Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

“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.” I kiss her forehead, tears burning in my eyes. “I love you, Auren.”

“I wish we could’ve had longer together,” I whisper brokenly. He brushes the hair away from my face tenderly and stares into my fracturing eyes. “But we will have death together, and that is endless.”

That milky gaze held me hostage, and then she opened her mouth and spoke a single word, in a voice that was not entirely her own. “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. I was fifteen years old when I first heard it, and back then, that word meant nothing to me. It frustrated me. Confused me. It was a word I agonized over. A word I tried to ask my mother about over and over again, to no avail. But then…after twenty years, I found the meaning. Found what was foretold. Auren’s breaths saw out of her as I brush away another tear and swallow hard. “With skin of gold and wearing feathers of a finch, I knew right then that you were mine. I realized what that divined word had meant,” I tell her, emotion cracking through my constricted throat. “While I was broken and ripped and utterly lost, my mother gifted me with the promise of you, Auren. The promise of my päyur.”

This—this is the worst. For the breeze to still flow and for steps to still tread, and for the world to just keep on going after she’s ended. For me to still live, while she’s dead in my arms. I don’t want it. I don’t want this life if I can’t share it with her.

I echo those words Slade first said to me, so long ago. Don’t fall. Fly. And I do.

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.