Gold (The Plated Prisoner, #5)

by Raven Kennedy

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

The only reason I don’t, and the only reason I’m not destroying it all and letting this entire harbor city wash up with those rotted fish, is because Auren wouldn’t want me to. She’d want me to spare the innocents. For now, I have to assume he is one. So instead of letting my sizzling magic release on him, I lean forward and whisper in a cruel taunt. “Run.”

Now I have his attention. I uncross my arms slowly, brace them on my knees as I lean forward, and look him right in the fucking eye as my voice drops low. “Let me tell you how this is going to go.” His hands tremble. “There’s a woman upstairs, lying in a mender bed because she was stabbed in the chest.” Manu’s eyes shift. “She’s been lying there for weeks. All because of you.” His head shakes back and forth. “I didn’t stab her! It was Second’s man!” The dagger that flies from my hand is so quick that he can’t track it. Doesn’t even notice that I’d yanked it from the sheathe at my hip. He screams as it plunges into his shoulder, his back knocked into the wall behind him. He stares in shock at the weapon sticking out of his body. “I missed your heart. Just like he missed hers.” A bead of sweat tracks down his forehead, and he sucks a breath in through his teeth as he glances back up at me. “Your fate is now tied to hers. If she’s stabbed, you’re stabbed,” I say darkly. “If she bleeds, you bleed. If she doesn’t drink, you don’t drink.” His eyes have gone wide. “If she has to soil herself in that bed because she’s so mortally injured that she can’t even fucking get up to take a piss, then you’re going to sit here in your own filth.” It’s not just his hands anymore. His whole body is shaking. I drop my voice to barely above a growl. “And if she dies, you fucking die, you scheming piece of shit.” He’s sweating fucking buckets now.

“The thing about the forced devout, or punishments doled out by the pious…is that followers eventually realize what they’re enduring isn’t for the gods at all. Your highly dedicated Matrons are festering with resentment, bitterness, and hate. All they need is an opening, and they’ll jump at a chance to get out.”