Where were you?
I asked Slade that question back in Deadwell, back in the sheltered protection of the cave. It seems so long ago. What I told him then will always hold true for me. That I was glad I saved myself.
But this time, I thought he was going to be here.
I thought he was going to come.
Where are you?
I’m strong. I’ve come a long way with my magic and my control. With my emotions and thoughts. Even my physical body has gotten stronger with the intermittent training. Yet none of that is going to help me break out of this enclosure.
I need help this time.
And I don’t have it.
I don’t know where he is or why he hasn’t come, but whatever it is must be something terrible, because I know without a doubt, he’d do anything in his power to be here. To track me down and save me. Yet he isn’t here, so I can only think the worst.
Something happened to him.
Did Queen Kaila have a hand in this? Did they do something to Slade? They had to have, or he would’ve come already. He wouldn’t have let them even take me out of Fourth Kingdom in the first place.
This realization sinks in like a boulder crashing into an ocean. It bottoms out, leaving the ground beneath my feet to shake, silt lifted up to muddy my vision.
“The Conflux execution must be carried out at once.”
My eyes rock to the king.
“You have been judged culpable for your crimes in killing King Midas and stealing not one power but two.”
“I didn’t steal anything!” I scream out. “Gold-touch is mine.”
No one believes me. No one even hears me. I search the other monarchs, but they look at me as if I’m a leech they need to burn, like they don’t want me anywhere near them in case I steal their magic, too. The spectators in the square don’t hold any sympathy for me either, their expressions pure hate.
To them, I’m nothing but a lying, murdering, thieving saddle who deserves this judgment.
“Please!”
My hands grip the poles again, wet with a gold that won’t harden. The puddle at my feet is so much deeper now, reaching the middle of my shins. Black, liquid roots slink in its depths, the tipped ends stretching toward all sides of the enclosure as if they’re trying to dig their way out but can’t.
I can’t get out.
Can’t control my magic.
My back is barren.
And he’s not coming.
My soundless sob is what breaks through the haze of my mind, snapping me back into full awareness. Without the buffer of my mental shield, I’m clutched in the chaos of my own condemnation.
The monarchs are all standing now, and there are guards surrounding my enclosure. Guards I didn’t even notice approach. They wear no armor, but their uniforms are starch-white with belts of gray to hold the sins of their blades.
“Arm!” King Merewen orders.
Every single guard pulls out his sword. There are six of them in total—three in front of me, three in back, surrounding my small circle.
It seems like some sort of cruel irony for there to be six.
“Please!” I scream again, but no one cares to hear my plea.
My heart pounds like it’s trying to break a hole through my chest and escape, but no part of me is leaving this enclosure.
Is this truly it? After everything. After fucking everything, is this my end? Condemned to death because of Midas?
Another cruel irony, that I should be executed because they think I stole gold-touch from him.
“Raise!”
The guards lift their swords. All six blades notched between the poles, their sharp tips pointed at me with lethal intent.
This enclosure is so small that the moment they stick these blades in, I’ll be stabbed through on all sides. There is no escaping this.
There is no way out.
Tears stream down my face, futile drips that barely reveal the panicked terror I’m flooded with.
I spin around, trying to jostle the barred door, but it doesn’t budge at all.
“Please!”
After all I did to be free, I’m going to die trapped behind bars anyway, locked in a cage I can’t escape. That’s how cruel life is.
It’s almost as if I can feel Midas laughing over my shoulder.
I surge inside of myself, trying to pull out my fae beast, trying to break past the runes at my feet, to shove apart the poles that surround me.
Nothing works.
My beast is curled up, feathers withering with exhaustion. My gold can do nothing but drain out of my skin. The structure that surrounds me feels like it’s closing in.
I’m trapped.
King Merewen meets my eyes from over the guards’ heads. “Lady Auren, I now sentence you to die.”
The blades close in.
And so do my eyes.
I feel the first piercings of the swords like a fingertip getting pricked by a wayward sewing needle. Sharp. Small. Just the very tip biting through my skin.
So I breathe. A single phrase caught in the exhale, joined with the sorrow of my heart.
Find me in another life.
Find me in them all.
And then there is no room for words. None for coherent thought, because the first of those swords sinks in deeper, and pain erases everything else.
My body braces. My mind empties.
But then…the world erupts.
I don’t understand for a moment. When the ground shakes. When the screams sound. I can’t grasp that the blades pressed into my body are no longer firm or sharp. My numbed mind only registers something is off when they fall away from me.
My eyes snap open to see dust as thick as fog crowding in the air. Looking down, I see that the swords are no longer gleaming and silver, but mottled with rust the color of amber stones and tangerines, and then they suddenly disintegrate completely. I can feel them burst into powder where they’ve sunk into my body.
And the guards...
I watch the man in front of me as his body morphs. Terrified eyes go opaque, sinking down into their sockets. His jaw hangs open like his muscles can no longer hold it. His lips peel, exposing a row of browning teeth. His veins fester and burst, lesions peeling back up and down his neck. He tries to grab hold of the pole, but his hands shrivel down to the bone.
When he falls, his body swells and twitches, bloating up unfathomably large, before everything then seems to suck inward, shrinking and shriveling until he’s just a husk of bones and dust.
I spin around at the thump and clang that surrounds me, seeing that all of the guards have met the same fate.
My head snaps up, my eyes searching, heart leaping...
And then I see him.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt true elation until right in this moment. It’s visceral, draping around me like the warmth of his body, my heart surging at the sight of him and making a sob wrest from my deepest depths.
He came.
He came for me.
A timberwing lands right in the middle of the square with a fierce roar, and the crowd screams as they flee, though they don’t go fast enough.
The moment Slade jumps off the beast, the very second his booted feet hit the stones, rot slams out in every direction. It consumes the crowd of onlookers, tainted roots growing and spreading, infesting everything in its path. The people fall, one after the other, bodies left to languish and decay, the guards surrounding the crowd succumbing to the same fate.
I cling to the pole in front of me, trying to keep upright, as cries crack the back of my throat and leak past my lips. Our gazes lock together, my heart locked with it.
I can feel the fury pouring out of him in endless waves, and the amount of power pulses in the air, but it doesn’t make my stomach roil, doesn’t make nausea churn.
He walks toward me with a savage stride, making the ground crumble, making the square squelch into silence as he rots everyone in his path and lets his boots crush their decayed bodies into dust. Until there are no more screams. No more running. Only quiet death lies in his wake.
I’ll be the villain for you.
He is the epitome of death and revenge. The personification of rage.
He destroys everything and everyone in his vicinity without glance or thought, and through the chaos, through the massacre, I revel in it.