“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that,” I confess. “I’m not mad at you for that at all. If I were in your position, I’d have done the same thing. I’m grateful you were able to stop me. I wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t intervened. I will always be in your debt.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, and I worry that I’ve really upset him, but then I suddenly feel his hand lift my leg. I startle, because I didn’t hear or see him move, but now he’s right in front of me, his deft, strong fingers massaging into the sore arch of my foot as he stands in the water in front of me.
Our eyes lock as he presses into every sore inch, thumbs circling, hands moving my foot up and down. “You are not indebted to anyone, Goldfinch, least of all me,” he murmurs as he continues to release the tension and the pain, like the real magic is in his touch. “You are priceless. You are worth more than gold. And the world owes you so much more than what you’ve been given.”
I think a tear might drip onto my lashes, but I pretend it’s the plugged-up steam.
Slade and I stay quiet after that. He massages both of my feet until I can’t suppress the groans, until my arches no longer feel stretched and sore. Then his masterful hands move up to my calves, his firm touch pressing into the knots, rubbing every tender part. Because that’s what he always does for me. He finds every aching part and helps me work through it.
Even when I don’t want to.
CHAPTER 24
SLADE
Finally, the storm has broken.
The sky is bruised, with clouds of black and blue clinging to the horizon as night starts to give way.
With it, the air has finally stopped blowing, and all that’s left of the blizzard from the past several days is what it dumped on the ground. A good six feet now borders all of Drollard, though the villagers were diligent and made sure to constantly clear off the paths and the fronts of houses, while the mountainside shelves helped to keep some of the snowfall from piling up in the pavilion. With the snow left to collect everywhere else, Drollard feels extra sheltered from the outside world.
I stride through the village with my hands buried in my pockets, and the only reason I don’t slip over the icy paths is because of the grains of salt and sand that have been scattered around like birdseed.
I pass the slant-roofed homes, though all is quiet and still since it’s not yet dawn. Smoke puffs up from the chimneys and breathes against the ceiling of the mountain’s overhang, dissipating into the sky.
The pavilion is empty, save for the parked carts that the villagers use to gather supplies whenever they get a shipment in. A few arthritic trees cling to the ground, their knobby limbs and bent branches holding up tufts of needles and snow.
Just beyond, the pavilion is covered beneath the lip of the mountain’s overhang, and it’s here, past piles of firewood, past the stone fire pit, where the door to the Cellar is located. I check there first, but aside from a large room stocked full of supplies and a single cold-weary guard, there’s no one there. He gives me a nod as I pass, and I then disappear into a split in the mountain just beyond, where the walls have been smoothed and filed back just enough to let a person through.
The cracked path is long and jagged, and for a while, I’m walking completely blind, no light afforded anywhere in the miserly fissure. When I finally make it to the end and squeeze out, the mountain is slightly more generous. There are a few blue lines spread through the cave’s anemic walls, casting off the palest of glows.
Despite being out of the elements, it’s colder inside here. The kind of cold that’s stagnant and inert, the kind that never leaves. Yet despite that, I find myself growing hot as I get closer to the iron door set into the shadowed rock. By the time my footsteps bring me to the barred window so that I can look in, the cold is only acknowledged by the clouds of exhale that leave my mouth.
“How long have you been back?” I don’t turn as I ask the question—I don’t need to. I sensed him in here as soon as I walked in.
Ryatt stretches out his legs from where he’s sitting. His shadowed form is blocking the firelight from the heat lantern hanging beside him, its orange flame fed from the oil in our very own mines.
“Couple of hours,” he says roughly, making me finally turn to him.
“There’s only one.” My tone is tilted with a question.
He scratches the back of his head, making his black hair stand on end in some places. He normally keeps his longer than mine, always grumbling when he has to stand-in as Rip and cut it shorter. “You said you needed one to question.”
“I said I needed at least one to question,” I correct.
He doesn’t look the least bit contrite. “If you wanted them all alive, you should’ve sent Judd. You knew I wasn’t going to let all of Midas’s rats come back here. You got what you wanted,” he tells me, tipping his head toward the cell. “I got what I wanted with the others. Especially since they made it so hard to fucking find them all.”
“How many were there?”
“Four. The lucky bit was my timberwing spotted theirs. That’s how I finally found them holed up against some hill not far from here. Once they heard you’d arrived, they took off, scampering like the rats they are, but the storm took them out and grounded them.”
At least the storm was good for something. Ryatt and I had been out searching for days, looking for them, and I was starting to worry we weren’t going to find them.
“You took satisfaction in killing the other three, I take it?”
Ryatt’s wicked grin flashes. “They made a much better adornment in the frozen wastelands dead than they did alive.”
Nodding, I once more look through the barred door, where I see a pitiful heap of a man slumped against the floor, shivering inside his gold-trimmed coat. I wonder how many days Auren spent gilding shit like this. How much of her energy and time and strength was spent on feeding Midas’s reputation and ego. Just thinking about that makes anger burn down my back.
“You’re up early,” Ryatt says, face pitched in my direction, half of it blue, the other half completely shadowed.
I say nothing, taking a seat on the barrel just across from him. The truth is, I’m still struggling to sleep. Auren won’t sleep at night, and I get barely a few hours tossing and turning before I give up before dawn, just as she slips in.
My brother makes a noise deep in his throat. “She’s still not getting up during the day?”
I cut a look over to him. “She’s adjusting.”
“Is she?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Ryatt shrugs a shoulder. “I see the look on her face anytime someone mentions the gold. She’s terrified of it.”
“She’s not,” I snap, anger making my teeth clench.
“If you say so.”
“Why are you so fucking concerned?”
“Why aren’t you?” Ryatt counters. “We all saw her that night. She might look like a mountain on the surface, but she’s a volcano ready to erupt. And when she does, it’s not some small thing.”
“She’s fine.”
Ryatt doesn’t let it drop though. Not that I would expect him to. Half of his personality is arguing with me.
“She’s scared of her own power—and rightfully so. But fear is a dangerous thing when it comes to magic. You should know that better than anyone.”
We stare at each other across the narrow path, on opposite sides of the cracked corridor. Blue streaks spread out from behind him, smearing him in their light, while the flickering lamps counter their glow.
“It’s going to take time.”
“And how much time can you afford?”
I rake a hand through my hair, tugging at the ends. “As long as she fucking needs.”
He shakes his head, disgruntled and contrary. “You might be a king, but even you can’t sustain that. Besides, you hate it here.”
“I don’t hate it here.”
Ryatt rolls his eyes. “Sure you don’t. That’s why you only visit when you absolutely have to.”
My back teeth feel like they might crack from how hard I’m grinding them. “I have a kingdom to run.”