Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

I won’t allow another storm to touch Auren. She has been flooded and wrung out, left to take the barrage without shelter. But so long as I’m here, I will be her shelter.

“No, Slade. Not you. You don’t break things. You protect them.”

“That’s okay, I fell too,” he says, pointing to his soiled socks. “And know what?” he asks. “What?” “The grass stains match your eyes too.” I don’t think I ever saw a smile that looked so sad.

“I don’t mean die physically, but mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.” She presses a hand to her chest, thumping it twice. “You can’t contemplate or settle or thrive when you’re living like that. I was dead and running, just trying to keep up with survival. Just making it one day. People don’t get that, you know? If they’ve never lived like that. It’s one day. A whole slew of one-day-at-a-times, just getting through, squeezing by. Always running, never expecting anything else. Never having anyone or anything but that running and fighting and dying through it.”

This time, you found your goldfinch and watched her leave her cage. She’ll open her eyes, just like you got the rest of us to do.”

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

She stares at me like I’m her lifeline. Like I’m her only hope of not being torn to shreds. But I will always ground her. I will always remind her of who she is. Because I see her. I always fucking have.

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. He’ll see the stark fear in my trembling lip and the guilt in my eyes as I try to keep backing away. He’ll see the reality of the destruction that surrounds me, while I desperately try not to trip. Distance is all I have between me and having to come to terms with the carnage that’s piling up to my knees.

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

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.

I may be empty, but I am not alone. And that, at least, is something.

I can choose to stay stagnant here, at the bottom of the cliff, broken and unmoving. I can rage, I can wallow, I can blame, I can hide. I can let the severed parts of me sever all the rest. Or I can get up, dust myself off, and look back up.

But none of that changes my determination. I need to be strong for myself. Because I will never forget that feeling of being held against a wall while I was mutilated. I will never forget that feeling of utter helplessness. Perhaps things are born from trauma. An anger. A clarity. A beast. It scares me. Terrifies the hell out of me—of what I did that night. Because I don’t know my own power. But that’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it? 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.

Why would you care? Why do I keep watching you? Why are you trying to help me? Why does my heart quicken every time you’re near?

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

“Even the most powerful people can be made to feel powerless. Finding your strength even when you believe you have none is what makes you a true force.

“No. The depth of his control over my thoughts. My decisions. My life. Even now, I find myself cringing away from people, not just because of my power, but because he never wanted me to be touched. I saw things one way; he told me I was seeing it wrong. I felt something; he convinced me I was crazy or overreacting.”

“It’s everything,” I explain. “The little things. How submissive I’d become. How trodden. I was nothing but a road to him. A means to get to where he wanted to go, and I paved that path in gold. Even now, I worry I’ll never really be rid of him. I worry that I’ll still be walked all over. What if I never truly heal from his manipulations? What if the damage he’s done to my person is never undone?”

But if you’re ever doubting, just stop and listen to the voice in your head. So long as the voice is yours and not his, then you know you’re beating the bastard.”

“I’m just fucking angry. Angry that I let it go on that long, that I let him take so much. I’m angry at everyone who ever wronged me or used me. And I’m angry that I didn’t figure out how to save myself sooner.

I’ve always been more passive in life. I think passivity is often mistaken for weakness. Really, it’s just a different way to cope. To survive. The safest way I learned to react to situations was to endure. To let things blow over. To please. To peace keep.

My Divine-damned mind was warped into the mold of someone else’s purpose. The abuse came in shades of gray. Some were darker and more noticeable than others. Some, I probably haven’t even noticed yet. My healing from this isn’t going to happen overnight. But...I’m free now. Truly free. For the first time in twenty years, I have the chance to decide who I’m going to be, how I’m going to be. And I don’t want to waste it on him. I want to sever his effects as meticulously and as thoroughly as he severed me.

I told him I wanted everything, and when you ask for everything from a person, you don’t get to pick and choose. You take them as they are.

“I know what you went through was horrible, but for what it’s worth, I am glad that you’re here in this world with me,” I say quietly. His eyes soften. “Oh, Goldfinch. I would’ve found you in whatever world you were in. In whatever life.”

He doesn’t keep us face-to-face, he has me like this with my back still bared to him, and when he places kisses there again, it’s like he’s replacing the violence and marking me with tenderness instead. Reminding me that I’m not ruined. That despite it all, we’re here, together, and that sometimes, our worlds have to rip in order for us to end up where we’re meant to be.

“One person’s pain doesn’t negate another’s. Our heartaches are not competition, but the bridge to empathy. So that we can look at one another and know that on some level, we understand.

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

“I thought I was making changes, making strides to be independent, but what if I’m not? What if I’m making the same mistakes all over again?” He jerks back, spine gone stiff against the carved wall. “You think you and I are a mistake?” I toss up my hands with exasperation, because the more I talk, the more frustrated I am. “No. But what if I am hopping from one king to another? I just got away from a one-sided relationship riddled with abuse. I’m finally free of all that, free to live, and I’ve never had that before. Ever.

You are mine, and I am yours, and whatever pleasure you seek, I will be there to watch you get it, and I will feed it to you tenfold afterward because you are mine, and I will see that you get what you need.”

“I mean you’re mine to please. To pleasure.” The motive in his eyes matches with the drag of his hand, the curl of his palm as he presses against my throbbing clit and makes me see sparks of light behind my eyes. “You’re mine to protect. To adore. To hear. To see. To experience. To love.”

“You’re mine, Auren. As wholly as I am yours. If there’s something you crave, if there’s some freedom you want to try the taste of, then you will do it, and I will be right there with you. Watching you devour your wants. And then I will devour you.”