My chin drops to my chest, as if it feels the burden of a forlorn weight pressing down. “Don’t do this, Midas. Not now. Not after everything.Please.”
His stony exterior isn’t touched by my plea. “This is the way it has to be, and you know why. You agreed.”
My eyes flick up. “I changed my mind.”
Midas levels a flat look at me. “I didn’t give you permission to change your mind.”
I rear back like he’s hit me. For the pain that’s emanating through my body, he might as well have.
His mouth is tight, shoulders tense, crown still proudly sitting on his head. “Last chance,” he tells me, a viciousness in his tone. “Get into the cage, or I’ll put you in it.”
It’s like I’ve been pierced directly in the heart.
I haven’t seen him for two months. I thought I was going to be killed multiple times. All I wanted was for him to tell me that he’s proud of me, that he loves me.
I wanted him to hold me. Toreallyhold me, head to chest, so I could hear his heart singing just for me again. But he didn’t. He didn’t hold me in his arms—he held me at arm’s length.
“I’m trying to talk to you, Midas.Really talk,” I say, voice bruised with the hurt he’s pressed into my chest. “I always trust you. I always listen to you. Just this once, can’t you listen tome?”
The look on his face is acidic enough that I’m surprised it doesn’t burn straight through me. “Listen toyou?” he spits. “Because you’resosuccessful at living in the outside world, is that it?” he asks mockingly. “When I found you, everything wasokay?”
My lips press into a thin line. “You know it wasn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“But that was then,” I argue. “I was just a girl, Midas. I’ve—”
“Proved it to yourself all of a sudden?” he says, cutting me off, throwing my previous words back in my face.
I cross my arms around me, eyes meeting his in defiance. “Yes.”
He scoffs, a humorless laugh to shove against my confidence and try to topple it over like he’s done so many times before. “What about Carnith Village?” he says, and the blood drains from my face. “You thought you were okay then too, didn’t you, Auren? And look what happened.”
The bruises in my heart seem to spread and discolor with mottled grief of blues and sickening greens. “That was an accident,” I whisper, feeling my eyes well up, my vision blurring.
How could he bring that up? How could he say that to me, when he knows how badly it destroyed me?
He sneers. “Tell me, did you have anyaccidentswhile you were gone?”
“Stop it,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut tight. I don’t want to see him, don’t want to hear him. “I’ve done everything you ever asked me to. I’ve been devoted to you for over ten years of my life, overlooked every flaw, shoved aside every hurt. I’ve done it all because I trusted you. Because I loved you.”
I’m crying freely now, and the tears wound as they fall, as if they were plucked directly from the ache of my heart and sent to scratch down my walls.
He sighs, shaking his head as he looks at the floor for a moment. “Alright. You’re tired and hysterical. You just need to go lie down. This isn’t you, Auren.”
“Thisisme!” I yell.
Midas is so shocked I dared to raise my voice against him that his eyes go wide.
“I am finally, after all this time, starting to beme,” I cry, pressing a hand to my chest.“I’m finally starting to say what I think, and I’m not going to lie down again to make it easier for you to keep me beneath your thumb.”
Midas may have put me on a pedestal, but I put him on one too. The height of those foundations made it impossible for us to look each other in the eye.
But we’re looking now.I’mlooking, not my romanticized fifteen-year-old self. I don’t like what I see.
“I gave you everything, and yet you still want to take. You told me to lie, said it was the best way to keep me safe, but that wasn’t really it, was it? You didn’t do it forme. You did it foryou.” My words are an accusation spoken from the deepest parts of me—the ones I’ve long ignored. “I won’t live like this anymore, Midas.”
“You’remine,” he roars, taking a threatening step forward.
