Gleam: The Plated Prisoner (Book 3)

Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it

Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it.

But the eyes of liars are tricky things. They can show you what you want to see without ever reflecting the truth. It’s best not to look a liar in the eye. They’re so good at their own compulsions that their gazes hold steady, and then you’re the one who loses sight.

“Love happens in all kinds of ways. Fast. Slow. In bits and pieces, or immediate. Filled with lust, one-sided longing, a snap realization never noticed before. Deeply. Thoroughly. Love is a whisper we didn’t hear or a sound that drums in our ears and drowns out everything else.”

My eyes bore into him as I wait for him to divulge.

I blink at the fierceness in his tone. I don’t think anyone has ever dared to call me boy, even when I was one. Yet I’m too damn terrified to even be bothered. I have no idea if I did more harm than good by using my power to keep her in this paused state, but I need to get her out of here. Far away, where there is no gold to grip her.

I turn and start stalking off, the others hurrying to match my step as I head for my army’s camp.

“What do you want to do, Slade?” Ry asks at my side.

My eyes harden with my resolve, only softening when they drop down to Auren’s face.

I’m going to fix her. She’s going to be alright.

I won’t accept anything else. I won’t even consider it.

Shouting voices from the front of the castle carry across the night air, making my steps quicken.

“We need to leave. Right fucking now,” I reply grimly. “Get the army back to Fourth.”

As soon as the panic abates, the survivors and witnesses are going to be talking. Accusing. Pointing fingers. They’re going to want answers and demand atonement. Because the dead can’t say what transpired in that ballroom.

But Queen Kaila can.

She and her group were in there. They saw what happened, and they saw that it was Auren who made it so.

It’s just a matter of time before they come for her.

But I’ll be fucking ready.

Her power wavers at the sudden intrusion, but the look of fear in her eyes nearly kills me.

“Forgive me,” I say again, because she’s scared of me. But she’s weak, so fucking weak, and I’m out of time.

With another push of power, I force her body to languish, even as my instincts scream that this is wrong. My own magic wars with me as I force her in a stasis between life and decay, as I make my power rot her from within. But I’m scared, so fucking scared that I could hurt her, that I could somehow do something wrong, push too hard.

“Forgive me,” I whisper for a third time, but I know she can no longer hear me. Please let this work, I implore silently. Please let her be okay.

When her aura is nothing but a wisp, she finally slumps, letting out a single, dusty breath as I catch her in my arms.

Without her consciousness to direct it, the wave of gold comes crashing to the floor. Taking a limp Auren in my arms, I run out of the archway just as a loud smash sounds. But even in the hall, more insipid gold is dropping from the ceiling and solidifying against the floor in uneven waves, nearly making me trip.

I dodge and duck, my spikes digging beneath my skin in a protective surge, wanting to come breaking out, but I grit my teeth and suppress it.

Gold floods the floor, splashing against the stairs, an unsuspecting servant crying out from somewhere behind me.

“Over here!”

I find Osrik waving me forward, and I skid to the right, trying to keep from jostling Auren too much as he leads me out.

The entire castle seems to groan, and I realize that more gold than just what was in the ballroom is rioting without Auren conscious to direct it.

No wonder she fucking drained herself. It’s like she brought every piece of gold in the castle to life.

“Out here,” Osrik grunts, just before he takes a sharp right, where a doorway is being propped open by Ryatt.

The moment we make it out, Ry lets the door slam shut, and not three seconds later, something hard slams against the door, splintering the wood. We all back up on instinct, watching as gold curls through the break. But much to my relief, it gives one last shake before it solidifies, its movement stiffening to a stop.

The crashing and crackling of the rest of Ranhold Castle dies down too, until bleak, unnatural silence bleeds through the air.

“Shit,” Lu says, letting out a low whistle.

Osrik looks down at Auren. “Is she okay?”

My stomach churns, a tic jumping in my jaw. “I don’t know.”

Shockwaves go through my Wrath, and then a hobbling Digby comes pushing past them to check on Auren. When he sees the state of her, he brings a pair of glaring eyes up to me. “You’d better fix her. You hear me, boy? Fix. Her.”

“Use your ribbons,” I urge her. They’re strong. She’s strong. She only needs to trust herself and—

A lamenting sob pours out of her mouth, eyes filling as she looks at me with something like regret. “I can’t.”

I frown, not understanding the look on her face, but Midas’s laugh heckles me.

“Oh, she didn’t tell you?” he asks smugly, mouth curved up. “She lost that privilege.”

My body goes still. Even the roots clawing at my neck seem to pause.

Midas motions down to her hand, and for the first time in all of this madness, I realize what’s tied around her wrist.

A single gold ribbon. One I know very well. One I expect to lift up and move.

Except...it doesn’t. It’s not trying to weave closer to me or shove Midas away in a protective furor. It just hangs there limply, and I know instantly that something is wrong. It’s in the lackluster color, the drooping ends. Even at rest, Auren’s ribbons are always...alive. As vibrant as she is.

And that’s when I see the severed end, the curdled drips of blood left behind.

No. No.

Something roars in my ears, and my eyes flash up to her misery-laced face, as the realization of what he’s taken from her sinks into me like a boulder. “Auren...” I rasp, my voice sounding as gutted as I feel.

As tears drip down her cheeks, my heart feels like it breaks in half.

“She’s helpless and completely at my mercy, and she will die at my hand if you force it,” Midas says, but I barely even hear it. “Ten seconds, Ravinger.”

I want to ask him what he means, but I don’t get the chance.

In the next brush of his lips against mine, his power rises up, the cloying, corrupt magic that steals the breath from my chest.

A choked noise catches in my throat as I feel something horrible rake down my insides, like poisoned air. My wet eyes go wide in shock, and I try to flinch away from him, but Slade holds me still, green eyes keeping me hostage.

My lips part on a jagged, rough cry rent from the stutter in my heart. From something insipid and withering that seems to decay the very bones in my body.

“Forgive me,” he whispers again.

I couldn’t answer him even if I wanted to. My vision decays, and in the next instant, my hold on the magic snaps with the last of my strength, like a dam bursting. All I feel before I black out is a clash of metal and rot, of gold and black colliding together in a rush of heat and dust.

The last thing I hear is Slade’s voice from that moment in the library.

We all have our edge, Auren. One day, you’re going to find where yours is.

I found it, I want to tell him.

I found my edge.

The question is, did I fall, or did I fly?

a terrified gasp flooding from my surging chest.

I barely have the might to send it back, but more is advancing, a ripple going through the floor, edging nearer. I have no idea where everyone else is, but terror grips my chest. What if I killed the Wrath, or Digby, or innocents? And yet, that’s what is going to happen, because my control is fading fast.

“It’s going to hurt you!” I cry, hands now scrabbling to push him away. “Go, Slade, I can’t...I can’t hold it back much longer, and I don’t know how to stop it!”

Hands land on my cheeks, cupping my face, and my eyes spring open, though I hadn’t realized I’d even closed them.

“Look at me.”

Frightened eyes lock onto him. “You have to leave.”

But the stubborn male shakes his head. “I already told you. If you think I’m leaving without you, you’re out of your damned mind.”

The echo of his previous words brings a sob up my throat as exhausted, terrified tears track down my face.

How quickly this astonishing power turned so disastrous. How quickly it overwhelmed me.

I can’t do what he’s saying. I’ve never had good control over my magic, and now, it’s running rampant, its will trying to buckle my own.

“Auren, your aura is fading fast, you have to let go!” he pleads.

There’s alarmed fear in his eyes now, and his aura lurches around me, like it’s trying to grasp onto my own to keep it from fading. I’ve never seen him look afraid before, and the sight of it makes me tremble.

I can feel myself draining, but if I let it go like he wants me to, then the tentative tether I have on the gold will give way. It will unleash on him and anyone else in its path before it settles, and I can’t let that happen. I made the gold unleash with the heart of a beast, and now, its single-minded will is to destroy.

“Leave. Please,” I beg.

I shudder with the effect of the drain, of trying to hold onto this power that’s overtaken every part of me.

My vision blacks out, and I slump, ears roaring, though I don’t know if that’s the magic overloading my veins, or my galloping pulse. There’s a tug through my gut, like my very life-force is being pulled on, and it tears a ragged breath from my panting chest.

I can hold it. I will hold it, until he’s out of harm’s way, for as long as my exhaustion can stand it.

My eyes are heavy, my breathing labored. Sweat drips down my neck and stings the jagged cuts of my ribbons, and I feel something in me sinking.

I’m dying.

“Dammit, Auren, you don’t have time. Let go!” Slade roars.

I open my mouth to tell him I can’t, but all that comes out is a pitiful whimper.

Then, he suddenly yanks my face forward and presses his lips against mine. The shock of it stuns me for a moment, and my faltering hold on the magic wavers.

Slade pulls back, something pained in his eyes. “Forgive me,” he breathes against my mouth.