. This is what I get for not being thankful for my cage.
“My king…” My voice is quiet, pleading. A last-ditch effort to speak to the core of him, instead of this staunch monarch who’d do anything to strengthen his rule.
Midas’s brown eyes hold no warmth. Just cold bark of a log forcibly cut from its roots. “I didn’t say you could stop playing.”
I blink at his words, my lips parting in pain as I drop my hands from the bars. He’s doing this. He’s truly doing this.
“Now sit pretty on your stool and play your silly music. Leave the men to speak, Auren.”
I flinch at his words as if he’d come forward and slapped me. My ribbons shudder on either side of my spine, as if they want to hide from his view. Slowly, I turn and walk back to the stool. My legs shake as I sit down, like a rock settling at the bottom of a pond, sediment billowing up, the depth of water keeping me oppressed from the sun.
I feel detached from my body as I see my bloodied hands lift up to the harp once more. The skin over the vein in my temple twitches, and my back goes ramrod straight, as if the hard lines of my shoulders can be a shield from piercing eyes.
The song “Shudder Serendipity” falls from the notes unbidden.
Each pluck of string is another incision that slices into more than just my skin, but into my heart. Every note is a lament, every movement a misery, every cadence a reverberating pang. Tiny drops of blood drip down the chords in sweet sacrifice.
I play it for my king. My protector. My savior. For the man I’ve loved since I was just a fifteen-year-old girl. I play it, remembering the first time I learned it, when he so sweetly sang along to the pretty rhymes, his voice an accompaniment to the campfire and crickets.
In time between times
In dawnlight we danced
Sipping from shine
Your lips like romance
Another tear falls from my eye, the haunting sound of his voice a long ago memory so far away.
The man who promised to always keep me safe is giving me to another, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
