Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

I don’t think I ever saw a smile that looked so sad.

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.

“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.”

And two, the people of Ranhold love nothing more than to warm themselves by spreading the flames of gossip. It’s a good way to keep spirits heated.

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.

This is the suffering of the silent. A hurt so deep it doesn’t show itself on a face. The tears fall down my wooden expression, leaking from slowly blinking eyes while I stare at my reflection

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.

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

I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.