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Mostly, I’ve just allowed myself to react while no one’s here to see.
Time changes with torment. It stretches on, lengthening seconds, extending minutes. I’ve learned that pain and fear have a way of prolonging.
And as if that weren’t cruel enough, our minds make sure we relive those moments again and again and again, long after they’ve passed. What a bastard, time is.
know that I’ve left a part of me behind on that pirate ship. I’ve been through enough tragic moments to recognize the...
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Every heartbreak I’ve endured in my life, every harrowing pain, it’s ripped a part of me away. I’ve felt every piece of myself that’s been torn off, seen each bit where it fell b...
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with golden skin hiding a broken heart.
I just want to sleep. Fall asleep and not wake up until everything stops hurting—physically and emotionally.
Shove down weakness, and strength will rise...
His pressing aura saturates the air, coating my tongue like icing sugar, clogging every taste bud. It tastes like power.
I should stay impassive, untouchable. I need to be a stone in the middle of his rushing current. I’m in the thick of it now, more vulnerable than ever, and I can’t afford to get swept away.
There’s something about having to lift your skirts and squat in the snow that really drags a girl down.
It’s all about the small victories right now.
“It was always going to be you,” he says quietly. “As soon as I saw your face, I was already lost to you, Auren.” He picks up my hand and places it over his chest. I feel the beat of his life thrum against my fingers, like it’s singing a song just for me. “Hear that? You have my heart, Precious. Always.”
“See? The gilded one gets me. That means she gets to be served before the rest of you ungrateful lot.”
Pretty lies cover up a lot of ugly truths.
There’s safety in loneliness, but there’s a lurking danger too. One that doesn’t come from anything other than yourself. The danger for me, of course, is the memories. The long hours offer me a lot of time to think. Without anyone else around, no distractions, no words besides my inner voice. There’s nowhere for those memories to be shoved away while I’m exposed, stagnant in my own festering company.
It’s so strange to think about—how I went from that girl begging on a muddy corner, to a woman adorned in a gilded castle. Life takes you on paths you don’t have a map for.
The problem with truths is that they’re like spices. Add a little, and it can enrich things, let you experience more layers. But if you pour out too much, it becomes unpalatable.
“We’re all captives of something, even things we don’t want to admit to.”
But more than that, you’re a woman who deserves to be treated with love and respect.”
I love that smile. It makes my heart squeeze inside my chest, like the feel of someone taking your hand. “And you always will be, here with me,” he promises.
Plotting is what I’m best at. A good thing too, since I lack both of the traits that this world respects: power and a penis.
A shame that I lack the first, but the second? I’ve found that most of the people who have those are altogether disappointing.
“Kindness shouldn’t have to be earned. It should be freely given.” Keg laughs softly. “My ma used to say something like that,” he replies, looking over at me. “And you know what?” “What?” “She was a damn smart woman.”
Maybe it was the barely-kiss that did it. Maybe it was the poke and prod, the proud smile I received when I unleashed my ribbons and admitted what I am. Or maybe it was right from the start, when he saw me and he knew what I was and he did not balk. Maybe I was doomed from the beginning, the moment I walked off that ship.
That realization, this awakening awareness, it feels as if the world is moving beneath my feet. Like I’m going to look up and see the ground while I walk on the sky. Even more shocking is that it somehow feels right.
“Stop being complacent. Stop being okay with being a pet in a cage.”
“No, Auren. You’re the one that needs to burn. You need to spark to life and fight. Stop letting him dull you, stop letting the whole fucking world trample you,”
“If you tried, you could shine brighter than the fucking sun. Instead, you’ve chosen to sit back and wither.”
Don’t lie down for the thumbs, okay?”
He and I are connected. Not just through gold, but through time. Through love. I can’t abandon that, can’t abandon him. Not after everything we’ve been through together.
“I must insist that you shut the fuck up,”
warm eyes looking at me like I’m his greatest treasure.
We simply watch each other for a moment, and I feel his presence tethering me to the comfort he represents. It’s that old, familiar warmth, that sense of security.
I’m shocked, embarrassed, hurt. To see that I can so easily be replicated, to see me, from the outside looking in...
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.
I thought because I’ve changed, that he would change too. What a silly, naive thought.
Midas may have put me on a pedestal, but I put him on one too. The height of those foundations made it impossible for us to look each other in the eye.
“No, Midas. I belong to me.”
I kept taking it and taking it, convincing myself that this was the way it needed to be. Lying to myself because I loved him, because he manipulated me.
I’ve been bending over backwards for so long that I forgot I even had a spine.
And right then, I wonder how the hell I fooled myself into thinking this was love.
I hold the weight of wealth in my hands, and it’s so damn heavy to carry.
A veil has been lifted—a veil I put there, over my own eyes. Now it’s ripped away, and I can see everything more clearly.
