Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

I’m out of time and with too much distance, so I have to choose. Orea or Auren. And that’s no choice at all.

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

“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.”

“Captain, give ’em hell.” “I don’t give anything else,” she says.

“You found me,” she whispers, lip trembling. The relief and heartbreaking joy is so intense I have to shove it aside before I can answer. “I’ll always find you, Goldfinch.” Always.

“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.”

As shadow and freeze, we embrace it together. Then, the bridge is no more. And neither… are we.

My rage isn’t red hot. It isn’t ice cold. It’s pitch black.

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

“Am I dead?” he whispers hoarsely. I shake my head and grip his face too, relishing the stubble that scratches my fingertips. “No. I came back to find you.”