Painted portraits of long-dead royals watch me as I pass by, the number of sconces growing in number with every level we descend to banish the night away with their flames. My pulse pounds in my ears as I’m led down to the first floor, where I hear music drifting out of the ballroom.
My escorts stop outside a pair of carved doors. The guard standing beside it opens it, stepping aside for us. “You may go inside.”
“Yeah, I just don’t really want to,” I mutter back.
Digby clears his throat, and I inhale a tight breath as I take in the flood of light, heat, and sound coming from the room.
I can’t scurry off to hide, because I’m not a mouse.
My ribbons squeeze around me, just slightly, a prompt to brace myself as I walk inside. The moment I step through the threshold, my eyes sweep around the space.
Musicians are playing in the very center of the room, instruments a lull of pretty composition. They’re surrounded by people dancing, the notes encouraging sensuality, the tune dipping into a heated croon. It’s a collection of fabric and skin, of limbs weaving through an impalpable melody.
The whole space is lit up with three huge chandeliers that cast sparkles against the floor. There must be at least two hundred people here, all of them basking in King Midas’s ostentatious wealth, their clothes a splash of lavish color.
The scent of their collective sweat and perfume is enough to overwhelm me. Despite the blizzard raging outside and the massive size of the room, the collective heat from all of these bodies makes the back of my neck prickle with beads of perspiration. Or maybe it’s from nerves.
Along both sides of the walls, there’s more reverie. Long tables are set up where guests are drinking, alcohol-faces gone ruddy and open. There are saddles everywhere, making the party far more licentious than it already is, which tells me that this gathering started a while ago.
I can see two groups slaking their desires against the wall, pretending that they have privacy inside shallow alcoves. Two men are even sharing a female saddle right in the middle of the dance floor, the woman held between them, hands sweeping inside a loosened bodice and up a draping skirt. She’s moaning loud enough that her throaty vocals mix with the music like it’s her own version of a serenade.
And past it all, on the very far end of the room on the raised dais, is my king.
Right now, he looks every inch the notorious Golden King that the people dubbed him. From his shined boots to his sparkling crown, everyone looks at him and knows that he’s the marvel of riches, the master of fortune, the ruler of wealth.
And the moment I move further into the room, his russet eyes find me.
He’s sitting on his throne, the queen noticeably absent, but that’s not surprising given the type of celebration this seems to be. He has three royal saddles draped around him; two of them sitting on the armrests of his throne, and one at his feet, her head resting against his knee in adoring submission.
All of them are topless, wearing sheer skirts similar to mine, though theirs are black. Behind Midas are several of his guards and King Fulke’s guards standing watch together, two kingdoms’ crests, gold and purple, standing together in a show of alliance.
King Fulke sits on his own throne set beside Midas’s, with Rissa straddling his lap. I can’t help but imagine that it’s me up there, forced to let his bony hands touch me and his yellowed teeth to nip at my flesh.
Behave tonight.
My eyes flick back to Midas as he leans in toward one of his guards, speaking words I’m much too far away to hear. In a moment, the music cuts off, the dancers coming to a dizzying halt, while everyone in the entire room turns to look at the monarch, who sends his saddles scurrying away as he gets to his feet.
“People of Highbell,” Midas announces, his strong voice carrying to every ear. “Tonight we celebrate the strength of Sixth Kingdom.”
People cheer in the crowd, shouting incomprehensible words, but I can’t help the way my lips press together in a thin line, the way my brow furrows. They did it. They attacked Fourth Kingdom, and they were victorious enough to warrant this party.
“Yet none of it would have been possible if it weren’t for King Fulke and our alliance with Fifth,” Midas goes on, gesturing magnanimously to the king beside him.
Fulke’s crown is slightly askew on his bald head, and his cheeks are ruddy and pulled into a grin, but at least he had Rissa get up from his lap.
“King Fulke, as promised, I gift you this night with my gold-touched favored.” Midas looks at me, pinning me in place despite the distance between us, those brown eyes like soil burying me with suffocating weight. “Auren, come forward.”
Two hundred pairs of eyes swivel to me. Frenzied whispers pass from one to another as bodies shift to leave an empty path from where I stand, all the way to where the king awaits.
Midas isn’t just giving me to Fulke tonight. He’s also making it a public spectacle.
“Go on.”
Digby murmurs the words quietly, but loud enough to get me moving. Swallowing hard, I force my feet to take their first steps, my body moving forward despite the fact that I want to turn and run away in the other direction. The other guards hang back, but Digby sticks with me, his stern expression in place as I match his stride.
My eyes skate around the gaping crowd, my ears assaulted with their murmured observations. They talk about everything from the shine of my skin to how much they think my fingernails are worth.
The way they look at me, I can tell that I’m not a woman to them. I’m a trinket that the king usually keeps hidden away. Everyone wants
