The sight of her makes me sick.
“I’m sure you’re relieved to be back where it’s safe,” Midas tells me. “Where no one can get to you.”
My eyes drag away from the cage and settle on his face. I grasp my skirts to stop my trembling hands.
“Ready?” he asks me.
Too fast, this is happening far too fast.
“Midas...” I choke out.
He crosses the room to come back to me, and takes my gloved hands into his. “I know I let you down, Auren. I promised to always keep you safe, and I failed you. But I won’t fail you again,” he promises, his expression focused with determined intent.
I swallow, trying to stop the whirling emotions so that I can be intelligible enough to talk. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I’m not afraid anymore. Not like I was,” I begin, swallowing past the acid that keeps climbing up my throat.
Midas frowns at me, and I fumble with what to say. This isn’t how I envisioned our reunion. Not at all.
He was supposed to hold me and not want to let me go. Our separation was meant to make him open to hearing me. I imagined being wrapped in his arms for hours while he listened to me talk.
Disappointment is a roughhewn boulder settling in my stomach. It rolls and scrapes, making me go raw with the realization that none of that is going to happen.
We’re picking right up where we left off.
I thought becauseI’vechanged, that he would change too. What a silly, naive thought.
The road that we were on has forked, and I went on a different path. I need to explain things to him now, need him to catch up to me.
“There’s so much that’s happened, Midas,” I tell him, trying to move that deadweight boulder, pushing it like I can pushhimto meet me on that forked road. “I know I need to prove it to you so that you believe me, but...I don’t need the cage. Not anymore.Wedon’t need it.”
He stares at me for a beat, his blond brows pulled together. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“This,” I say, my head cocked toward the cage, though my eyes can’t bear to look at it, can’t bear to meet the eye of the woman inside. “We don’t need it.”
The confused frown morphs into a scowl, and his tone grows incredulous. “Of course we need it. That fact should beblatantlyclear after what you just endured.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’sbecauseof what I endured that we don’t,” I hastily explain, tugging my hands from his. “I spent all that time with the army, and everything was okay. I know how to handle myself now. I proved it to myself, and I know that once I tell you everything, I’ll prove it to you too.”
I relied on the cage for too long. And then I resented it—resentedhim, resented myself. I don’t want to go back to that. I’ve outgrown it, and I’m finally strong enough to admit it to him.
Midas lets out a long-suffering sigh and rubs his blond eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. From my peripheral, I can see my decoy watching us with rapt attention.
“Auren, I know you just experienced some terrible things, but for now, I need to go meet with King Ravinger. Afterward, once it’s dark out, I’ll bring you out for a bath and a meal, and we’ll talk, alright?”
I shake my head, hands held up in front of me. “No, it’s not alright. Just listen for a minute—”
He cuts me off. “I don’t have time for this. Get into the cage.”
He’s doing what he usually does—talking over me, making me feel like I’m always wrong and he’s always right. If I could just get him to listen, to reallyhear me, then he would understand.
He’s under a lot of pressure right now with Fourth Kingdom breathing down his neck, and I don’t want to add more stress to him. I know that, at the heart of it, he craves this control because he was worried about me, so I understand the root of his reactions. But...I need him to understand mine too.
For once, I need him to see my side.
I don’t want to be cowed by him. I want to set a different tone now than the way things were before. I want to start off on the right foot and have a fresh beginning. Show him how things can be, that I’m ready for it. That I need it.
I take a calming breath. “It doesn’t have to be this way anymore.” My tone is gentle, as if it can draw out that softer side of him too.
Silence stretches between us, and it’s filled with the reactions that play over his face, a song with the rhythm of his disapproval and disagreement. I don’t want to hear it.
