“The Matrons serve a fundamental part in the Temperance,” she replies, and it’s so rehearsed I know she’s heard and spoken that saintly slogan hundreds of times before.
I smirk. “Sure they do.”
She turns to the others. “Witness, sisters. Her acerbic attitude is only the wickedness revolting against the Cleansing.”
“Nope,” I retort, wiping water off my face. “My attitude solely comes from the way you seem to think you can treat me. The golden whore? Isn’t that what you called me?” I don’t give her a chance to respond. “You don’t need to be following some made-up ritual and worrying about gods who don’t give a shit about you. What youshouldbe worrying about isme.Because this golden whore can purify you far quicker than any Cleansing can. And trust me, you’ll come out golden and shining.”
She levels me with a look, and the faintest of pressure appears at my stomach, pinching me down, making me want to vomit. But I don’t wince. I refuse to.
Her jaw cricks as she bites out, “You know what would truly be golden?Your silence.” Despite the pain, a snort escapes me. She releases her hold on me a second later. “This is all normal, Lady Cheat. You are not the first woman to come into this room with corruption engrained in her spirit. Evil never wants to be cast out. It’s up to us to compel it.”
I nod toward the wall of whips. “Is that what those are for? Is that how you and your Matrons abscond themselves and compel others? By being beaten? Being whipped or Cleansed or tortured or made to live uncomfortable lives without touch in awful tubs and uncomfortable blankets? Is that what your lives have been reduced to? I feel sorry for all of you,” I say, gaze sweeping around the room. Because I might not be able to bring out my magic, but I can bring out words that can fester doubt in their minds.
Her hairless eyebrow arches up. “We keep ourselves pure. Pain makes us focus on our inner wrongs, and bleeding is a way for those wrongs to be released. We do not expect such a worldly woman to understand. Your touch is besmirched, your soul wicked. We will do what we can to Cleanse you before you face your superiors and your gods, but if you do not capitulate, then perhaps the teachings of the Temperance will heal you.”
“Temperance save you,” the other Matrons mumble.
I lean forward, not caring that my hair tugs painfully against the other woman’s hold. “I don’t want the Temperance to save me.”
She cocks her head, that stupid, serene smile back on her face. “Then what, pray tell, do you think will?”
I smile. More teeth, more bite to add to my answer. “I’ll save myself,” I tell her before my eyes move across the wide-eyed faces of the others. “And even if I don’t, King Rot will.”
Despite her colorless face, she somehow pales even more, and a telling hush falls over the room.
“Did you forget about him?” I ask with a smirk. “Because when he gets here, not even your gods will be able to save you.”
My outburst led me to another pinch of pain that made me pass out for a few minutes. I came to while oil was being dumped onto my feet to “expunge the vessels on which I touch holy ground.” Then, clothing is tossed at me. I debate fighting them on changing, but the queen’s obviously looking for any reason to use her power on me. I have no hope of recovering unless I can play nice.
So, I groggily strip out of my sopping wet clothes to pull them on, and as soon as my old clothing lands on the floor with a plop, one of the Matrons hurries over to gather them up and then tosses them into the fire, making it hiss and steam.
There’s gauze-like material to bind my breasts, but I ignore that. There’s also not one, butthreelayers of different kinds of underwear. I go with one, much to their chagrin. Then I pull on a dark gray cowled dress that covers me from neck to ankle, the sleeves cinched unpleasantly at the wrists, the color apparently signifying the taint of my spirit.
Lovely.
I should probably be more afraid, but I’m more angry than anything else. I’m really tired of monarchs using me for their own narratives, when all I’ve ever wanted was to be left the fuck alone.
Now that I’m dressed, the Matrons surround me and start herding me out of the room. The residual soreness throughout my body makes me shuffle forward, hunched and wavering. I won’t deny the fact that the queen did a number on me. The well of my magic feels like it’s been stretched and squeezed, gummed up in a too-narrow tube. Yet I have to do something. Have to hope I can recover enough that my gold-touch will work. I probably shouldn’t have talked back so thoroughly, but I couldn’t help myself.
I tell myself not to open my mouth again. To bide my time so I can recover. Yet as soon as I pass through the archway to the outdoors, the queen’s magic crushes back into me.
As if she somehow knew what I was planning, she suddenly attacks. Her power cinches me like a too-tight corset, cutting off my ability to breathe, making my heart feel like it’s being fisted in someone’s cruel hand.
I gasp, falling over into the Matrons to my right, their robed bodies staying straight and firm, a knock of elbows and shoulder bones smacking me back in my tiny circle between them. It’s a wonder I stay on my feet, taking gasping, short breaths that make me feel like I’m going to hyperventilate. It’s just enough pinching pain to make my body panic, to make it difficult to focus, yet it’s also subtle enough to not knock me down into unconsciousness.
Pain is a pyramid, she said. And she’s stacking more on top of me, brick by brick, like she sees my suffering as some shrine to her own power.
The oppressive heat doesn’t help. It presses down on my wet hair and prickled body, my bare feet burning against the tile as we walk along the outdoor path. I don’t pay attention to where I’m being led. I simply follow the white and gray striped sheep, trying to focus through the pain.
Although the heat is almost oppressive, the sunlight seems toinvigorateme. Like it’s tapping into something deeper, sinking into my skin and shining on that beast inside of me.
Because for me, the sun has always equaled power.
And in this world, if you don’t have power, you don’t survive.
I was shut away from it for ten years. Blocked away, kept apart in a snow-doomed kingdom where the sky was always covered with oppressive clouds. Before that, I lived at a harbor that dumped out rainwater and flooded the streets. Yet here...this is where my magic came out. Here is where my gold first came and my ribbons first sprouted. This is where it all began. So even though my time in Second Kingdom was traumatic then, maybe there was a reason why my fae power ignited while I was baking beneath its sun.
Despite the queen’s leash of pain, I channel into the sunlight instead. Think only ofthat, of it soaking into me and giving strength. Then I try to muster up enough gold, try to tap into it and ignore everything else.
