Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

“I will find you. I will find you in that life. I fucking promise you that. But you have to go. Please, baby.”

As long as there is breath in my lungs and a heart in my chest, I will fight for her with everything that I am.

Our souls are now bound together. Our lives forever connected. Our magic entwined. It means that she and I are a match fated by the goddesses. It means that we have been given the greatest gift ever bestowed on a fae. It means that she’s mine.

You have your own light, little sun. So you must carry it with you when it grows dark.

When tears are like starfall, when bleak is like night, We remember the dawn that will bring back the light.

I might not know anything else yet, but I do know this truth with innate certainty. My name is Auren Turley.

And I am stronger than the dark.

“You can’t love me,” I tell him, my voice full of denial. “I can.” No argument. No added detail. Just a vow. “You don’t want me really,” I argue. “I do.” “You won’t always.” “I will.”

“My last name is Caddell.” “Your last name is going to be Ferox soon, because that’s mine.”

Okay Os i see youuuu

“My jealousy doesn’t discriminate, and I’m thorough.”

When a woman faces an impossible problem, whether she be mother or queen, she must find a solution. She must find a way.

I told her I’d be the villain for her, and I was. Now, I need to also be the hero she would want me to be.

All of it, every death, every fault, it cuts through me with blades, and I bleed. Bleed and bleed onto the gilded floor.

Auren is life. I am death. That is why the goddesses paired us together. She is the gleaming power of light, and she needed her antithesis to stand at her side. Because she’s the golden sun of warmth and growth, while I am decay and darkness, with a magic that comes from the deepest core of the earth. There is no growth without rot. There is no sun without the dark sky. And there is no me without her. But even if we were never paired, it wouldn’t matter. Because I would have made her mine, whether the goddesses deemed it or not. And I’m going to find her. So I turn and start to walk. “Let’s go.”

“What are you?” she asks. My gaze stabs into her. “Really fucking pissed.”

But the true beast about to tear through this place is me

They tried to erase me, but they didn’t succeed. They tried to say who I was, but I’m going to show them.

They’ve already tried to break me, but instead, I broke free

She is ambrosia. And for a male who was never anything but rot and hate, Auren has become my salvation. My purpose.

“Oh, Goldfinch. My love for you consumes every part of my soul. It’s in every word, every movement. With each morning that dawns and every night that falls. You are completely mine, and I am yours, and that is all I ever need in this life and all the others.”

“Sometimes, feelings build up and become our foundation. Shame and guilt aren’t like pages in a book. I couldn’t simply turn it over and move past it. This regret…I’ll carry it for the rest of my life.”

“Sometimes, our mistakes are so big that when they land, the consequences stretch out farther than you ever could’ve imagined.”

“Because Orea has finally united. We’re fighting…together

Last beats, beating for my people. To do this one thing right. To be exactly what my kingdom needs.

“Culling the weak,” I snarl as his tongue dries out, the blackened husk breaking off. “You spineless, heartless, evil piece of shit. May you rot for fucking eternity and know that you are nothing

“While I was broken and ripped and utterly lost, my mother gifted me with the promise of you, Auren. The promise of my päyur.”

“My foretelling, my life’s prophecy, my purpose, my divined was you,” I choke out. “Always you.”

“You were always mine, and I was always meant to love you with every single part of my existence.” Always.

“Peace can be difficult to enact,” Slade says as he sets down his drink. “But it’s also difficult to keep. Eventually, peace always deteriorates.”

The grief is too close for us to get a good look at it yet. The wound too fresh. None of us know what to do with it. None of us know how to move around the empty space he’s left in our group. Maybe we never will. Maybe sometimes, time doesn’t help. It just…stretches. Widens the gap between the loss and the after.

Time tells a lot of secrets, passing off the words day by day.

There will always be a piece of sadness for all that we’ve lost. For what we’ve endured. But the happy takes up the most space. And that’s a gift I’ll never stop being grateful for.

My wings flutter, my heart soars, and I know. That after everything. After all of it. This was what I was always fighting for. This was why I kept going even in the bleakest of times. Even with every stumbling fall. Because this love? This is what it feels like… to fly.