Gild (The Plated Prisoner, #1)(14)

Bam!

It hits Rissa right in the face.

Shit.

Rissa’s head snaps back, and she goes down with a yelp. It’s not the usual way I see her going down, but still, she somehow manages to make it look pretty.

She falls, landing on her ass, her sheer dress tangling up in her long legs as she screeches and clamps her hands over her lips.

I stare in wide-eyed shock, really wishing I’d thought that through more. Or at the very least, I should’ve aimed. Rissa looks mutinous.

I give her an awkward thumbs up, my face in a tight smile. “Distraction complete,” I whisper, as if I meant to do that. I mean, I did. But I didn’t mean to hit the poor girl in the face. I thought it would just bounce off her chest, and she could act like her boobs needed a lie down. Midas likes them, so it seemed like a sure thing.

She shoves her waylaid hair out of her face, and I see the first drops of blood dripping down her chin and coating her fingers, her mouth bleeding. Great. Not only did I hit her in the mouth, I also didn’t account for how damn heavy that gold-plated book was.

“What the hell are you doing, Auren?”

I snap my head over to look at a furious Midas as he glares at me from the table where the men are all circled around. Ten pairs of eyes are locked on me, and I fidget under the frowns.

I blink at my king, opting for innocence. “My hand jerked, and the book just slipped out of my grasp, Your Majesty.”

His jaw grinds. “It slipped,” he repeats evenly, his brown eyes like rusted nails.

I dip my head, though my heart is pounding. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

I can hear Rissa crying beside me, and I try not to cringe. I really didn’t mean to hit her so damn hard. Where was all of that arm strength when I was trying to break out of my damn cage last week? Useless muscles.

Polly is glaring at me with hot hatred, but King Fulke chuckles. “A little saddle contention, eh, Midas?” he jokes.

“It would appear so,” Midas says flatly.

I worry my lip as my king continues to stare at me until he finally looks away. “Take the saddle back to the harem wing,” Midas barks out to one of the guards before he turns away from me again.

Two of the guards quickly rush forward, a little too eager to head to the saddle wing, if you ask me.

“See? It worked,” I whisper, trying to show her the bright side. “No more dancing.” She shoots me a furious glare, blood still gushing from her lip. If I had to make a wager, I’d say she’s not quite ready to look at the bright side yet.

“Auren?” King Midas calls, his voice deceptively even.

I turn my head to look at him as Rissa is escorted away. “Yes, my king?” I ask, watching his back where he’s leaned over the map.

“Since you’ve divested King Fulke of his dancer, you will take up the saddle’s duties.”

Divines be damned.

I stare at him for a beat, wondering if I could chuck a book at myself and get out of dancing too. But one look from King Fulke and the tension in Midas’s shoulders tell me that they’d probably make me dance even with a bloody mouth.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Quirking my jaw in frustration, I make my way to the center of the cage and then slowly start moving my hips and swaying my arms up above my head. King Fulke licks his lips, watching me with a smirk, and my stomach bubbles with acid. The days are counting down until Midas will give me to that man. Every time Fulke looks at me, I can see the sand in the hourglass getting lower in his grainy eyes.

I’m not nearly as graceful as Rissa, but I take a breath and play a slowed-down version of “Cock Him in the Cuckoo” in my head, using the tune to guide my movements.

What I wouldn’t give to cock King Fulke in his cuckoo right about now.

Fulke watches me as I move, while I try my hardest to pointedly ignore him and watch the spot on the wall over his head. Despite my best efforts to pretend he’s not there, he saunters over, his velvet-covered thighs chafing together until he stops directly in front of me. There’s a good eight feet or so between us, but he’s still too close for my liking.

“You’re mine tomorrow night, pet,” he says with a grin, his plump fingers wrapping around one of my bars and stroking the gold up and down suggestively.

That bubbling acid in my stomach begins to boil up.

His eyes glitter with something hungry and excited, but I stay in my head, forcing myself to hear the music, to keep dancing, to pretend he’s not here. He must not like my efforts to ignore him, because he moves to step into my line of vision.

“I’m going to mark you with so much cum your skin won’t even look gold anymore,” he says before rasping out a dark smoker’s laugh.

Shocked at his crass words, my movements come to a jerky, awkward stop, and my gaze latches onto him.

His lips curl up, satisfied that he won. “Oh yes, how I’m going to play with you.”

My ribbons curl against my spine like a snake arching up to hiss. I trade my gaze from one king to another, only to find King Midas already looking at me.

My stomach does a flip. Has Fulke finally just pushed Midas too far? Is my king coming to his senses about what a horrible, degrading thing this is, and he’ll change his mind right now and put a stop to this?

But Midas says nothing. Does nothing. He just stands there, watching Fulke speak to me like this, as if it doesn’t bother him at all.