Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

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

“Shove down weakness, and strength will rise. You can’t be strong without conquering those weaknesses first. That’s what I think, anyway.”

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

Men ruin all of women’s best laid plans.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

Why is it that a man can make you feel like nothing, when you have given him everything?

When that man turns his smiles and nice words onto you, it’s hard not to fall under his spell.

“I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. For a long time, I convinced myself that was what love and friendship was, because I didn’t know any better.”

I couldn’t face the truth that Midas was abusing me too, just in a different way.”

“If Midas ever loved me at all, he buried it beneath his love for gold and the love for himself. Buried it so deep that he doesn’t even remember what he covered.”

“Like I’m a person instead of a trophy. Like you don’t just look at me and see gold,”

You’re not the villain in my story.” “I am,” he says without remorse, his sharp jaw tight with tension. “But I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.”

“But I get all of you too. I won’t ever again give myself to someone who doesn’t give himself back to me. So make very certain that you’re choosing this, King Ravinger,” I parrot back to him. “Because once you do, there’s no turning back.”

He thinks I’m gorgeous. Okay, yeah, he thinks I’m a liar too, but the takeaway here is the gorgeous part.

There comes a point in your life when you have to choose between having regrets and the possibility of making mistakes.

She is everything I don’t deserve.

“But that’s the curse of the survivors. We have to live with our dead.”

“I thought you loved me, but you only love yourself. I know what it feels like now to truly be cherished and respected, and those are two things you’ve never done,”

“You can’t cut off the strings of your puppet and still expect it to move for you.”