Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

Because he knows the answer. I can see it in his face. “Midas,” he snarls, like a predator with its eyes trained on a trespassing hunter in the woods. He waits, looking at me to confirm, yet I don’t reply, don’t even nod my head.

Possessiveness

All twenty-four of my ribbons lurch to attention. They become charged with energy, as if they’ve felt the erratic spike of his magic and are answering in kind. Yet instead of them lashing out at him like they did with Midas, they form a cocoon, like they’re creating another layer upon his aura that’s already surrounding us. These parts of ourselves feel so alive. So decadent.

I think her ribbons know that she is compatible with him, not Midas.

“Since the moment I arrived in Fifth Kingdom, I’ve thought about little else other than ripping him to shreds with my bare hands. But do you know what stops me?” he asks, his thumb still caressing, our beats still in rhythm. “More than politics and potential world wars.” I don’t want to ask, but I do anyway. “What?” “You.”

My mind recoils at the way he spits the word, at the bitterness that stains his exhale, and I yank my hand away from his chest, like I’ve been scalded by it. “Me?” “Yes. You would hate me for it, because for whatever reason, you still care for him.” “I don’t,” I argue, saying it again when he scoffs at me. “Oh, really?” he challenges. “Then ask me.” My mind stumbles, like I’m riding too fast downhill and the speed is getting away from me. “Ask you...?” “Ask me to kill him for you.”

“That quick, Auren. I’d end him in a breath, in a room full of people who’d run screaming, with monarchs who’d band together against me. But if you wanted me to do it, I would. So say it.”

There’s a churning in my stomach, his declaration twisting me all up so much that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to disentangle myself. Based on the woven look in his grass-bladed eyes, he feels the same.

“Judge me for it—for not being able to end him,” I say softly, almost like I want him to. And maybe I do. Maybe it would be a good punishment, fit for the girl who fell in love with her captor and let herself flounder. “I know how pathetic I must seem to you.”

“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.”

“He fucking hit her.” Osrik stops in his tracks. I turn to face him, and his brown eyes blink at me, his round face going ruddy beneath his scruff. “What the fuck did you say?”

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

It’s time to face facts. Like I told Auren, I’ve been away from my kingdom for too long. She’s made her choice, and I have to accept that, no matter how strongly my instincts try to convince me otherwise. No matter how much my magic rebels.

Vulnerability pierces me right in my chest, but I know I can’t stop now. Even though I’ve run out of breath, I have to keep on exhaling, keep on purging, or else I’m going to suffocate in my own poison.

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.”

I watch him and he watches me, and in my head, I hear him saying, you are my own good. In the tingle of my lips, I’m feeling the heat of his mouth when he kissed me.

There’s an internal compass inside of me that laid still for so long, stuck behind its arc of glass, listless and without hope. But it’s been spinning since the moment I left Highbell, begging me to follow my instincts. To move toward something better.

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you, Goldfinch. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”

“I want all of you,” he tells me, a newfound hunger in the depths of his green eyes that stirs heat beneath my skin. “Every piece, every memory, every minute, every inch. This isn’t going to be some casual dalliance. This isn’t going to be temporary. I want you soul, mind, and body. I want your trust and your thoughts. I want your past, your present, your future. So make very certain that you want me for the right reasons. Be certain that you’re choosing this, because once you do, there’s no turning back.”

“Oh, I’m certain,” he replies. “I chose you the moment you called me a prick, and your ribbons tried to knock me on my ass.”

“Love happens in all kinds of ways. Fast. Slow. In bits and pieces, or immediate. Filled with lust, one-sided longing, a snap realization never noticed before. Deeply. Thoroughly. Love is a whisper we didn’t hear or a sound that drums in our ears and drowns out everything else.”

“I don’t want to be your master, Auren. I’m not asking to keep you like property. I’m asking you to give me your all and not hold back, because I’m far too deep with you to settle for anything less. It’s what our fae nature demands. It is what I will demand. Once I have you, I’m not going to give you up.”

There comes a point in your life when you have to choose between having regrets and the possibility of making mistakes. I’d rather make those mistakes than live without ever taking a chance, because I’ve missed out on too much already. Taking chances can be like walking through a mudslide, where every inch of you gets stained, but regrets are the stagnant pools of deprivation, and I’ve been wading in them for far too long.

One look at Slade, and my face heats, but I don’t want my nerves to get the better of me. I want to be confident, sexy, in control. Empowered.

I know how difficult it was for her to place her emotions at my feet, especially considering how many people have trampled and manipulated them in the past. I know what it took for her to trust me, and I also know that I’ll destroy myself before I ever let her down.

She’s a burst of light in my dark, erupting life in the rotting depths of my soul. She is everything I don’t deserve. But I’m going to keep her anyway.

I watch in amusement as I finish my food and drink my fill, all while relishing their easy interactions. It makes me relax bit by bit until I find that I’m just...enjoying myself. I’m not on edge. Not having to watch what I do or say. I don’t have to play a part. I can simply be myself and not look over my shoulder. We might be on Ranhold’s front doorstep, but in this moment, I feel an ocean away.

Quicker than Judd can dodge, she smacks him on the back of the head, making him grunt. “Ow! Why are you so violent?” Lu flashes him a grin that’s all teeth. “Because it makes me happy.”

“Tell me.” Not a command. He says it in a way that lets me know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s here as my ally. That he’s not just my lover, but someone I can depend on, can trust, and that’s what gives me the strength to finally unburden myself and let my tongue unravel from the secret knots that have tied up my throat.

Then, Midas brings the sword down on them, the edge of the sharp blade slicing into their golden lengths, and my entire sense of self fractures. All I know is utter agony. Utter, eclipsing, unmitigated agony. I don’t just scream. I rupture.

Something prods in my chest, pounds against my ribs. The hammer of a blacksmith against an anvil, red-hot metal ready to be forged.

I take a step closer to him, leaving just a foot of distance between us. To show him that I’m not afraid. To show him that even though he split me down the middle and stole pieces from my soul, he’ll never win.

That moment of him rescuing me was what made me trust him. It created the base for my shaken footsteps. I viewed him as some sort of savior. But he orchestrated even that. He manipulated me right from the start, before we even spoke face-to-face.

He made me trust him, love him. He made me think he was my hero, when all along, he was my villain.

A single gold ribbon. One I know very well. One I expect to lift up and move. Except...it doesn’t. It’s not trying to weave closer to me or shove Midas away in a protective furor. It just hangs there limply, and I know instantly that something is wrong. It’s in the lackluster color, the drooping ends. Even at rest, Auren’s ribbons are always...alive. As vibrant as she is.

That’s all the warning I get before the entire room seems to erupt with power all at once.

Everywhere around me, the gold that Auren has created seems to come to life. All I have time to do is suck in a breath as the floor, the walls, the fucking table, every inch of metal, melts like magma. It starts to attack like it’s taken on a mind of its own, like it heard the call of its mistress, and it’s come to do her bidding.

“You punished the one who mattered,” I promise her. You punished him.

“I can’t. I don’t know how to let it go!”

Shockwaves go through my Wrath, and then a hobbling Digby comes pushing past them to check on Auren. When he sees the state of her, he brings a pair of glaring eyes up to me. “You’d better fix her. You hear me, boy? Fix. Her.”