My head jerks up at Queen Kaila’s voice, at the way she’s pointing at me, the shock on her face so apparent that I’d bet nearly everyone in the crowd can see. “She stole King Rot’s power too!”
She screams it.
And the crowd screams with her.
But I’m in too much of a shock to say anything at all, because she’s right. Thosearethe same seeking strands that Slade spreads through the ground, the same veins that writhe beneath his skin.
In some sick twist of fate, these lines of rot are spreading, digging, tunneling through my gold like roots twisting through to grow a plethora of festering weeds, right here for everyone to see. Rot sprouting from that single speck that Slade left inside of me, the seed that we thought was dormant.
“She stole gold-touch! Now she stole rot! She can steal more!”
“Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”
My world tips. I stumble back against the poles, feet splashing in the pooled up metal. I need this pull on my magic to stop, need to cut it off, yank it out, but I can’t.
I was drugged for days, I’m dehydrated. Hot. Exhausted. My feet are charred. Every place where Queen Isolte tortured me feels like one crushing wound. My magic is gushing out of me with a deadly and unstoppable force, and I’m trapped.
I’m trapped.
My whole body starts to tremble, eyes flaring around wildly, heart feeling like it’s too big for my chest, too thundering for my pulse.
“Monarchs, give your vote!”
Every single one of them joins the voices of the crowd.
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
King Merewen turns to his people. “The royal Conflux rules that she is guilty!”
The voices of the crowd spread into a thousand cracks.
“The verdict is immediate execution.”
And everything around meshatters.
Guilty guilty guilty.
CHAPTER 64
AUREN
There’s a recoil that happensin your brain when something shocking occurs. Something so violently harrowing that your thoughts blanch and withdraw. As if your mind becomes a protective mother, shielding its child’s eyes and muffling the frightening noises while the massacre occurs and she knows they’re next. Subduing the receptors, mentally numbing the fallout—it’s the last thing it can do to offer protection.
The last thing it can do to soften the impending blow.
So I hear the crowd continue their chant.
Guilty.
I see the shouting faces, the movement of the monarchs, the spill of my stained gold.
Yet all of it is dulled. Soft. Monotone. Slow like I’m in a dream. As if this is only a nightmare, and my mind is reminding me to keep me calm.
Except I know this isn’t a dream. The worst things that have happened in my life have always been while I was awake. This is no different.
Where were you?
I asked Slade that question back in Deadwell, back in the sheltered protection of the cave. It seems so long ago. What I told him then will always hold true for me. That I was glad I saved myself.
