Curling my fingers into fists, I call to the gold. When I feel it pool in my palms more this time, my heart leaps. I let it gather until it starts to drip between the cracks of my fingers. It’s slow, but it’s something.
The first drop that falls to the floor makes the freckle-faced man’s eyes go wide. With a push, I shove my hands out in front of me, fingers spread, letting the rest of it splash down. In a blink, I use the gold to slither toward them and wrap around their feet like thin snakes, the clinging liquid twining up their legs, stretching and hardening around their limbs. I yank more gold from my palms, a small stream pouring out, reaching for the woman next—
And I’m suddenly hit with pain.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It doesn’t strike like lightning, doesn’t burn like fire. It doesn’t pierce through me or feel like a limb slicing off.
This feels like beingpinched. As if invisible hands have delved through my belly button and grabbed onto my organs. As if phantom fingers have dug around to my veins, taking the tubes and compressing them so hard it makes my blood stop.
My heart, my stomach, my lungs, my muscles, my throat—these pinching fingers grip my insides and make everything freeze up. This horrible, pressing pain lances through me, and I fall to my hands and knees, making the gold cut off, squelching between my fingers, soaking through my pants.
I can’t breathe, can’t move, as these horrible contractions squeeze every part of me harder and harder and—
It suddenly stops. As if every single pinching point was released at the same exact time. I’m shaking, covered in sweat, choking in rasping coughs.
Through blurred eyes, I look up to see the woman gliding forward, stopping just before the liquid gold can stain her pure robes.
“There, none of that now,” she says, her placid tone so out of context in this situation.
I look up at her with fury and try to call my gold again, though the echoing bruises inside my body make it so much harder. I barely manage to get a new trickle forming from my palms when I see her lift her hands, the sleeves falling back just enough to show her pressing her forefinger against her thumb andpinch.
Just like before, that pinching pain erupts inside of me.
This time, I collapse on the ground instantly, choking through a clamped throat, while everything inside of me cinches in agony, compressing like it’s going to make my organs burst and bleed.
“Stop...” I croak out, writhing on the floor.
“No more trying to use that magic, Lady Cheat,” she says. “This will happen every time you attempt to use what isn’t yours.”
The pinching ceases, and I twitch on the floor, feeling like I’m covered in a million internal bruises. It takes me a moment to recover before I even realize what she said.
“What did you call me?” I pant.
“Lady Cheat,” she says in her same serene voice. “The gilded saddle who cheated her way into the Golden King’s heartandhis power, before she stole both and then his life. You’re a cheat and a fallen woman, and this is the best place for you.”
All I can do is gape at her.
She watches me as if she expects me to reply. When I don’t, she prompts, “Well? Did you or did you not trick and steal and kill, Lady Cheat?”
“I guess that’s the reason I was drugged and kidnapped, right?” I retort. “For me to go on trial and be asked that very question?”
Her fractured eyes glitter. “Indeed.”
I drag myself up to a crouch, my trembling muscles nearly giving out as I force my body to stand. Splatters of gold stain the room, the shallow puddles already starting to dry. It’s left splotches all over the men’s pants and boots, none of the gold responding, just as limp and wrung out as I feel as it lies on the floor in useless strips.
“Come with me now, unless you’d like to try to use your stolen magic again?” she asks amicably, her pale lips reminding me of the white sands of this kingdom’s shore. “Oreans who relinquish themselves to the Conflux are forbidden from using power.”
Wincing, I sit up straighter. “Well, I didn’t relinquish myself, so you can fuck off with that rule, and I won’t be going anywhere.”
This time when she pinches her fingers together, it feels like my skull is being flattened. I scream, falling over with my hands against my head, my eyes feeling like they’re about to burst like grapes. Agony ripples through me until I’m sure my skull is going to crack and my brain turn to mush.
It’s only once I feel blood leaking from my nose that the pain ends.
Slumped against the wall, I glare at this woman with so much hatred through my blurred eyes I’m surprised she doesn’t catch flame. My body feels destroyed, like I’ve been shoved in a shrinking room while the walls closed in on me, crushing me in its claustrophobic hold.
But I bleed gold. Cry gold. So I use my tears and my blood and try to move it, try to shrink them to pins so I can stab her through her horrible fingers and needle through her throat, but she presses again, cutting me off before I can do a single thing with that either.
“I can do this all day, Lady Cheat.”
