There’s a long thoughtful silence before he says, “The emotional trauma you’ve endured will take time, and you need to know when to be gracious with yourself and when to steel yourself. But if you’re ever doubting, just stop and listen to the voice in your head. So long as the voice isyoursand not his, then you know you’re beating the bastard.”
Beating the bastard.
I like the sound of that.
“To be honest, I was bracing myself for the guilt to hit me, for regret to shove its way in. Midas manipulated my emotions for so long that I fully expected the damage of that conditioning to rear its ugly head. But what he did to me…”
I clear my throat and look away, one hand feeding into my coat pocket. My fingers twist the piece of my ribbon around, the satin fabric looping around my hand, bolstering me.
“I don’t feel regret or guilt,” I admit. “I’m just fuckingangry. Angry that I let it go on that long, that I let him take so much. I’m angry at everyone who ever wronged me or used me. And I’m angry that I didn’t figure out how to save myself sooner. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this inside me, but I’m not afraid anymore. I’m not trodden with guilt or regret. All I feel isanger.”
Rip’s mouth curves. “Good. Use your rage to complete your courage.”
I suck in a breath of air, the fae beast inside of me practically purring at his claim.
“Anger can do a lot of things,” he goes on, thumbing over the sharp tips of his spikes. “It can drag you down, make you bitter. But if you wield it another way, it can be a stepping stone for your determination.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“I am. I learned to use my own rage to my advantage.”
The idea that this sharp anger that’s carved into the recesses of my chest could actually be put to use intrigues me. “So you’re not going to tell me to live and let live? To work through my anger and move past it?”
“Absolutely fucking not. I’m going to teach you touseit.”
CHAPTER 29
AUREN
I don’t want to becomebogged down by my anger, dragged under it, to turn into some bitter, miserable person. But using my anger in a different way? In a way to bolster me up? Now that—that is something I can get behind.
I’ve always been more passive in life. I think passivity is often mistaken for weakness. Really, it’s just a different way to cope. To survive. The safest way I learned to react to situations was to endure. To let things blow over. To please. To peace keep. To constantly regulate my own reactions and thoughts and emotions so that the tyrant could be appeased into a lesser form of abuse.
So from an early age, I learned that my anger wasn’t safe. Then, I learned that it was irrational. Then, it was just plain wrong. I was always in the wrong.
Fuck that.
My Divine-damnedmindwas warped into the mold of someone else’s purpose.
The abuse came in shades of gray. Some were darker and more noticeable than others. Some, I probably haven’t even noticed yet. My healing from this isn’t going to happen overnight.
But...I’m free now. Truly free. For the first time in twenty years, I have the chance to decide who I’m going to be,howI’m going to be. And I don’t want to waste it onhim. I want to sever his effects as meticulously and as thoroughly as he severedme.
So if I can learn to use my anger in a way that moves me forward rather than keeps me here, pinned to a painful past, then that’s what I want to do.
When I look up at Slade, my resolve looks with me. “I do want you to teach me how to use my anger,” I tell him. “But the truth remains that my gold isn’t working right.” Shrugging, I look down at my hands. “I could see myself using the gold as this beast—this fae side of me—but I can’t call to it like that. I don’t have control over it in that form. And now, it’s not working at all.”
My gold-touch has never been something I had to put much effort into using. In fact, it’s always been the exact opposite. I had to be more careful, to work harder for itnotto come out.
When I unleashed in that ballroom, it could’ve been cataclysmic. I’m lucky Slade stopped me when he did, because my rational mind had no control. I could’ve killed Slade or the Wrath or Digby. My gold could’ve seeped through the rest of the castle and down into the city, killing innocents.
“My gold can’t be trusted.Ican’t be trusted.” I finally say the words aloud, the same ones that have been churning in my gut, making me swallow them down again and again.
Slade frowns. “You unleashing like that, defending yourself while your magic unfurled with another layer you’d never been able to utilize before, it’s not a bad thing, Auren.”
I’m not sure how he can say that. Then again, he rots people. Probably not the best judge of good versus bad.
“Regardless, I haven’t gilded anything,” I say, picking at my leggings. “Not a single thing since I woke up. My gold-touch has always happened involuntarily.Always. If the sun’s up, my gold would come whether I wanted it to or not. But since I woke up...nothing.”
