Before either of them can stop me, I stride toward the castle, toes frozen as more snow saturates my silk slippers.
“Sister,” Manu calls, but I don’t stop. I hear rushing footsteps as he and Keon catch up with me just before I make it to the steps.
“At least let me go first,” Keon says as he abruptly cuts in front so he can walk up before me.
“Be careful,” Manu cautions.
With a brisk nod, Keon heads up the steps, and as soon as he does, I follow behind him. “Kaila,” Manu hisses beside me. “Just because it’s stable right now doesn’t mean it’s going to stay like that. We don’t know how volatile it is.”
“It’s solidified,” I say, shoes rasping against the slick gold just before we make it to the top step. The doors are hanging from their hinges like teeth knocked loose and crooked.
“It was solidifiedbefore,too,” he retorts. “And look what happened with that.”
“Looking to see what happened is exactly my intention.”
I hear him sigh as I walk through the doorway, but my footsteps slow as soon as I’m inside. The flames from the wall sconces are flickering erratically, as if they too are jumpy, still recovering from the assault.
The entry hall echoes with our footsteps as Manu and I follow a few paces behind Keon until we reach the ballroom. All three of us stop in our tracks when we make it through the doorway.
I blink at the darkness that’s settled over the room. At the darkness and at the gold inside that glints in shadowed warning. Before, flames from the chandeliers and sconces lit up the entire space, making it rival the daylight. But now, everything’s been cast in shadow. The only light comes from the iron furnaces still burning in the corners, their presence only now visible because the ballroom is empty. This room doesn’t even look remotely the same. It’s as if the entire space was made with wax, and someone held a burning candle to it.
The walls look half melted off, gold frozen in its drip. The ceiling, too, has strings of it cast down like icicles, ends pointed down at us with sharp purpose. The plated pillars are bare of their gilt, every bit of golden adornment melted away.
The floor is a rippled mess, clumpy in some areas, raised with motionless shapes that make me cringe. A visible hand reaching up, frozen in place. A gilt lump of a body curled beside the raised platform. A frozen wave caught below the mezzanine, as if the balcony melted clear off and splashed to the floor below where I can see someone’s leg sticking out.
“Gods...”
Manu’s whispered declaration spurs me back into motion. My footsteps take me across the ballroom, gaze cautious, skipping from one spot of gold to the next. Yet as I get further in, a horrible groan comes from the walls. The floor. The ceiling. Like an old home settling with cracks and creaks, only this is far worse. It’s eerie. Like the gold is a ghost, bemoaning our presence, threatening to haunt.
I go still, pulse spiking even more than before. Beside me, Manu grips my arm. “Kaila, we should get out of here.”
The groan tapers off like a sigh, the room falling silent and still once more.
Shrugging off my brother’s touch, I continue in my search. “I want to see.”
Keon points forward and says, “There.”
As soon as I lay eyes on what he’s pointed out, my feet take me forward, all the way to the far end. To the bulbous spot now marring the space of the wall.
“Great Divine...”
It’s him.
His crown is missing from his head. Perhaps melted into the gold that now encases him. He looks like he’s being melted into the wall itself, like it was trying to suck him into its depths and swallow him whole. His agonized face is on display. Wide eyes held with shock and fear.
King Midas is now nothing but a corpse encased in a gold tomb.
The gold groans again, as if staking its claim.
“No…”
We whirl around at the woman’s voice to find Mist stumbling forward, looking at Midas with horror. “My King…” She falls to her knees, clutching her belly, the tinged, demolished room carrying the echo of her cries. “She did this. She did this to him.”
“Buthow?” Keon murmurs as we watch her sob. “How is that possible?”
I think back to each interaction, to everything I’ve been told. I stare at Midas’s face as I think. As I hear. Flicking past strands of old webs that I’ve collected, words swaying back and forth in my mind.
Monarchs are secretive about their magic. It’s strategic. Knowing when to show your hand and knowing when to conceal it. In some cases, it’s best to make people underestimate you. In others, monarchs are known to show enough power to make everyone either revere you or fear you. Sometimes both.
