My ribs feel like they’ve been chained together. Not a single link allowing any give to breathe.
“I didn’t listen to my fucking instincts,” I tell her, anger at myself practically spitting out of me. “I tried to go see you again. I could feel that something just wasn’t right, but Midas kept me too distracted. Before I could get to your room, he called all of us into more damn meetings before the ball was set to start. I was so tied up that I didn’t even realize the shit happening all around me. It was only when Lu showed up and signaled to me that I realized she’d found him.”
“Digby?” Auren asks.
“No. Ryatt,” I tell her. “Lu was looking for Digby, but she found my brother in a holding cell instead. Ryatt told her that he saw Digby being handed off to another set of guards. We had to wait for the ball to start before she could go back down to get Ryatt out, and then while she distracted the guards and led them back to the ball, Ryatt got Digby.”
She processes it all with a slow nod of her head, tipping like a buoy in the sea.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I ask, though I fucking hate the pain that it causes her.
“He drugged me.”
Her declaration makes my eyes flare. My entire fucking chest feels like it splits open, chains be damned. “He fucking what?”
She pauses at the seething horror in my tone, her gaze flicking down to where my spikes have all torn through my shirt, like the black fangs of a snarling beast.
“Like I said, I was a fool,” she goes on, a single shoulder lifting. “I let him lead me downstairs, and he did bring me to Digby. That was the only honest thing he ever did.” Tears start to fall down her cheeks, her brow pulled into pain. “He was beaten. I thought he was dead at first. And I was furious. I wanted to hurt Midas. Make him hurt as much as Digby was hurting. But then he had me held against the wall and he...he...”
My chest cleaves. “Auren—”
“They hacked at my ribbons. One by one. I felt everything.” She’s trying not to cry, but the sobs squeeze her throat and make my own close up so tightly I can’t take a breath. “It hurt. It hurt so badly.”
Where were you?
I didn’t just fail her. I allowed her to be fucking destroyed.
“I passed out after that—from the pain or the dew, or both. I woke up but only briefly, and then the next time I woke, I was given more dew. I don’t remember everything after that. Just snippets.”
My teeth ache with the sharpened canines that’ve shoved their way down, my cheeks itching with the scales that I know now adorn me. That whole day leading up to the ball, my stomach had felt like there were claws raking down it. But then, like a magnet drawing me in, I finally saw her that night. Up there on that balcony. And even though I didn’t know any of this yet, even though we had hundreds of people between us, I could feel it. Could see it in her erratic, fitful aura.
I thought you were going to come. But you didn’t.
I should’ve rotted the whole fucking ballroom right then and there.
The hate I feel for myself is so intense that my spikes throb down my spine, as if they want to stab me in half.
Auren sucks in a breath, and for a second, I think she’s just catching her breath, but when I see her eyes have dropped down, I follow her gaze to my arm. My arm, where my spikes are pulsing, and rivulets of blood have seeped through my torn skin.
I guess that explains why my back feels like I’m being chewed up, though it’s nothing compared to the pain I feel scouring through my chest.
“I’ve never seen that happen.”
I shake my head absently. “It hasn’t. Not for a long, long time.”
When I lift my head to look at her again, glittery lines from her tears are drying on her cheeks. Tears that never should’ve been there. Not if I’d done my fucking duty and protected her the way I promised.
Disgust consumes me, and I curl my hands into fists. “Where was I?” I say with a sigh, making her eyes slam back to mine. “I wasn’t fucking there.”
I wasn’t there.
While she drained her magic.
While she was drugged.
While she came face-to-face with a beaten and bloody Digby.
While she was held against the wall and mutilated.
And yet, she came down from that mezzanine, she fought her way through a crowd, and she stood in front of me to face Midas, claiming me in front of everyone, looking like she was ready to fight the world in order to protect me.
And I…
I wasn’t fucking there.
CHAPTER 28
AUREN
I sit here, a thick layer of a coat beneath me, gloomy daylight filtering in behind, and all I can do is stare at the male in front of me.
If anguish was a person, it would be him.
He shoves a hand through his hair, grip tugging at the black strands while his face is twisted in a pained expression.
I wasn’t fucking there.
Just the way he said it, I could tell it had been beating inside his skull with raised fists, reverberating in his mind over and over again like a malicious echo.
I can’t help but drop my gaze to where the spikes on his arms have ripped through his skin, making him bleed. I’ve never seen that happen any of the other times he transformed. But I can also tell this wasn’t just a normal transformation. When he was listening to my account of what happened, his spikes tore out of him in a violent burst. Whatever magic is associated with his usually harmless metamorphosis couldn’t keep up with his furious emotions.
But seeing this side of him—seeing Rip—it makes me let out a shuddering breath. Because even though he’s still him no matter what form he’s in, I somehow missed him. This is the version of him that I knew first. The version of him that I trusted and pined for.
Tortured black eyes lift to me, and I shiver at the sight of his aura pulsing around his body. It’s moving like aggravated shadows, an overcast of dense torment. But it’s not a falsehood. It’s not a maneuver or a tactic. He’s not doing it with purpose or to manipulate my emotions. In fact, he’s trying very hard not to show emotion.
Seeing him like this makes me wonder how I ever looked at Midas and believed a damn word he said. If Midas ever showed any emotion other than anger, he did it as a scheme.
“An apology is an insulting, shallow word,” Slade forces out. “I hate that all I have to offer you is a cheap word. Sorry is inadequate.” He shakes his head, his shoulders tense, though I doubt it has anything to do with the spikes that tore from his back. “I failed you so utterly. You should loathe me for it. You should never be expected to forgive me for that. But I’m a selfish piece of shit, because I will try to earn your forgiveness anyway.”
Earn it. Not ask for me to give it.
This is so incredibly foreign and bewildering.
“Rip—”
“If I had done anything differently, things could’ve been avoided. I should’ve known something was wrong when Midas headed me off. I should’ve gone straight to your room afterward to check on you. Should’ve never let you leave the camp in the first place. I should’ve found you in that holding cell and saved you before he could hurt you.”
“But, Rip—”
“I should have rotted that entire Divine-damned ballroom right there on the spot, consequences be damned, because I let him fucking hurt you. I just stood there. I just stood there while he threatened to kill you. You should fucking hate me forever, blame me, because I failed—”
“Rip!” My voice lashes out like a whip, cutting off his tangent. He startles, black eyes snapping to me. When I’m sure I have his full attention, I say, “I don’t want that.”
He shakes his head, his jaw working. “I know you didn’t want me to rot everyone. Even after everything you went through, you still came down to protect me.” He scoffs in disgust with himself, as if he didn’t deserve that.
“That’s not what I mean. I’m glad you didn’t intervene.”
He rears back as if I’ve shocked him. “What?”
My nod is slow, but definitive. “I’m glad you didn’t.”