Gold (The Plated Prisoner, #5)

by Raven Kennedy

When you feel swallowed by the dark, may you become your own light.

So, yes, I was scared to fall. But without falling, I never would have landed. And what a beautiful thing it was to land.

It wraps around my body like threads of the sun. Like bands of steel. Like rays of warmth. Like streams of light. Like…

“You’re the Lyäri Ulvêre,” she says again, her voice choking up. My own voice pants out, my temples throbbing as my dizziness begins to tunnel through my spiraling mind. “I don’t understand…” A tear falls down her cheek, even as a smile tugs at her thin lips. “It means it’s alright, Lady Auren. Because you’re home.”

It’s time I remind her and everyone else exactly why you don’t fuck with me and mine.

“We loyalists call you the Lyäri Ulvêre—the golden one gone. The gilded girl who was lost in the night.”

“We know you, Lady Auren, because we’ve been praying that one day, you would return. We know you, because you are the Turleys’ last-birthed heir.”

I love him with a fierceness that goes beyond the heart, and so I will ache and leak and grieve until he finds me. And he will find me. For now, I shut my eyes and think of him, letting my subconscious reach out with gentle fingers. Maybe somewhere in Orea, his eyes will close too. Maybe he’ll feel my pull, and we can meet in our dreams while we sleep. And maybe there, we can be home, for just a little while. Because my new home, I’ve realized…is him.

Desperation knots my veins, makes me lump up my ribbons on my lap. They always reached for him. Touched and danced and played. Flirted. Then they were gone, and now he’s gone. So I’m whole…but I’m not.

It’s like my heart—my fucking soul—has been torn from my chest, leaving me to gape.

So long as she’s wheezing, she’s alive. So wheezing has been my favorite fucking sound lately.

I lied, though. I do want something. But I already had it. For a fleeting fucking second, I had it, before it was yanked away. And every day Rissa stays in that bed and doesn’t wake up, there’s less and less chance I’m getting it back.

It’s strange to return to the place where your roots are, only to realize you’re actually a tumbleweed, cut off and drifting.

He looks at me like he’s not surprised at my answer, and then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pocket watch. It’s silver with an embossed broken-winged bird sigil right there on the front case. “You keep this,” he says, handing it over. “And remember that wherever you are, you have people behind you.”

Because she wouldn’t want me to. As if on cue, pain in my chest spikes so fiercely that I nearly sway on my feet. It bulges and burrows, the black veins in my skin starting to stutter. My heartbeat slugging in my chest like a drunken punch.

I promised her I’d be the villain on her behalf. So that’s what I’ll fucking be.

Ever since, she has been my light. For someone with a soul as black as mine, who’s done the darkest deeds and has the foulest power, her glow is something I will not give up. Without her, I am darkness and death, and that is what I will be until I get her back.

Unlike the rest of the animals, they don’t bolt. They don’t separate. Instead, both timberwing and fire claw begin to steadily and carefully walk away, neither of them leaving the other’s side. They prowl across the empty, frigid landscape together, snow cat and flightless bird. Free.

“I sensed it inside of her before, but as soon as she went through the rip…it felt like someone dug inside my chest and scooped something out. Like there’s a chunk that was ripped out. I’m bleeding out rot. It’s infecting me, affecting my magic, and I swear to fuck, sometimes it twinges, like I can almost feel her. And all of this, it’s just a physical manifestation of what I already knew.” “What?” “That I can’t live without her. I won’t stand for it, and neither will my rot. The separation is killing me, Ry. In more ways than one.”

Grief isn’t based on someone’s length of presence. It’s based on the impact of their absence.

“Some people are in your life for only a moment, like a shooting star. Quick and short, but they light up a part of you for a second, and their brightness lingers even after they’re gone.”

“And what about this…dangerous lover of yours? Did he tame you?” The smile on my face goes sad, a fresh pang of longing pinching the center of my chest. “The opposite. He set me free.”

Emonie comes up. With light steps, she leans down, placing the broken-winged bird charm from her earring onto the ash. As soon as she steps away and sits beside me, more Vulmin take her place, each one of them setting down their own sigils. Until there’s over a hundred of them lying at the foot of my home, glinting among ash and rubble. Until all of them are kneeling with me, here on the hallowed street. A silent tribute. A wordless bond.

“If there is ever a choice between her or the world, it’s going to be her.”