Glint (Plated Prisoner Book 2)

It’s strange how your body reacts to certain things. For me, when I see the cage, there’s a roaring in my ears. It howls, gusting over my skin and whipping against my bones.Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

I wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with a new cage so soon.

Midas turns to face me with a smile. “I had this made for you,” he says, motioning over to it with clear approval. “I know it’s small. This one is temporary for now, and not gold yet, of course,” he adds with a wink in my direction.

That roaring wind starts blowing hard enough to batter my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

When I see something inside of the cage move, I startle. “What—” My words cut off when a person rises from the small bed. From the faint light, I see her—my decoy.

She has bed-mussed hair and paint-smeared skin. A quick glance to the blankets shows stains from where it’s rubbed off. Metallic gleam left behind on the sheets like the damning evidence of a secret lover.

The woman rises and looks between us. “My king?”

Her hair hangs around her shoulders, a little shorter than mine by a couple inches. She has round, light brown eyes, and a similar face shape to me. Her lips are plush, and her body is an hourglass wrapped up in a gold dress.

My gold dress.

And even though the paint covering her body and hair isn’t my exact shade, and even though I can see it creasing around her eyes and wiped off her palms, the sight of her sets me on edge.

Midas strolls over and places the candle on a table just outside of the cage door.

“Good news for you, my favored has arrived,” he tells the woman.

She smiles, creasing dimples into her cheeks. I can tell from the relief in her eyes that she can’t wait to get out. I wonder if she feels like a wing-clipped bird. I wonder if she can’t wait to wash the gold from her skin.

This was temporary for her, when it never is for me.

When she notices that I’m still staring at her, the smile on her face falters. I know it’s not her fault that she’s in there, that she’s painted and dressed to look like me, but emotions roil through me as erratic as a cyclone. I’m shocked, embarrassed, hurt.

To see that I can so easily be replicated, to see me, from the outside looking in…

Osrik was right—the woman I’m looking at right now? She’s nothing but a symbol for Midas. Not a person, not someone in charge of her own life, but a living and breathing image to showcase the Golden King’s might.

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 because I’ve changed, 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 push him to 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. We don’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 be blatantly clear after what you just endured.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s because of 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—resented him, 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 really hear 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.

“We don’t need it. Trust me. Things are different now. I’m different now,” I say, pointing at my chest. “Things don’t have to be the way they were in Highbell.” I tilt my chin up. “And I don’t want them to be.”

He stands so still, and he’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before, and maybe I’m looking at him like that too.

Midas blinks at me for another moment before he runs a frustrated hand down his face. He starts pacing the small dressing room, shoes scuffing over the purple rug on the floor.

“I’m trying to be patient with you right now, considering what you’ve been through, but you’re making this very difficult,” he says before turning back to me. “You’ve never behaved this way before.”

I bristle from his chastisement, but he’s right. I haven’t, not with him.

Two months ago, I would’ve backed down immediately. I would’ve never pushed him in the first place. But I’m changed now, and the worries, the dangers—we can work through those together.

But the thought of being shoved back in a cage, especially one so small…

Osrik’s words blare in my ears.

I’ll never get how you fucking stand it.

Right now, in this moment, I realize.

I can’t.