“I have to get her out—get here away from here in case she starts gilding the whole fucking village,” I tell him as I dump the blankets onto the floor before draping the two thickest ones over my arms. Even with my gloves on, this is risky, but the gold doesn’t seem to be doing anything other than staying in its collected pond. It’s not turning anything solid, it’s not gilding the fabric on the bed. Instead, it’s just pooling out of her and keeping her buoyed.
But at any moment, that could change. It could start moving, rushing, attacking.
“Ryatt,” I bark out, and in an instant, he’s at my side.
“Got it,” he says with a grim nod, and as if he’s read my mind, he grabs a blanket and lets it drape along his arms the same as me. “Ready?” he asks.
As soon as I give him a nod, he goes to Auren’s side.
“Even with your gloves and sleeves, you need to be careful,” I caution. “I don’t know if the gold is going to do anything.”
With complete confidence, he carefully rolls her body, keeping the blanket as a layer between them. As soon as he moves her, the pooling liquid begins to cascade down the side of the bed.
“Watch it!” Digby calls from the doorway, rushing over with another blanket to toss over the liquid spilling on the ground.
Ryatt doesn’t get deterred, even when the viscid substance splatters on his boots. He’s able to turn her enough so that her body is out of the deepest parts of the pooled gold, and as soon as he does, I swoop in. Using the covering of the layered blankets, I gather Auren into my arms, though some of the gold seems like it tries to stick to her inert body like honey on a stick, not wanting to part with her.
“Sire—” Hojat’s worried voice cuts off when Digby starts to drape another blanket over Auren for good measure, until all that’s visible is her face, beaded in gold perspiration.
Wasting no time for the gold to react to me taking her, I rush out of the bedroom and down the hall, while Digby limps as he tries to keep up with me. “Where are you going to go?”
“As far away as I can.” When I make it to the front door, Hojat is already there, yanking it open for me.
“What do you want us to do?” Ryatt calls behind me.
“Keep an eye on that gold. If it starts to spread, get the fuck out of the Grotto and evacuate the villagers,” I call back. “It won’t be safe if she can’t pull it back.”
“It won’t be safe for you either,” he says back, but I don’t have time to reply. I rush out of the house, and I hear the door closing behind me.
Hurrying, I race out into the storm, debating for a split second which direction to go, before I turn to the right. This time though, I don’t go to the Perch. With gold already starting to soak into the blankets, I can’t risk bringing her on top of Argo. Not only could her gold suddenly lash out at him, but the worst place to be when it happens is up in the sky where a fall could kill us all.
“Auren, wake up,” I tell her.
Dusk is clutching the sky as securely as I’m clutching her. I’m trying my best to keep her tucked securely against my chest, taking the brunt of the wind and the snow as I carry her. A new line of gilded perspiration smears her brows, and panic crawls up my throat. “Listen to my voice. You have to listen to me and wake up.”
Perhaps it’s the howling wind, but I swear, I hear a moan.
“Auren?”
This time, I know I’m not hearing things, because I feel the moan vibrate from her chest. It sounds pained and exhausted, and her brow puckers in the tiniest of grimaces.
My heart leaps into my throat and grips my airway, making it hard to breathe. Not once has she made a sound or an expression since she collapsed.
I sprint up the incline of the mountain, bypassing the timberwing’s roost. I pass a cluster of craggy trees where the stone path stops, and with it, the shoveled maintenance. With labored steps, my legs slog through three feet of snow as I head along the incline of the mountain’s base.
“Keep trying to wake up, Auren.”
Every foot of distance I put between us and the village could be a matter of life and death. I have no idea what will happen if her gold fully awakens, but I have a feeling that this steady drip is just the beginning.
My chest heaves with the effort of trying to run through deep-set snow, and several times, it almost tips me over. It’s by sheer determination that I keep hold of her as I climb. Every second that passes, the blankets grow more weighed down, and I feel the syrupy heft of more and more gold soaking through the fabric, and it’s heavy.
The whistling wind freezes my ears, and the punishing snow makes it nearly impossible to see, but I finally get to the bend of the path just as her gold starts to drip onto the ground, no longer contained by the layers.
Rivulets burst free of the blankets, landing in splashes on the snow, and with it, Auren starts to tremble. Her pained moans are now constant along with the shivers racking her body, but I have a feeling it’s not due to the cold.
When I adjust my grip on her, my gloved hands come away sticky. The gold is no longer simply wicking away like oil, but soaking into the fabric, gilding every fiber as it continues to pour from her skin. I don’t know how far off nightfall is, but the sky is darkening, though not fast enough.
“Fuck.”
When I reach the crevice cracked through the side of the mountain, I practically dive for it. Once we’re hidden in its fluorescent depths and out of the storm, I kneel to the rocky ground and set Auren down.
With gold-smeared gloves, I peel back the layers of the blankets, and as soon as I do, her body quakes. Thick, syrupy gold comes pouring out, gathering against the ground of the cave. This is no longer a slow, steady drip. It’s pouring from her in streams, snapping and groping around the room like it’s searching for someone to maim.
It soaks into the knees of my pants where I kneel, while some of it starts to creep toward the cave’s entrance. I reach up to try and hold her steady as her body thrashes, while fear pummels against my chest and rings in my ears. If she doesn’t wake up, if the night doesn’t stop her and her gold reaches the village…
My glove sticks against her cheek when I cradle her face. “Wake up, Goldfinch. You have to wake up!”
Her power is splashing, her aura gone erratic, and panic surges through me so thoroughly that I might be quaking too. “I’m not going to rot you again, do you hear me? I can’t fucking do it. So wake up!”
Her lips part, and then she lets out a scream that echoes through the hollows. The gold seems to snap in answer as it clambers up the walls, masking the dim fluorescence as it covers the veins of blue etched into the rock.
Yet the force of her scream and the floodgate of her power makes her aura suddenly flare to life, the brightest it’s been in days. I have to squint against the sight, but then it flickers back to near-nothing, and my heart halts in my chest, barricading any breath that might’ve passed through my lips.
Her gold thrashes, rushing back toward her, like it’s going to encase her whole so that nothing else can get to her. “Auren!” I call as I start shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake. Up!”
And then, so suddenly that it makes me rear back, her eyes snap open.
My voice is nothing but shock caught in the net of an exhale. “Auren.”
I see her pupils dilate. See the golden depths of her irises shimmer. All around her, the gold goes still. It stops dripping. Stops flooding. Perhaps night has fallen, and now the gold is watching me as closely as she is.
My pulse pounds in my head, but I don’t dare move. A deeper intuition is keeping me rooted to the spot. “Goldfinch?” I ask.
But I already know. I can see it in the depths of her eyes.
It’s not fully Auren looking back at me.
All I have time to do is suck in a breath. Because in the next second, she attacks.
CHAPTER 13
SLADE
Huge tendrils of liquid gold lash out, wrapping around me like ropes and then tossing me away. They send me crashing against the jagged wall of the cave so hard that I see stars. I land on my side, the breath knocked out of me for a moment, and it’s only because of the endless hours of training I’ve had that I leap right back up to my feet.