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I’m the gold-plated prisoner. But what a pretty prison it is.
Does it really matter if your cage is solid gold when you aren’t allowed to leave it? A cage is a cage, no matter how gilded.
And there, in the corner of a ten-year-long foundation of reliance and trust, a break appears. Like a shallow, jagged chip knocked into glass, a tiny fissure like spider’s silk spreads up an inch.
When I chose to hide away, I was barely more than a girl. Vulnerable. Battered. Scared. Utterly sick of what the world had to offer. So I hid in a cage, and I was content to do so. After the things I endured, I wanted it. I accepted the bars, embraced them, even—not to keep me in, but to keep others out. But I missed this. The fresh air in my lungs. The smell of the breeze. The cold against my cheeks. The feel of the ground beneath my shoes. I missed it so damn much.
As if I could avoid my hurts, my shame, my dark thoughts that creep out every time I close my eyes for sleep. One day, I suspect those plaguing thoughts will want to stop being ignored. They’ll catch up. They’ll slink past me, refusing to be hidden in a tear-soaked pillow or between the cracks of a mirror.
It’s the arrogance of men, to think so little of women. And it’ll be their downfall too.
Men making deals on the behalf of women never seems to go very well for the women.
Finally, he speaks again. “So, this is King Midas’s pet.” He glances down at the feathers on my sleeves, the gold ribbons bereft in the snow, and his black eyes flash with interest as they lift again to my face. “I have to admit, I didn’t expect to find a goldfinch.”
My favored. My gilded. My precious. She’s been stolen from me and is being held in an enemy’s clutches. I turn to my guards, my anger rising like boiling water, sending a thick haze of fury over my vision. The precision of my planned annihilation against King Fulke will be nothing compared to those who dared take Auren from me. She’s mine. And I’ll destroy everyone in my path to get her back.
