Midas pushes me.
One second, his arms are like steel bands around my waist, and the next, my body is crashing into the cold metal floor of the cage.
He did it. He actually tossed me in here without my consent. Without so much as a thought or care for whatIwant.
That’s when I start to scream.
The scream goes on and on and on. It crawls up the walls, clings to my skin, digs into the canals of my ears to add to the drum, to feed the fire.
I’m completely rabid, frenzied, a sense of panic like never before.
“Out!” he barks at the woman.
I leap up faster than I knew I was capable of. Rushing forward, hands outstretched, I reach for the cage door.
The woman scrambles to get out first, but I know as soon as she does, Midas will slam the door shut on me.
I can’t let that happen.
My ribbons unravel, like fury unfurling. Strips of angry satin strips poised at either side of my body, suspended in air.
In an instant, all of them shoot toward the door to keep it open, their long lengths wrapping around the bars in a vise grip.
But the woman is two steps in front of me, running fast, so I reach forward and shove her with a hand to her shoulder.
My palm burns.
Her body flies back, hitting the barred wall with a thud, but I concentrate on my ribbons as they push at the door, making my back strain.
Midas’s mouth opens to shout something as he struggles against me, trying to slam the door shut, but my ribbons are stronger. The iron door makes a groan under the strength of them, and in the next second, my ribbons tear it clear off its hinges, snapping the iron like splinters. With a flick, they toss the useless door directly into Midas, hitting him in the chest and knocking him to the ground on his back.
My ribbons go limp, back screaming from the effort and strength that just took. My momentum nearly sends me careening forward, but I manage to lift a hand and catch myself on the bars of the cage before I fall flat on my face.
But that’s when it sinks in.
The burn.
My head snaps up, gaze landing on the bar, on my hand that’s grasping it. Mybarehand.
Sometime during my struggle, my glove came off.
I quickly snatch my hand away and start to back away, but it’s too late, of course.
Gold streamed from my palm the moment I touched it, like blood pouring from a wound. I was too frenzied to control it, too panicked to direct it.
The gold leaks down the bar and then puddles at my feet. It moves, spreading across the cage floor like it has a mind of its own, crawling up every bar, reaching toward the domed ceiling of the ironwork, coating every inch of the iron cage.
I whirl around with a warning poised on my tongue, but instead, it becomes a strangled cry.
No.
No, no, no.
Running forward, I trip over my ribbons as I go, but getting closer doesn’t do anything to confirm what I already know. My palm burned when I shoved her, but I was too distracted to pay attention to it.
I stare in horror at the woman’s solid gold body, her mouth still open in a soundless scream. Her body is at an odd angle, stuck in the same position from when I shoved her into the bars, her neck snapped forward with whiplash.
But her eyes—her eyes are squeezed shut, like she felt every agonizing inch as the gold consumed her.
