Gold, page 34
Dommik takes us right inside the training area, cushioning us into a cloistered corner. The last time I came here, I was just a girl who’d become interested in boys. I used to sneak in and crouch beneath the equipment bench where the sword targets were stacked so I could watch without anyone knowing I was here.
I watched the men who bared their chests, sweating despite the cold. Watched as they spit and swore, making my ears blush at the things they talked about. Then, I’d slink away, not daring to ever tell my father where I’d been, not even if I got lashed for it. I’d simply come to hide and watch again the next day.
Yet this time, instead of hiding from the soldiers, I have to step out to face them.
Dommik pulls away most of his shadows, allowing me to see. To hear.
“Are you sure about this?”
I nod. “Yes.”
He yanks away his magic completely, and as soon as he does, I walk out of the dark corner of the fighting hall and stride over the sandy pit. The room’s high ceiling makes it feel bigger, the stench of sweat and metal clinging to my tongue.
As I stride forward, men stumble to a stop, some getting hit from their sudden loss of attention. Surprise ripples through the entire room, until every soldier is staring right at me.
When I’m standing directly in the middle, I look around at them all. Outside, the wind whistles past the high windows that line the entirety of the four walls.
“What are you doing here?” a man with a slick of sweat-soaked mousy brown hair asks. There’s a threaded notch at the collar of his jerkin, signifying him as one of the generals, and if that didn’t alert me to his superiority, the arrogant look on his face would.
“This is my home, General, and there is a threat coming to Highbell. I would think my presence would be expected.”
He levels me with a look and rests his hand on his belt. “We thought you were dead.”
The rest of the men stare at me, as if they want me to apologize for being alive instead.
“You were misled,” I say simply.
“Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here, in my barracks.”
I bristle. Technically, it’s my barracks, but it’s pointless to argue.
“As I said. There’s a threat coming. I’m sure you’ve heard what I said in the courtyard earlier.”
He smiles, showing cracked teeth, as if he got punched one too many times in the mouth. “Aye, we heard it. Had a good laugh over it too,” he chuckles, and the sound sets off at least a dozen others to laugh as well.
I don’t react to the sound. I’ve already been laughed at today, so I have my walls up to defend against it.
“The fae are coming, General. I’m giving you orders to gather the men and prepare for attack.”
He kinks his neck as he regards me. Everyone else is quiet, waiting to see what he’ll say, their gazes bouncing between us.
“We’re taking orders from Queen Kaila now.”
“You didn’t swear your oaths to Queen Kaila.”
He chews at his cheek like he’s chewing up his thoughts. I’ve no doubt he was one of the soldiers who abandoned his post during the riots.
“Highbell is better off with Queen Kaila than for us to listen to a madwoman who ordered us to kill our own citizens.”
Shame slams down over my head like a bucket of water, and the men’s accusing stares take on a more honed edge. One I understand. I did order them to do that during the riots, and I thought it justified to do so. Instead of truly listening as a queen should, I lashed out and made things worse.
Dommik’s eyes on my back feel as piercing as ever. I don’t like for him to see or hear about the way I behaved before.
The general must smell blood in the water with my continued silence.
“Now, you’re here, ordering us to fight for you again?” He shakes his head as he looks around the room, making the others join in his dismissal. “No, we won’t be doing that. We’ve had enough of your orders.”
“I was wrong.” The words are gummy, hard to unstick from my tongue and let them fall out. I’ve never admitted such a thing in my entire life, but I admit it now.
I expect them to all be shocked. To listen to me now that I’ve admitted fault.
They do not.
“Yeah, and Queen Kaila seems right. We want her as our queen. Not you.”
His declaration is a blow to my face, but I don’t turn my cheek. Not even when I feel every single man in the room exude that same scathing sentiment.
I press my hands together in front of me, dig my fingers against my torn palms. “She can be your queen all you like, and she may well and truly be a better one than me. But Highbell is, and always has been, my home.” I look him steadily in the eye, let him see the truth of it in my white hair and icy blue eyes. “My family has lived and reigned here for generations, and we Coliers have always been loyal to Highbell. If nothing else, you know that about me,” I say firmly. “The fae are coming, General, and their numbers are vast. We must ready for attack.”
They’re staring at me, my words sinking in, and for a moment, the general himself seems to consider me, making hope surge in my chest.
It plummets a second later when he shakes his head.
“We’ve heard enough. It’s best you go back to being dead, Cold Queen.”
With the utmost sign of disrespect, he gives me his back and walks away, and I’m left standing here as every single one of the soldiers walks away with him.
Devastated desperation has my eyes glossing over. Has a single tear getting caught in the corner, freezing before it can even drop down my cheek.
Feeling shaken all over, I turn and make the long walk across the room toward the door. Only once I’m outside with my back pressed to the wall do I close my eyes and let out the quavering breath.
“Malina.”
My eyes peel open to see Dommik standing in front of me.
His eyes run over me, and I wait for him to ask if I’m okay. Instead, he says, “Do you want me to kill that man?”
He’s perfectly serious.
A dry laugh cobbles up my throat, the tension leaving me.
I shake my head. “No, assassin. Keep your dagger to yourself.”
“What about Queen Kaila?”
“No,” I tell him, as tempting as it is. “Despite what happened, the people listen to her—trust her. When the fae come, I think the city will need her presence to band together.”
He looks disappointed. I, however, feel slightly better knowing he’d kill her if I asked him to. At least I have one person on my side.
These men don’t understand. They didn’t see. If they had, they’d know death is coming to Highbell. I can’t let this place face the same fate as that outskirts village, but I don’t know how to stop it. I only know that I don’t want to see it slaughtered.
I walk forward, gaze falling down the mountain to the city below. To my city. Not because of my royal lineage, but because this is where I’ve lived my whole life. Where my family lived.
“You tried, Malina,” Dommik says as he comes up to stand beside me on the flattened snow trodden down by hundreds of soldiers’ footsteps. With the barracks at our backs and the empty mountainside just behind, we’re cast in shadow. The wind whips around us, my loose hair spitting at my face. “Just say the word, and I’ll get us out of here. Find us someplace safe.”
I reach back and re-braid my hair, pulling the white strands as tight as I can before tying it off at the ends. Then I square my shoulders, my view still on the city. “I’m not leaving Highbell.”
Dommik pauses for a moment at the ferocity of my statement. “So what are we going to do?”
No one ever asks me that.
That’s the question I’ve had to ask other people all my life. My father, my husband, my advisors.
Men.
Whenever something needed to be decided, I had to ask. I had to wait around for the men to decide. Nobody asked or even cared much for my opinion. Nobody ever waited, like Dommik is waiting now, for me to come up with a plan. Nobody trusted me to do so. I had to resort to offering unwarranted opinions or pointed questions, driving them to reach the conclusion I’d already thought of, to make it seem like it was their idea in the first place.
For once, the question is for me, and I have an answer.
“We’re going into the city,” I say as I turn on my heel, steps sloshing through the thick snow as I head for the stables. “I’m going to need a horse.”
Despite the fact that I am an excellent rider, Dommik insists on sharing the damn horse. We’re in the stables, the animals firmly locked up in their pens in preparation for the snowstorm that seems to be blowing in. The stablemaster jumped in fright when we appeared in the corner, but one look at me made him skitter away without a word.
Or perhaps it was the hooded assassin in my company.
“I started having formal riding lessons when I was two,” I point out as I watch him ready the saddle. The horse’s body is thick with long white hair, mane trimmed and braided intricately.
“And I’ve been riding wild stallions barebacked since my cock got hard for the first time. You’re still riding with me, Queenie.”
He finishes tightening the straps and then walks over to me. Without warning, he grips me by the waist, making me gasp, and sets me atop the horse as if I weigh nothing at all. Then he mounts himself behind me, leg swinging over as he sits in one fluid motion.
I shift in the saddle, my skirt not made for riding like this, but he simply reaches down and tugs it up until the fabric is bunched at my thighs. If it weren’t for the thick leggings I’m wearing, my legs would be indecently on display. “I don’t think—”
“Good. Don’t,” he interrupts.
He reaches forward with both arms on either side of me, and I expect him to take the reins, but he picks them up and hands them to me instead. I grip them, and he moves his hands to grip me. One staying at my bunched skirt, and the other splayed against my stomach.
“I can ride alone,” I say, though my voice sounds breathy now. His touch is bleeding warmth into me despite my clothing. Though it’s nothing to the heat that erupts when he suddenly yanks me back into him until my ass is flush with his groin.
I suck in a breath.
His head comes down, mouth at my ear and voice deliciously rough. “You’re riding with me.”
All my previous arguments have died away. I can’t think of them with his body so close to mine, and I find I don’t want to.
“Admit it,” he says huskily. “You like it.”
“I don’t…dislike it.”
He chuckles, and the sound sends a shiver down my spine.
Clearing my throat, I try to ignore his hard body behind me and snap the reins to direct the horse forward. We trot out of the stable, across the flat, snowy yard, passing soldiers as we go. They all gape at me, but none of them try to stop me.
Once we reach the road and begin our descent down the mountain, half of my mind is trying to come up with some sort of a plan, but the other half is completely preoccupied with the feel of Dommik.
I seem to think about him a lot lately. It’s difficult not to, especially when his splayed fingers start to rub circles over my stomach, making it dip.
Yet even that hasn’t distracted me fully from the terror I feel every time I have to travel on this road. The way down the mountain is perilous, but I can’t allow myself to fall into distress. So I use Dommik’s touch as the distraction I need, focusing on him instead of the winding slope.
Every time we hit a slick patch, he tightens his hold on me, brings my bottom closer to his groin. Normally, I’d be in a carriage with the curtains shut tight, not willing to look at the height. But here we are on horseback, completely exposed, yet I’m preoccupied by the hard length pressing against me.
His hand skims lower, distracting me as those fingers of his continue to slowly rotate. Heat gathers between my legs, and my eyes flutter closed of their own volition, my mind imagining what it would be like if he were to go even lower.
I desperately want to shift in the saddle, and I nearly lift up so I can get closer—
The horse jolts, screeching out a neigh as it slips on a patch of ice, my eyes flying open with terror. The animal stumbles, trying to find its footing, and I let out a scream, certain we’re going to go careening off the edge of the mountain, my fear of heights rushing up so fast my head spins.
But Dommik snatches up the reins and, with expert maneuvering, gets the horse to calm, somehow helping it regain its footing. I breathe hard as we lurch to a stop, eyes blinking down at the edge we’re just two feet away from, hands white-knuckling the saddle as I shake all over.
“Great Divine. That was…”
“Scary?” he volunteers.
“Your fault!” I snap.
He has the audacity to laugh. As if we didn’t both just nearly perish over the side of the mountain.
“Got a bit distracted, Queenie?”
I grit my teeth, though I’m still breathing hard. “This is why we shouldn’t have ridden together!”
“Oh, I disagree. We should do a lot of riding,” he says wickedly.
My stomach flutters with a burst of icicle butterflies. So I jab my elbow into his stomach to ensure he feels something irritating too.
He lets out an oomph, which is reward enough.
“Keep it up, Malina,” he says, his tone darkly playful.
I look at him over my shoulder, our eyes meeting. “I intend to.”
His lips curve. “Good.”
With a click of his tongue, Dommik leads the horse the rest of the way down the mountain with slow, sure steps, keeping his hands to himself this time. My body is able to cool, until I once again can pretend that neither desire nor fear has its grip on me.
Once we reach the bottom and make it to the bridge that goes over the chasm and into the city, I let out a sigh of relief, glad to be back on even ground. Yet that relief is short-lived, because now, I have to face the people.
The people who detest me.
After crossing the bridge, we’re swept up in the city’s entrance. A low wall drags across the length of the chasm behind, but in front of us, there’s a wide stretch of cobbled stone that glitters with a light layer of snow. There are several streets that lead in different directions into the city, their tidy lanes packed tight with shops and people.
I retake the reins from Dommik and direct the horse where I know it’ll be busiest—the square.
No one pays us much mind as we go, probably in part to do with Dommik at my back, his cloaked height blocking me somewhat. When we reach the square, the market is still going. There are carts with awnings laid out, people filling baskets with the goods they purchased as they exchange coin beneath the pavilion. Yet it’s clear they’ve been watching the sky too, as some of them are starting to put away their wares and shut up the shutters on their carts.
The last time I was here, I was trying to win my people’s favor, and they rejected me, threw things at me, hated me—and that was with a retinue of guards and a fully enclosed carriage for protection. Now, I come with only Dommik and a horse.
Vulnerable.
Yet, I remind myself that they’re far more vulnerable than I am. They just don’t believe me yet. It’s my responsibility to make sure they do.
I urge the horse right into the middle of the square, where merchants and shoppers move out of the way as I yank to a stop. I stand in the stirrups and then swing my leg over and hop down, skirt settling back at my feet.
Surprise spreads over the market when people turn to look at me, when they realize who I am.
Dommik lands behind me, staying there with the reins in hand as I walk forward through the crowd, making sure I have everyone’s attention. Making sure they see me—my Colier white hair, my face, my eyes.
As they take in my presence, I can feel their shock and confusion. Their anger and disgust. It’s clear that like the guards, everyone here would’ve preferred I’d stayed dead.
It doesn’t matter.
I’m not here for me. I’m not here to win them to my side or to gain their favor this time. So as I stop and turn in a circle, I let them see my bedraggled state, let them see the desperation in my face as I lift my voice high enough for them to hear me.
“People of Highbell, I can see that you know me, that you realize you were told lies about my death. I’ve come to warn you. There’s an enemy marching on us!”
There’s a palpable reaction of distrust in the air as they gather around me with wary distaste, like my words have offended them.
“I traveled to the edge of our world. I saw the ruins of Seventh Kingdom with my own eyes. The bridge of Lemuria was remade, and the fae have returned to Orea to attack us.”
My voice catches on the blustery wind, and I continue to turn, to try to make sure they can all see me, all hear me. They’ve given me a wide berth, from nobles to beggars and every status between.
“I was your queen once. All I want is to protect Highbell.”
“Lies!” a man calls from the crowd, his clothes ragged and heavily layered, a spun cloth wrapped around his head to keep the cold away. “Queen Kaila is here to protect Highbell now. We don’t want you and your lies!”
His words set off even more angry shouts, even more dismissal.
“I’m telling the truth!” I cry out desperately, eyes searching through the crowd, trying to find even one person who seems to be heeding my words.
There are none.
“The fae are here! You need to get to the castle, or flee, or prepare to fight. Because they are coming whether you believe me or not.”
People turn and start walking away. Turning from me as if who I am means nothing to them. As if my words hold no consequence. My breaths scrape up and down my throat as the cold wind blasts my face, and I feel completely ineffective.
Useless.
Desperation catches in my throat as I shout through the storm, feeling like I’m trying to snatch at air, my grip empty, unable to catch their attention or care. “Wait! I know I have failed you. I know you rejected me. But this has nothing to do with me. You must prepare!” I shout, urgency clawing at my voice.
