My anger twists and knots, and my blood steams beneath my skin, making veined gold puddle at my feet.
I wish I remembered everything. Wish I could know the nuances I’ve lost. But I don’t need all my memories to know that this whole spectacle is pure vilification. Of the Vulmin, of my family, and of me.
Rotting just one of those memory worms drained me and took hours, but I’m going to uncover every single thing King Carrick stole from me, and I’m going to make him pay.
I’m glad I’m covered beneath this cloak where no one can see my face, because my anger burns straight through my eyes.
The actress makes an exaggerated pout with her painted lips as she’s dragged away. Then the performers come back out to take a collective bow to the cheers and applause of the spectators while my magic continues to pool.
While I continue to seethe.
Once the performers leave, a hush descends in the arena. Behind the stage, where the half circle of steps are split apart, there’s another street directly across from me. I see a line of soldiers marching on it, heading this way. They file in with synchronized footsteps and then stomp up the arena’s wide steps to my left, forcing people to clear the way.
A male wearing a furred mantle and a stone crown on his head walks in the middle of them.
King Carrick.
He ascends the arena, and once he’s at the top step to look down upon the stage below, he turns.
With a flick of his hand, the stone wall behind him shifts and forms into a throne. He takes a seat as his guards take position behind him. The quieted crowd begins to murmur, and I can feel their excitement mounting.
My fiery, hateful gaze stays latched on his face and my ribbons tighten around me. More gold bubbles up to gather at my feet, thickening beneath my bare soles. Clotting with fury.
“Lydians!” a fae calls as he walks out onto the stage with his arms outstretched in a flourish. He’s dressed in bright purple, his sleeves puffed and hat feathered.
“We know these rumblings of the Vulmin fanatics have caused trouble in our beautiful land for too long!” he says ashe strides from one end of the stage to the other. “They have disrupted our way of life, and they have sullied Annwyn with their cowardly actions and their sabotaging insurgency.”
Maybe I’m imagining it, but I feel tension sprouting in the air.
“But the Vermin’s mutinies have shown their true colors, because our king has exposed their lies!” His voice carries, every performed word calculatingly convincing. “People of Lydia, we have the truth with us here today. The Vulmin aren’t as strong as they would have you believe.”
He pauses dramatically, and the crowd seems to collectively lean in, waiting on his next words, while others seem to go still, that tension in the air coming from the same ones who didn’t laugh at the play.
“Everyone is turning on them…including their own so-called Dawn’s Bird.”
Movement cuts through the soldiers lining the street behind the stage, and then I see a figure being led forward by guards.
Murmurs erupt through the crowd.
My breath stops. My eyes widen.
Because the next figure that stands upon the stage…isme.
CHAPTER 30
AUREN TURLEY
My breath plugs in mychest like the stopper on a vial. I watch the gold figure stand there, and seeing her makes a jolting, harrowing flash of a memory erupt. I see Emonie in the cell. How her face dripped away like wax, melting into my own appearance with gold skin, gold hair, gold eyes.
Right before she passed me the ring that’s stuffed in my pocket.
Wick’sring.
“Here she is,” the fae announces with a sweep of his hand. “Their very own Lyäri Ulvêre. Except, she was never the golden one gone. She has been here with us all along!” he says with a grin. “She is no rebel. She does not lead them or stand by them. She has been here with the king! And to prove it once and for all, she is here to bow before the Stone King and show everyone in Annwyn that this mockery of a rebellion isover. All hail King Carrick!”
The crowd titters back, a frenetic excitement filling the air.
Emonie gleams in the sunlight, dressed in a provocative gold dress. It cuts down into a V, past her breasts and below her navel, the skirt splitting up both sides of her thighs. The crowd leers at her with incomprehensible shouts.
