My eyes flash, but I don’t flinch. “No, Midas. I belong to me.”
He shakes his head, the glint of his crown catching like fire. “You gave yourself to me a long time ago, Precious. It’s time to remember your place.”
My place.The one in a cage. The one beneath his thumb.
I keep my expression unyielding. “No.”
A sharp silence sticks between us, like a skewer ready to impale. And then in a blink, Midas moves so fast that I can’t even gasp before he’s on me.
He spins me around, gripping me around my middle, and I let out a surprised shout.
He wouldn’t hold me for comfort, but he’ll hold me for control.
My mind blares that realization in my head, and with it, everything, every single tattered pain, ignored doubt, shoved aside feeling, they all come barreling out.
I let him put me in a prison.
He rescued me when I was at my lowest, and because of that, I thought staying with him would keep me at my highest. But really, he’s trapped me in place and forced me to accept it all.
He dragged me into a foreign, frozen kingdom.
He married a cold queen who hated me.
He fucked saddles in front of me.
He made me into a spectacle.
He kept me in that cage, day in and day out.
He used me.
There are so many things that he’s told me to adjust to, to adapt to, because this is the way it has to be, the way it was expected to be.
I kept taking it and taking it, convincing myself that this was the way it needed to be. Lying to myself because I loved him, because hemanipulatedme.
I’ve been bending over backwards for so long that I forgot I even had a spine.
What a fool I’ve been. What a stupid, stupid fool. I learned not to trust people, but I thought I could trusthim. I was wrong.
Fury and surprise send my legs kicking, fists hitting, but he doesn’t drop me, doesn’t let go.
“Auren, stop!” he barks in my ear.
“Let me go!”
Midas ignores me, ignores every hit I rain down as I try to break free. He slows my thrashing by squeezing me so hard that he cuts off my air. With jilted steps, he walks us backwards toward the cage, hand struggling to dig for the key in his pocket.
I tear at his arms, his face. His cheek presses hard into the back of my head, trying to stop me from whipping left and right, not letting my hood fall off.
“You—need—to—behave!” he grits out, a hiss against my ear.
But I don’t. I don’t, because I can’t do this. I can’t go back in a cage. I can’t, I can’t, I—
I hear the key being tossed on the floor. “Unlock the door. Now!” he snaps at the woman. I’d forgotten about her until now.
“No!” The sound is choked off, but me begging doesn’t stop her.
I hear her scramble to pick up the flung key, hear her fitting it in the lock, hear it turning. It turns inside of me too. Like the key is opening a door that I shut on every repressed emotion, every pent-up thought.
