Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

“Auren,” I gasp out. As if she can hear me. As if I can say everything I need to say. Moisture gathers at the corners of my eyes, shedding the misery of my failure. Of everything I’ll never get to see her do. The little and big moments I’ll miss. I wanted them all. I wanted to see and experience and have all of her, forever.

:(

Instead, she tucks her head under mine. I love how she does that. Fiery with me one second, then melting for me the next.

She thinks I’d go off and die?

All this talk about dying is stressing me out

“Winged creatures will feel a kinship because of what you are. Of what we are. This,” he says, moving his finger to press against the side of my spike, “is a symbol of that. We are Culls. But more than that, we are the dragon-wielders of old.”

And we're just tapping into this power now?

He reaches up and tugs away the red cloth that he always wears tucked into his collar, revealing the tiny grouping of scales that litter his collarbone.

“After five generations of Cull blood, someone in our line finally manifests both scales and spikes, but you still cannot call forth a dragon.”

At the snap of his finger, the shed ceiling splits, and an outcry of distress shoots from the throats of the birds. They immediately bolt, flying out of their enclosures in a panic, running into walls, a couple smacking into my head as they try to escape. My father drops them one by one with his magic. Necks snapped, they land in piles, feathers bursting up, screeches filling the air. The hatchlings’ cries pierce my ears, and the mother starts to flap her wings, baring blunt teeth at my father in vicious protectiveness. He doesn’t kill her, but breaks her wing instead, snapping it and making her cry out so horribly that panic pounds in my ears. The hatchlings scream. “Stop!” I shout, spinning in a circle, distress eating through my heart. He’s tearing off chunks of it and tossing them onto the floor in bloody heaps.

Jesus…

Yet it seems that part of my magic that allowed me to get into Orea and get Auren into Annwyn has been drained away forever.

And then the veined strands snap her like a twig.

Im here for it

I look down at the gold holding me in place and then back at her with a smirk. “If you wanted to tie me up, then may I suggest we do so in private?”

Then our auras meet. Join. Collide. Our bond shatters the air. Shadow and light blinds, shoving away everything else, until all that exists is her. We stare at each other, caught in this cocoon of our own atmosphere while the world trembles with our bond and everything else disappears. Together. We’re finally fucking together.

We’ve lived a thousand little lifetimes, dying a little bit every second we were apart.

The street is still blessedly empty, save for the shell-shocked male who stands beside the fountain. “Auren?” As soon as he says her name, a snarl rips out of me, and my teeth flash at him with unbidden fury. I want to tear him apart. I want to gut him from groin to grin and spill out his lifeblood for daring to speak her name.

Only her voice could yank my attention so thoroughly. My breath pants through gritted teeth, and I’m fucking hard as a rock, enraged at the nearness of this strange male so close to her. A small part of me knows I’m acting insane, but there is no room for logical, rational thought. There’s nothing but a base, animalistic need that’s ignited every nerve, demanding me to claim her, to protect her. To satiate her every need.

“I’m hanging on by a fraying thread. I really need you to not say another male’s name right now.”

But I pause, noticing something at the back of her neck. I push aside her hair, and my breath sucks in at the small golden scale that gleams right there upon her skin. A scale from me. From our bond. The same color as my own that sits over my heart. Satisfaction imbeds into me, leaving behind every impression of her. Making my desire flare at the sight of her body showing its bond with mine.

“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.”

“And I am so entirely in awe of you. So incredibly proud.” I shake my head, ready to tell him all the ways I failed, but his fingers still my lips. “No, Auren. You were so fucking strong.

For what? She didnt even look for you, Slade

“You thought you were worth more to me alive than you are dead,” I say as the rot in his throat thickens, decaying the windpipe with his next scraping inhale. “You’re not.” His body jerks and he collapses against the table, wheezing with a failing ability to breathe as the rot attacks his every organ, focusing on his heart.

Oh damn ok

all I want to do is pull her in close and have her to myself, but that’s not how it is anymore, is it? Auren isn’t just mine. She’s found a place with all of these fae. They look up to her. Stand in awe of her. She means something to everyone on this street. Her very presence impacting them.

I kinda dont like this tbh

Because my dragon drops in supplication to her. She’s the one who rules, and I couldn’t be more fucking proud.

Slade kind of just feels like a guard dog now. They're both powerful. Idk why they cant lead together

I close my eyes with a sigh. I hear Dommik suck in a sob. And then, with my assassin’s help, I push the blade straight into my heart.

The most senseless death. It only took a cut to make the bridge… theres literally no reason for them to die. And shes just abandoning Orea. Who will lead if Orea survives?

Dommik goes down onto his knees with me. Tears running down his dappled face. Then he wraps his hand around mine where I’m still holding the dagger, and he plunges it into his heart too.

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. “You’ve finally fulfilled your purpose,” he tells me with a biting edge.

Wtf

A split second before my heart is pierced too, there’s a flash of gold. With the help of her ribbons, Auren suddenly flings herself in front of me.

Screaming crying throwing up

rot his hands from his wrists, making the skin wither, the muscles melt, both limbs falling off to the ground. He screams in pain and tries to grapple at my hold, but his feet can’t touch the ground, and he can no longer call up his power at the snap of his fingers. I seethe into his face with bared teeth and dark hostility. Within my shaking, wrathful hold, his skin molders and greens, peeling away in painful strips. His teeth go black. His one good eye widens in fear as black veins leach into the white. I fucking told him. He was done. He was dead.

Ok ok

“I knew you were my pair even without your aura.” Her brow furrows and she blinks slowly, like she’s trying to hold on to my words. Trying to hold on to her life. And I need her to, because I fucking need her. “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,” I explain, my confession rattled and grieved. “One word. One single word. Spoken from the lips…of my mother.” Auren’s eyes widen ever so slightly. When I ripped the world and brought my mother with me to Orea, I think I tore her in half just as much as I tore myself. Because she stopped speaking. Her voice went mostly mute. Her mind, mostly muddled. But it was there and then, beside a poisoned rip, in a foreign cave, where she said the last word she’s ever spoken to me. Just one. I had been pressing a cool cloth to her fevered forehead, trying to care for her after how sick she became from traveling through the rip. When suddenly, her hand snatched out and gripped my wrist with surprising strength, fingernails digging into my skin. When I met her gaze, I saw how her green irises disappeared and were replaced with churning milky pools caught in a sightless stare. Saw an ancient scrawl drag across them, the language indecipherable, the size far too small. 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.”

“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.”

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

“We…we won’t g-get our one days, Slade,” she says with anguish. My heart fucking disintegrates, but I manage to shake my head. I curl around her, offering her shivering body every ounce of warmth I have. “Yes we will, baby,” I rasp out as I stroke her tortured expression. “Don’t you remember? I will find you in any life. So just wait for me, okay?” My breath snaps off, but I force my voice to keep working. “I will find you wherever you go, and we will have endless one days of happiness. Won’t we? Won’t we, Auren?”

My päyur bond has been cut. Like scissors to thread, both pieces left to float in a colorless sea. Drifting further and further away from one another, every wave and gentle lap separating us even more.

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.

I swallow hard, eyes burning as I look down at her. My heart was rotted before, but now it lies split and ruptured. Just a gaping organ in a useless chest, the golden scale over it nothing but a torturous taunt.

So I used that power and I gave up the gift of the stars.

So what does this mean? She wouldve become a goddess?

“We saved our world,” Kaila retorts. “We fought for it, and we prevailed. Now, we can alert the rest of Orea. Let people know the danger is gone and that we’ve defeated the fae once and for all.” I take in Kaila’s demeanor. Beside me, Osrik tenses, and I can see Lu pause where she’s wrapping a timberwing’s leg, her head turning to look at the queen with a hint of distrust.

Kaila is a damn cockroach

Päyur. “It’s Saira Turley, isn’t it?” I say. “Yes. And the prince.” He points to their auras that glow around them. “I’ve heard from some of the Vulmin that they were one of the strongest pairs to have ever bonded.” He pauses, finger hooking over the page. “Like us.”

“Oh, Goldfinch,” he murmurs. “If ever there was a person for whom love was created, it was for you.”

Because this love? This is what it feels like… to fly.