Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1)(4)

“I would enjoy participating more,” I reply, extremely mindful of how his fingers move with my mouth as I speak.

Midas brings his hand back up so that he can touch a piece of my hair. He rubs the strands together, watching the way they glimmer in the candlelight. “You know you’re too precious to pile you in with the other saddles.”

I give him a tight smile. “Yes, my king.”

Midas drops my hair and taps me on the nose before pulling his hand out of the cage. It takes a lot of self-control to stay still, to not arc my body toward him like a branch bending to the call of the wind. He breezes past me, and I want to bend.

“You’re not like one of the common saddles to be ridden daily, Auren. You’re worth far more than them. Besides, I like you always there, watching me. It makes me hard,” he says with a heated gaze.

It’s funny how he can make me feel both immense desire and crushing disappointment at the same time.

Even though I shouldn’t, I push back. I blame the coiling forlorn want in my stomach. “But the other saddles resent me, and the servants talk. Don’t you think it would be better if you let me participate one night, even if all I do is touch you?” I ask. I know I sound a bit pathetic, but I yearn for him.

His brown eyes narrow on me, and just like that, I know I’ve overstepped. My stomach tightens for an entirely new reason now. I’ve lost him. I’ve torn the playfulness off like a ragged strip of parchment.

Handsome features harden, charm cooling like snow over coals. “You are my royal saddle. My favored. My precious,” he lectures, making my eyes drop down to the edges of my toes. “I don’t give a forged fuck what the servants and saddles say. You are mine to do with as I wish, and if I wish to keep you in your caged quarters where only I can get to you, then that is my right.”

I shake my head at myself. Stupid, stupid. “You’re right. I just thought—”

“You are not here to have thoughts,” Midas snaps, cutting me off in a rare harsh discipline that makes my breath catch. He was in such a good mood, and I ruined it. “Do I not treat you well?” he demands, flinging his arms up as his voice cracks through the vast room. “Do I not bestow every comfort to you?”

“You do—”

“There are whores in the city right now, living in squalor, pissing in buckets and humping in the streets to make a coin with their cunt. And yet, you complain?”

My lips clamp shut. He’s right. My situation could be so much worse. It was worse. And he saved me from it.

Bright side: The fact that I’m the king’s favored gives me lots of advantages and protections that others don’t have. Who knows what would’ve happened if the king hadn’t rescued me? I could be owned by horrible people right now. I could be living where disease and cruelty runs rampant. I could be fearing for my life.

After all, that was my existence before. A victim of child trafficking, I lived for far too long at the hands of bad people. Saw too many vile things.

I ran away once, lived with the only kind people I’d ever met since my parents. I thought I’d escaped the brutality of life. Until raiders came and ruined that too. My life was going to be pushed right back into misery, but Midas swooped in and saved me.

He became my shelter from the harsh, biting violence always raining down on my beaten soul, and then he made me into his famed figurine.

I have no right to complain or demand. When I think of how I could still be living...well, the list pretty much just goes on and on with lots of other really unpleasant things, and I don’t like to think about that. I get indigestion when I think of my past, so I prefer not to. After all, indigestion doesn’t mix with the amount of wine I drink every night. That’s why I’m a bright side kind of girl.

The second King Midas sees the contrition on my face, he looks pleased with himself that he was able to redirect my line of thinking. His eyes soften again, and his knuckles come up to brush against my arm. If I was a cat, I’d purr.

“That’s my precious girl,” he says, and the worry knotted up in my gut loosens a bit, because I am precious to him, and I always will be. He and I, we have a bond no one else understands. No one else can. I knew him before he wore the crown. I knew him before people bowed to him in reverence. Before this castle gleamed with gold. Ten years I’ve been with him, and that decade knotted the string between us.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“It’s alright,” he soothes, one more stroke over the bones in my wrist. “You look tired. Go on back to your chambers. I’ll call for you in the morning.”

I frown as he pulls away. “In the morning?” I fish. He doesn’t normally call for me until after the sun has set.

He nods as he starts to turn and walk away. “Yes, King Fulke is leaving tomorrow to return to Ranhold Castle.”

It takes a lot for me not to visibly sigh in relief. I can’t stand King Fulke of Fifth Kingdom. He’s a sleazy, crass old man with the power of duplication. When he uses his power, he can duplicate whatever he touches exactly once. It doesn’t work on people, thank Divine, or I bet he would’ve tried to duplicate me ages ago.

If I never see Fulke again, it would be too soon, but he and my king have been allies for several years now. Since our kingdoms border each other, he comes here a few times each year, usually with wagons full of things for Midas to turn to gold. Once he gets back to his own castle, I’m sure Fulke duplicates it all. He’s gotten very rich off of Midas’s alliance.