Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

To those who were kept in the dark. May you smile at the sun.

Brown eyes glare out of a ruddy face, his chin prickled with week-old hair like spines on a cactus. I can smell the alcohol on him, so strong it overpowers the trash beneath me. He’s probably been into the cups for hours.

But now I have to reconcile all of those previous thoughts. Because the person who pushed my buttons and forced me to admit what I am, the male who kissed me in his tent and stood on the snowy shore of an arctic sea to watch a mourning moon...he’s someone else.

“Careful,” he says, baring his teeth in a wicked smile. “There’s a saying about rocks and glass houses.” “I don’t live in glass, I live in gold. So I can throw whatever damn rocks I want,” I snap.

I hate him. I hate him so much right now that my eyes burn. They burn until I can’t hold back the lick of flame anymore. A scorching tear leaks down my cheek, and his eyes follow it until it drips off my jaw. “Maybe my perceptions wouldn’t be so skewed if the people I trusted didn’t constantly trick and twist and lie,” I retort, bashing away another stray tear.

My heart squeezes tighter than my fists. I hate that part of me still feels relieved that he’s here, as if I’m safe now, as if he’s still my ally.

Ravinger has the same strong jaw, the same black hair. Rip is just more fae looking. Sharper. It’s no wonder people say that the feared commander has been mutated by King Rot, because Rip looks so other. The bones of his face, the tips of his ears, the spikes on his back and arms, all sharp enough to cut glass and so different from anybody else I’ve ever seen. In his Ravinger form, he looks strange because of those creeping dark roots that sway against his skin like shadows, so much of it hidden beneath the scruff of his jaw. I wonder just how far those lines stretch. I wonder what they mean.

“I want you to leave, Rip,” I say again, hoping this time he’ll listen. “I told you, you can call me Slade.” “No, thanks,” I reply curtly, enjoying the flash of frustration that goes through his eyes. “But I’ll curtsy for you instead, Your Moldering Majesty.”

“And what the Divine hell did you do to my guards?” The men are still coughing a little, but at least they managed to stay standing, even if they do look like death rolled over. “Oh, them? I rotted them a little.” Midas blanches. “You...you what?”

A sound like a growl erupts from Midas’s chest. “Or...” Ravinger goes on. “Perhaps I simply wanted to see how the acting monarch of Fifth Kingdom lives.” Green eyes slip over to me. “Interesting how one keeps a king’s favored,” he muses with a twist of his lips. “What does it say, do you think, about a male who keeps a woman in a cage?”

If we shifted, if it were his head pressed against my chest, would he hear? Would he hear the sound of my heart and know what it means? Would he recognize the lyrical loathing?

Dressed head to toe in black, his impeccably tailored pants and tunic do nothing to hide the muscles beneath. He looks good. Way too damn good. His gaze drops to his boots, and when I follow his line of sight, mortification flushes my skin when I see one of my ribbons curling around his leg.

He may wear the crown, but I was the one who made it gold.

burning fire. I hurl a yell of frustration along with it, a noise made through clenched teeth and a

Blood pounds in my ears from my short-lived plummet, and I swing lightly back and forth, hanging like a puppet by its strings. The irony is not lost on me.

“Nope. I, uh...I’ve got it handled. Don’t try to catch me or anything, okay?” A snort escapes her. “Wasn’t going to. I want to enjoy watching you fall on your ass.” “Thanks,” I say dryly.

“Yep. Glad we’ve established that,” Lu calls up. Did I say she was my favorite Wrath? She’s not. I prefer Osrik.

LOL

He was my almost more. An idea, a hope, a reach in the dark. It wasn’t until my fist closed around emptiness that I realized I was grasping for him. And that’s what makes my eyes sting with regret. He pushed me to light, to burn, only to douse me with ashen deceit.

We tell ourselves twisted lies to tangle around our wicked truths, all so that we can get caught up in the bind and not have to face bare regrets.

When Rip sees their retreating steps, a storm gathers on his thick brow, and his aura pierces the air like an off-key note, making me wince from the pitched tremor. “You see a commander from another kingdom’s army coming toward your king’s favored, and your instinct is to back the fuck up?” he seethes.

“You’re lucky I’m not an enemy. You’re lucky my king has signed an alliance with yours. Because you’re both incompetent idiots who have no business guarding her,” Rip growls, his voice the low boil of a brewing anger, and that anger seems to stoke my flushed skin, makes my chest tighten. “Leave, before I tell your king how you behaved.” The guards gape. “But the favored—” “I will walk her to her rooms, and she’ll be far more protected by me. Unlike you two, I would never back up if a threat approached.”

Why does it all of a sudden seem as if my heart is a fawn picking her head up from behind a leafless shrub? Like I’m prey already entangled, not by teeth or claws, but by spikes. By the thorns hidden in the twist of the brambles I so willingly walked toward, my heart’s blood coating each barb. There’s no mistaking it. Right now, at my weakest and my most vulnerable, the truth lies bare, like a maiden stripped down to nothing. No matter how many times I try to lie to myself, no matter how many times I try to shove him out of my mind, the truth is in the blush of my skin and the ache of my chest. This male with the bottomless eyes has already snared me.

Before I can fall, Rip’s strong arms go around me, one beneath my knees, the other behind my back, and I’m swept up before I can even lose my center of gravity. I look up at him with wide eyes. “I slipped.” A soft laugh ripples out of him, as cool and refreshing as running water over timeworn rocks. “I noticed,” he replies, echoing the same conversation we’ve had before. When it was just the two of us standing beneath a blue mourning moon at the edge of an arctic sea.

“You caught me,” I say, though my voice comes out in more of a whisper, the sound of an unsaid question drifting inside of it. He tips his chin down, eyes coating me like shade against a scorched day. “I’ll do that anytime you need catching, Goldfinch.”

“But I could’ve gilded you,” I repeat. “Then you’d be a statue stuck right here on the stairwell, and I don’t think gold’s your color, Commander.” “I disagree. Gold has quickly become my favorite.” I gape at him, too dumbstruck to say a damn thing.

Rip adjusts his hold on me, and I have to work not to let my neck fall back. “You’re very floppy.” I rest my head against his firm, muscled chest. “You’re very hard,” I counter. A rich, dark laugh slips from his mouth. “You’ve no idea.”

“You know, I think I believe you. Even though I shouldn’t.” I feel the slightest bit of tension loosen from his bunched muscles. “Yes, you should.” One of my ribbons slips from its bow, the golden length looping around his arm, and an entirely too pleased look crosses his face. “Your ribbons seem to like me.” “Well, they don’t have brains, so…” The richest, deepest laugh I’ve ever heard lumbers through him and wraps around me. I almost lean toward the sound, like I want to bury myself beneath its bark.

The intensity of his gaze lights a fire in my belly. “My own good was stuck on a pirate ship, with an aura like a beacon that flared across the Barrens,” he grits out, a thick spun voice meant to tie knots around me. “My own good was cowering before men who were nothing—fucking nothing—in comparison to her.” All of my ability to breathe is gone as I stare at him in shock. “My own good hated me, fought me, argued with me, but I didn’t care, because I watched her slowly come out of her shell, peeling back one layer at a time, and it was stunning.” He raises a finger in front of my face. “I got one touch. One taste, and if it was an act of selfishness, then you should know, it certainly wasn’t one-sided, Auren.”

“I’m saying that you are my own good. And for you, I gave you a choice, but you chose him.”

“I’m glad you’re choosing you,” he says quietly, and my lips part, like I want to swallow the rumble of his cadence. “You are?” I go completely still as he moves his hand and grips my chin, like he wants to make sure I’m paying attention. I am. “Yes, Goldfinch. Because I’m choosing you, too.”

My ribbons trail out like vines, slinking up his body, wrapping around his arms to pull him closer. A guttural groan thunders from his chest at that, and he deepens the kiss even more, until it’s not just my skin that’s hot, but a needy fire that’s ignited between my legs. He stokes that need even higher when one hand skims down to stroke my ribbons, making a delicious shiver trickle along my back.

“Hopefully that clears things up.”

LOL um no sir it definitely does not

He straightens up, and even though the sight of him still has my pulse racing, it’s not in fear. Not anymore. His timing of that transformation was deliberate. Because his form might change, his eyes, his stance, his name, but those lips, his hands, his words, his heat...they’re the same.

Rip and Ravinger are the same, and it took a kiss for that ...

The monarchs are all sliding looks at each other when one isn’t looking, their words nothing more than riddles fluent in derision or rife with fake flattery. The only one as quiet as me is Slade.

In the meantime, I don’t particularly care to see the reminder of my lapse in control on her bruised face. I’ll let her be for now. Let her settle.

God Midas is the fucking worst

But...I also feel good. Like I’m doing something productive. It satisfies the creature pecking at my chest.

Im starting to wonder if this is a metaphor or not?

Mist is going to have Midas’s baby. The man who just struck me, hurt me, left bruises over my body. Sympathy, like a heavy, wet raincloud, drizzles over my mood, saturating it in sorrow for the woman sitting across from me. It could’ve been me. I could’ve been the one carrying his child, and then what would I have done? I’d never have been able to get away from him.

Mist’s life has been irrevocably changed forever. She’s now shackled with the master manipulator and reigning narcissist, a man who just showed me he’s not above hurting someone physically.

Every grip and stroke seems to fill an empty well inside of me. Despite the fact that he knows what touching my bare skin can do, he never hesitates. It’s like he can’t help himself, like he needs to feel me. Midas never touches me like that. His touches are always placating—a pat on my head, a tap on my jaw. Either that, or it’s possessive. But with Slade, it’s neither of those things. He touches me like he can’t resist, like he can’t go one more second without feeling me.

But as soon as I turn my head, he goes utterly still. It’s an unnatural stillness. The kind that makes my breath shrivel up while confusion and fear slithers through me. Fury pumps into the air around us, and then, with a voice as dark as the pits of hell, Slade says something that makes my eyes go wide. “Why the fuck is there a bruise on your cheek?”

Heat drips down from my navel, settling between my thighs and making my muscles go tight. His fingernail scrapes against my knuckle, an abraded edge of nearness that carries the hint of a need to dig in deep. Right then, I want to let him. To peel my layers open so he can get to what lies beneath.

“He hit you.” Slade grinds out the words, each one spoken from sharp back teeth. Midas has done far more than that, but emotional assault doesn’t leave any marks on the skin.

“You’re not pathetic,” he murmurs quietly, a somber sort of song. “You just haven’t found it yet.” My golden brows pull together as I search his expression for meaning. “Found what?” “We all have our edge, Auren. One day, you’re going to find where yours is.”

“You’re going to find out just how far you can be pushed until you’re tipped over. And when that happens, when you find your edge, just promise me one thing.” My voice comes out like a croak, a single tear dashing down. “What?” “Don’t fall.” Time stands still as he leans in and places a kiss on my temple, lips turning to whisper into my ear. “Fly.”

I’m glad for the anger I see on his face. Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it.

I thought I was going to lose it. Until Auren touched me. One touch, and she brought my magic to heel. I could practically taste her sunlit aura as it swept against mine. It’s a good thing no one else can see it but me, because people would’ve figured her out a long time ago. But distance and my own damn anger has my power stretching and slinking, like it wants to crawl out from beneath my skin and rot this whole damn castle.

That Midas has her use her power like this, nearly draining herself, all to boast his own image. Because this gold does nothing. It’s not for the people to use, it’s not counted in the royal coffers. It’s just a useless, wordless brag.

Leaning in close, I let the fucker see the magic lines crawling up my neck. He can never look at it without flinching. I need him out of Drollard. Every second he has eyes there is time for him to find out more shit I don’t want him knowing. No one has ever uncovered the secret I’ve kept buried there, and I sure as hell am not going to let him of all people gain entry to one of my only vulnerabilities.

I’m a once-clear pond gone all murky, like Slade dove in and splashed around in my depths. Without me realizing it, he slipped into my veins and now swims through my every thought, steeped into every drop.