Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

My rotting heart aches more incessantly. Pulsing in tune with my adrenaline, except instead of a beat, it just thrums, go go go.

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

This is a päyur bond fusing.

I stare at my hands, my arms, watching the black and gold drift off me like steam from a hot spring.

It’s our auras. Mine and hers, mixing. The päyur magic ripples.

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.

Right here, over my heart, is a scale. A golden scale. I pull in a sharp breath, just before I reach down to feel it. Yet the moment my fingertip touches it, I explode. Not my heart, but me.

When I realize what shape it is, my mouth drops open. My eyes widen. “What…the…fuck.” A face looks out at me from billowing darkness. A face of power and viciousness. A face that hasn’t been seen in Annwyn for hundreds of years. A dragon.

The creature has a sweep of gold scales along its silvered cheeks, with more down the chest like gilded armor. Each scale is as wide as my hand, brighter than the flare around my shadows, making the smoke creature gleam in the dark. It looks like something out of a nightmare. Something that can’t possibly be real. Except it is.

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

My name is Auren Turley. And I am stronger than the dark.

“You don’t want me really,” I argue. “I do.” “You won’t always.” “I will.” I can, I do, I will.

“I wouldn’t fucking dare.” “See that you don’t, Captain.”

I’m my mother’s son. I’m a Ravinger.

The gold gleams even in the dark. It just goes to show how thoroughly I’ve bonded with Auren. She’s marked me. Pure male satisfaction bursts through my chest at the sight.

A miracle only made possible by the most vicious threat. King Rot.

Because I am Auren Turley. And I’ll do whatever it takes to save myself and break free.

He has an eerie, innate ability to sense the threats, and his magic hits them before their attempt can even come close.

He walks the path alone, and he does not stop. He does not waver. King Ravinger walks down the bridge… And is swallowed by the vaporous void.

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 sun without the dark sky. And there is no me without her.

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

It forms in layers over my body, molding like a chest plate of golden armor that’s marbled with black roots.

The gold feels as familiar as the ribbons do, and because of that, I feel stronger than ever. Because this is me.

“I’m going to check the city.” Her eyes widen. “But it’s dangerous.” “It’s okay,” I tell her with a smile. “I’m dangerous too.”

Like a flare in the swallowed dark. A soft golden light illuminates from the city’s depths, its rays breaking through the high treetops like sunlight. I stagger back. Because there, Auren’s aura shines from the city’s core.

Seeing her aura and mine roiling together like this is a fucking gift. One that knocks the air right out of me. An ebb and flow of light and dark that saturates the sky and sears into my brain.

she growls at me. Growls. Filthiest, sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.

“Rot and Rip together.” “You made me whole,” he says. “Fixed how I’d been ripped apart.”

“You’ve staked quite the claim on me, Ravinger.”

Lyäri Nōhcra. No longer the golden one gone, but… The golden one who rules.

But while I may not have magic, may not have anything that this fae considers powerful, I do have one thing. Loyalty.

“But we will have death together, and that is endless.”

With the last spot of vision, with our bodies wrapped tightly around each other, Dommik and I fall into the void. Into the death. Willingly.

But…the bridge is gone. Which means there’s no way for Slade, or my mother, or Auren to come back.

This is what he’d always planned. This is why he pushed me so hard as a boy. He wanted me to manifest a dragon…so that he could murder me and take it for himself.

couldn’t protect her. Couldn’t save my mother. And now I’m going to be killed at the hand of my father.

My heart is breaking while hers bleeds out.

“I knew you were my pair even without your aura.”

“I knew you were mine the second I laid eyes on you. Because someone told me. Someone who hasn’t spoken to me ever since,”

“One word. One single word. Spoken from the lips…of my mother.” Auren’s eyes widen ever so slightly.

“Goldfinch.”

That one word, torn from a diviner’s lips. And right now, it’s pulled from my own mouth and laid at Auren’s feet like an offering.

“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.

“Don’t you remember? I will find you in any life. So just wait for me, okay?”

“I will find you wherever you go, and we will have endless one days of happiness. Won’t we? Won’t we, Auren?” She nods, though we both know the truth. No.

I bury my face against her neck, my tears soaking against her pulse that no longer thrums.

But the gilded star feels that root, still growing from its core. What if I do not want to fall?