Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

I may not have gold-touch, and I may not have rot, but words are the most powerful weapon of all, and I will wield them.

Like a dam giving way, this is what happens when power is suppressed for too long, left to collect, to rise, to beat against its containment until the cracks form and it can finally break free.

Mountains should know better than to bow to the wind.

“Auren, you need to wake up.” Of course she doesn’t listen. She never listens to me. Always argues, always has a simmering fire just beneath the surface, which I fucking love. “Wake up and argue with me, Goldfinch.”

Stop you romantic fool 😫

“We’ve all got a little rotten in us, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. It’s how we’ve survived.”

“You don’t have to be cruel to be strong. You don’t have to be mean to seem brave. You don’t have to look down on others in order to stand tall. Having emotions does not mean you’re weak. It means you’re smart enough to let yourself feel.”

“Who will I be?” She leans forward and kisses my forehead, combing my damp hair away from my face. “You will be completely yourself. And you will be proud.”

Keg lets his head fall back as he laughs loudly. “Captain, you wound me. I’m romantic as fuck. If I was propositioning you, I’d knock your Divine-damned socks off.” “Just so you know, my socks smell like shit.”

My thoughts snap back to that night when Auren told us about Rissa. About how the bitch was basically blackmailing her. I suggested we kill her. I suggest killing a lot.

“You listen here, you savage hairy giant. I’m a sex worker and a woman. You think I have the privilege of living my life on some moral high ground?” she spits out. “Well, let me tell you, I don’t. Saddles give the world the pleasure it wants, and what do we get in return? We’re controlled and judged, and that’s just best-case scenario. So you can hate me all you want, want to kill me even, but I do what I have to in order to survive in this world, and if that means I use information to my advantage, then I’m going to do it.”

“You’re gorgeous when you’re unhinged,” I tell her. Then, I slam my lips against hers.

😍

“I will drive myself so far into you all you’ll feel is pleasure for how fucking glorious you are as you burn for me.

But I will always ground her. I will always remind her of who she is. Because I see her. I always fucking have.

“There was something inside of me that just snapped open.” “And it was fucking glorious.” She flinches. “How can you say that?” she asks, her voice cracking. “I became a monster.” But I shake my head, brush my thumbs over her wet cheeks. “No, baby. Not a monster. A fae.”

Because if he gets close, he’ll see the truth. He’ll see how the ground at my feet is riddled with potholes and bumps.

But what is the value of strength when it’s just a facade?

“Where else would I be if not with you?”

I’ve always been treated like treasure, but with Slade, I’m simply treasured.

But even a haven stops being a refuge at some point.

Even to me, the I’m fine sounds like a collection of lies. A platitude of denial made up of heated stalling and forced ignoring.

He wants to yank out the stopper holding in my anguish while I’m still desperately trying to keep my fingers pressed to the cork.

The writing is on a whole new level this time. It’s pain and anguish and unfiltered emotion. So good

That’s the thing with trauma to the body—it shows up instantly. In breaks and bruises, in burns and in blood. But the trauma on the inside, that’s harder to see. It creeps around your mind, poisons you with disquiet. It can hit you out of nowhere, debilitating and ruinous. There are no marks visible for those. None, save the shadows in your eyes.

One of these males watches over me, the other sees right through me, no matter where I tell him to look.

Maybe none of us truly know our own strength. Not until the world has hacked away at us. But the point is, we aren’t strong because of our trauma. We were always strong to begin with. We just needed to figure it out for ourselves.

“I want to be so strong that I never have to fear anyone else in this world. That if I need to, I can make them all fear me. And I want you to teach me.”

“The next time someone wants to try and use me, control me, I want to be ready. I want to crush those who would keep me under their thumb.”

You never notice what’s keeping you balanced until you realize you’re not standing straight anymore.

Rashness, fiery tantrums, outbursts, those are never well thought out. Punishment is best served cold.

“Oh, Goldfinch, I’d follow you to the end of the world and tip right off the edge, all because of a crook of your finger.”

“You are not indebted to anyone, Goldfinch, least of all me,” he murmurs as he continues to release the tension and the pain, like the real magic is in his touch. “You are priceless. You are worth more than gold. And the world owes you so much more than what you’ve been given.”

Because that’s what he always does for me. He finds every aching part and helps me work through it. Even when I don’t want to.

Because that’s what men did. They took and they hurt and no one ever stopped them.

“I want you to understand something, Goldfinch. I am not good. I will rot every person in my way, will bring a blight to every corner of the world if I have to.”

“If you’re a villain...then I’ll be a villain with you.”

The choice is mine. So unprecedented. Choices have never been mine, so I don’t want to waste a single one.

But maybe that’s just what home is. A feeling.

Instead of being afraid of the whole damn world, I could make the whole damn world afraid of me.