“Auren, use your ribbons.”
“Oh, she didn’t tell you? She lost that privilege.”
The dagger changes now, and I’m no longer pinned against Midas’s back, but pinned against a wall. It’s not gilded reins tied around my wrist, it’s my ribbon.
And then there’s a sound that the sword makes as it comes swinging down. It’s not a slice in the air, it’s not a whispered whistle. It shatters. Like a body being flung out a window, or a fist slamming into a mirror.
Or the shattering of a soul.
With it, comes the pain.
Pain and pain and pain again. Pain as I fracture into a million pieces. Pieces that look like strips of satin falling frayed and bloody to the floor.
“This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”
I can’t hear my screams. Can’t hear myself wail or beg or grieve. It’s just an endless cracking of crystalline glass.
And then, it’s suddenly over. Jarring in the ringing silence, caught with daggers and ribbons and splintered shards beneath my feet.
Broken. I feel so broken.
“You did this to yourself.”
I just stare at the shards of mirror, seeing my face in a thousand different pieces. Seeing my ribbons in a thousand more.
Seeing him.
Hearing him.
Over and over again.
“Don’t disobey me anymore, Precious.”
“If I can’t have her, no one can.”
“This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”
“You did this to yourself.”
My reflection in these mirrors shows every range of emotion looking back at me. Judgment, disappointment, pity, anger, numbness, anguish. My broken faces surround me as I drop to the floor and start digging through the shards with frantic desperation.
I snatch up the ribbons, but the mirrors make it confusing, and just when I try to grab hold of the satin strips, my hands hit the glass instead. I slice open my palms, my fingers, my knees.
Still, I dig through it desperately, tears and blood dripping down simultaneously, while the cut-away ribbons evade me at every turn. But I can’t give up.
I need them back.
I need them back I need them back I need them back
My grip comes away bloody, mangled, not a single scrap of ribbon safe in my hold. Then, I start to sink. Tied at the ankles and dragged under, so the glass starts cutting into my stomach, my arms, my chest.
No matter how hard I try to dig my way back up, I get pulled further down, dragged by a million shards of myself that broke, tangled in the lengths of ribbons I’ll never get back.
And a single gilded dagger, sharper than all the rest, digging right into my throat.
“You did this to yourself.”
My eyes burst open, lids rimmed with the dampness of tears. My hand is already at my throat, frantic movements checking for blood that isn’t there. I take several gasping breaths, sitting up in the otherwise empty bed. I’m shaking all over, covered in sweat, and I fling the covers off the bed, because it feels like the walls are closing in on me.
I pace around the room.
Back and forth, socks gathering static with every quick tread. My back feels battered and aching, as if the dream implanted it with phantom pain. With another particularly nasty twinge, I grab the lantern from the bedside table and pass through the bathroom before heading into the closet. I hang the lantern on the doorknob and then lift my shirt, standing there in front of the floor-length mirror.
When another stitch of pain jumps at my lower back, I turn around and carefully lift the wrapping Hojat keeps bound around my back.
My breath has gone rickety, nearly creaking from my throat in derelict protest. And when I look over my shoulder at my reflection, gaze zeroed in on the spot that’s hurting me, this time I do make a noise that scrapes past my lips.
The pair of my ribbons at the very bottom of my back are hanging on by a thread. Like skin that’s started to peel, left attached to harden and shrivel. My fingers barely skim over them, but even that faintest touch has them both falling off.
Just like that.
Like browned leaves on a stem, dead and brittle they fall. Swaying to the floor in near weightlessness until they land on the rug, two sorry pieces of shrunken and emaciated ribbons that have lost their gleam.
My eyes burn as I look down at them, and they fill when I press my fingers to the indents in my back. Nothing there but a pair of thin scratches on either side of my spine.
As if my ribbons were never there at all.
The sob that comes out of me is cut off as I slap a hand to my mouth. Muffled more when I lean against the closet wall, shoving my face against the spare coat hanging up.
My ribbons are going to flake off like that, one by one, until my back is bare and there’s nothing left.
I think a part of me believed that they were going to heal. Grow back. But all hope of that has flaked off, left to wither and wilt with the pieces at my feet.
So that’s it. That’s it now.
They’re gone, and I’m not going to get them back, and I just have to deal with that.
I breathe against the coat, trying to exhale out this chiseled-in mourning, though it’s carved too deep for me to get rid of. So when I’ve steadied myself again, I swipe away the tears that have leaked down my cheeks, and then methodically replace my bandages and pull down my shirt.
I pick up the dried, disintegrating ends. Hold them carefully in my palm. My mourning melds with my anger, stoked fresh with prodding and sparks.
With a shored-up sigh, I grab the lantern and leave the closet, going back into the bedroom where I place the ends and the lantern onto the bedside table. There’s no chance of getting back to sleep now.
Passing the banked fire, I leave the bedroom and walk down the dark hallway, my feet going faster, like they want to break out into a run. When I get to the living room, the flames in the fireplace are burning a bit more brightly, and one look at the clock on the mantel tells me that it’s early evening, though the house is quiet.
Movement from the kitchen catches my eye, and my gaze settles on the lone figure sitting at the table with a cup clutched in his hands and a bottle in front of him. I pause for a brief moment before I drift over, taking a seat directly across from him.
Digby lifts his gaze, settling his steady bark-colored eyes on me. For a moment, we just look at one another. Without bars between us. Without a king who had no business wearing a crown. Without rules or expectations. We look at each other as two people who have a culmination of shock still working through their systems.
I don’t know what Digby can see in my eyes, but I know what I see in his. I see countless hours of torture. Of imprisonment. Punishment. I see racking guilt and bone-deep injury and stark regret. I think that’s what pains me the most. That I can see, despite everything that’s happened to him, that he’s suffering right here, for me. For what I endured and what he was forced to watch.
“It was always you with the power.”
I smile shakily at his words. “I imagine it was a big shock when you saw me in Ranhold. Probably seemed foolish to you once you knew what I could do and how much I let him walk all over me for so many years. You must think I’m very stupid and weak.”
He shakes his head fiercely. “Even the most powerful people can be made to feel powerless. Finding your strength even when you believe you have none is what makes you a true force. Nobody made you into what you are, my lady. You were always strong. You just had to prove it to yourself.”
I swallow hard, still brushing off that awful dream, still feeling those ends fall off my back like petals flaking off a flower. “I wish I hadn’t waited so damn long.”
“And I wish I’d never let the bastard hurt you in the first place. I should’ve been there for you. Should’ve shielded you from what happened.”
With my shaky hand, I reach across the table and grip his fingers still tucked loosely around the cup. “It’s not your fault, Dig.” My words are a hoarse whisper with nothing but crystal-clear truth.