With my back toward the table, I let out a shaky breath, thankful that no one can see my face. The pain twinges and prods, like it’s trying to fish through the very depths of me, but that’s exactly the last place I want to feel.
I give myself one more strained breath before I turn back around, bottle in hand. Somehow, Lu has already brought cups to the table, setting the last two down in front of her and Judd as I unstop the cork and start to pour. It’s not nearly enough for all of us, especially since I helped myself earlier, but it’s something.
Yet even with the distraction of the food, my careful mood is threatening to tip. I’m up on the point of a blade, trying not to fall and cut myself open, but I know I can’t keep upright forever, no matter how stiffly I sit at this table.
Beside me, Slade is tense too, and the others are watching me, though they try not to be obvious about it. I grab my cup, holding it tightly, staring at the deep red color.
“Auren.”
“Not tonight,” I say without looking at him as I take a drink.
I’m not ready. I need more time. Not tonight.
I hold those words against my chest like a beggar’s coins, clutching at them because I know they’ll offer me the tiniest reprieve for a little while, until I’m empty-handed once again. “Tonight, I just want this.”
When I glance back up at the now quiet table, no one is pretending not to look at me, and I hold my breath with anxiousness until Judd jumps up. “Well, alright then,” he says with a nod. “We’re going to need more wine.”
He lopes over to the pantry and comes out carrying two more bottles along with some bread and jam he found. “Something a bit more edible,” he says with a wink as he sets everything down.
I let out a shaky laugh, relaxing when they all start to drink and talk and eat, relaxing even more when I join in.
And for a while, that’s all there is. That’s all that matters. I clutch my words and stay balanced on the blade, and for now, it works. For now, I don’t have to reflect or process or talk. I don’t have to face anything real.
For now.
CHAPTER 16
AUREN
I don’t wake up so much as a hammer slams against my skull so hard that it knocks me into consciousness against my will.
My breasts are smashed against the mattress from lying on my stomach, and I feel tickling fur on my cheek. Cracking open an eye isn’t as painful as I anticipated though, because the room is blessedly dark. I suppose there are some perks to having a house inside of a cave.
I roll over, but the tug against my back makes a grimace pull at my lips and a pained groan slip free. That small noise in this quiet room seems to be amplified, and when I look up, my heart sinks.
Slade is sitting in a chair beside the bed, watching me.
There’s a book on his lap, its pages fanned out like he wasn’t really reading at all. His legs are spread before him, one elbow bent and leaning against the armrest, finger and thumb cocked against his jaw.
I sit up the rest of the way, forcing the grimace off of my face, though I immediately notice that nothing is gilded. Not the blankets, not the pillow, not my clothes. Is it still night?
“How long was I asleep?”
“I’m not certain,” he tells me. “But you needed the rest to sleep off the wine. Plus, your body is still recovering from the power drain, among other things.”
I let out a noncommittal noise because the “power drain” and “other things” are firmly in the I’m not talking about this yet territory.
“I was hoping you could show me the cave today,” I tell him as I get to my feet and look around the room. The only light is coming from the low-burning fire and glowing blue just outside the window. “Are there any shoes I can borrow? Do you think Lu has anything?”
When he doesn’t answer, I risk a glance at him, just to find that he’s still watching me steadily, the greens of his eyes pitched in something heady and attentive. The silence of his study makes my skin crawl. Because somehow, despite not knowing him for long, he has always been able to sift beneath my surface and find truths I thought were long-buried.
“...Is that a no on the shoes?”
He carefully tosses the book on the floor and gets to his feet, and I find myself backing up a step. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, because I don’t want him to get closer. I don’t want him to start to dig in my depths.
The second he sees me back up, he jerks to a stop and something unsettled flashes through his expression before he shutters it.
I hate that I’m standing here, putting distance between us. But distance is the footpath of avoidance, and it’s the track I have to cling to for my own sanity.
Because if he gets close, he’ll see the truth. He’ll see how the ground at my feet is riddled with potholes and bumps. He’ll see the stark fear in my trembling lip and the guilt in my eyes as I try to keep backing away. He’ll see the reality of the destruction that surrounds me, while I desperately try not to trip. Distance is all I have between me and having to come to terms with the carnage that’s piling up to my knees.
But leave it to Slade, because I swear, he can see this too.
“We need to talk.”
Just four words from his lips, and heat presses against the backs of my eyes and makes my nose burn. Shoving them back, I shake my head at him, try to straighten my shoulders. But I can’t. I can’t, because it hurts, because—
“No.”
The word wrenches out of a cinched throat, lashed from a whipping tongue.
His lips press together in a thin line, and I see the first peeks of his roots moving beneath the collar of his shirt.
“I want to go see the cave,” I say, my voice stronger this time.
But what is the value of strength when it’s just a facade?
After a long moment that stretches between us, Slade tips his head. “Alright, Goldfinch. I’ll show you the cave.”
Relief pilfers through the stack of my anxiety, stowing some of it away for later.
“I have some boots for you in my closet, so we’ll need to go into my room first.”
I look around in surprise. “This isn’t your room?”
He shakes his head. “Your gold has taken up residence there for the time being, so we’re staying in here.”
My gold—what? But then the other part of his answer snags my attention. We’re staying in here. We.
“You slept in here with me?”
To say I’m taken aback is putting it mildly. The idea that he would stay with me makes me feel oddly vulnerable.
He cocks his head. “Where else would I be if not with you?”
My breath catches, heart twisting.
“But the daytime…”
“I was up before dawn,” he assures me, the shadows cast in the room making the sharp angles of his bearded jaw more pronounced. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”
I look down, eyes skating over the rough threads of the thick socks I have on my feet. They’re not gilded either, and something uneasy tempers in my chest.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
My ears perk with the sound of him taking a single step forward. My body wants to sway toward him, to move with the force of his approach, because his nearness has always been a force of its own. One that’s always held power over me.
I feel the heat of his body in front of me, the shadows cast from his body mingling with mine. “I claimed you that night in Ranhold,” he tells me, his tone so full of unfaltering fire that it draws my gaze back up. Heat flushes my face, as if he really were ablaze, his words igniting the packed-down snow of my spirit. “And then you claimed me right back, in the middle of a ballroom for everyone to hear. Or don’t you remember?”
Flashes.
A crowd of faces.
Lines of armored guards.
Cruel, angry eyes beneath a golden crown.
The heat of a body at my back.
And then my own clear, unshakable voice. He’s mine.
It wasn’t just a claiming, it was a challenge. As if I was ready to destroy anyone who tried to refute it or take him away from me.
Do I remember? Of course I do. I remember every single encounter with him. I walked off a pirate ship and fell at his feet in the snow, and ever since then, it’s like I’ve just kept on falling.
“I want to go see the cave.”