Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

“How ’bout you, Tyde? What do you hate the most about battles?” Tyde has his gaze pinned straight ahead, the only soldier whose serious expression hasn’t cracked. For a long moment, he doesn’t answer, until finally he says, “The wait.” His words and quiet tone sober everyone in an instant. “You rush to make plans and defensive strategies. Rush to prep and pack and travel. Rush to arrive at the place where you’re going to take your stand. But when all that rush is over, all that’s left is the wait,” he says, still looking ahead at the enemy army. “The wait is like a night that won’t end. You keep waiting for the sun to crest, but it doesn’t. So you gotta keep watching the horizon, because you know it’s coming, you know it’s inevitable, but the anticipation chews up your nerves and spits them back out. You don’t know when the wait is going to turn into something else. But it will. And that something else is really just death. It’s death that we’re waiting for. We just don’t know if it’s ours or theirs.” He pauses. “That’s why the wait is the worst.”