Gleam (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 3)

by Raven Kennedy

  With one last look at me, Midas turns on his heel and catches up with Niven. The prince’s prattling voice carries up to me as he launches into conversation. Midas matches Niven’s stride, so stiff that his arms don’t even swing at his sides. They round the corner and disappear from view, and a tension I hadn’t realized I carried immediately loosens its grip on me.

  “Come, my lady.”

  I pull my attention to the guards. “Yeah. Okay,” I say with a sigh. “Just...give me a second.”

  Still leaning on the railing, I look down at my feet, as if eyeing them will somehow offer encouragement. I manage a step, then two, but by the third, my legs are shaking again. When I lift my foot and pull myself up the stair, I realize there’s a very good possibility I’ll end up on the floor in a crumpled heap.

  I stop again and lean against the railing, my palms throbbing where I grip the banister. Great Divine, four days of using my power nonstop is too much.

  “My lady?”

  “Just...gimme...a minute.” I say a minute this time instead of a second, but really, I’m gonna need a few hours.

  I try to breathe in and out, willing myself not to collapse. I pushed myself way further than I realized.

  “We must escort you upstairs immediately,” the guard insists.

  I feel weaker than I have in a long time, and it pisses me off. This weakness is exactly what I need to eradicate. I need to get my mind, my body, my power stronger.

  The guards share whispered conversation, but my mind is swimming, so they’re just going to have to wait. I lay my head against the railing, trying to talk my body into not falling asleep standing up. I’m not sure it’s working.

  “Goldfinch? What’s wrong?”

  My eyes snap open.

  Groggily, I swivel my head to the left without picking it up. Since when is my head so damn heavy?

  “Rip?”

  My vision tunnels as I watch him striding toward me, taking the stairs two at a time, his leather uniform practically molded against his muscled body. I can see it’s the real him, not his body-double, because his helmet is off and his dark aura is clinging to his silhouette. His spikes are jutting out menacingly, and the look on his face makes the guards back up.

  When Rip sees their retreating steps, a storm gathers on his thick brow, and his aura pierces the air like an off-key note, making me wince from the pitched tremor.

  “You see a commander from another kingdom’s army coming toward your king’s favored, and your instinct is to back the fuck up?” he seethes.

  Whoa.

  A chill runs down my spine at the dark anger that bleeds out of his voice, and my breath catches in my chest.

  He stops in front of the two men, a good half a foot taller than them both. The blazing black of his eyes make me glad I’m not the one who’s catching the brunt of his glare.

  “We...were just escorting her to her rooms.”

  “You were doing nothing but standing there being useless while she’s practically falling over.” His jaw is tight, expression filled with cutting disdain, and my pulse jumps at the ferocious protectiveness streaming from his words, like the warning growl of an alpha wolf.

  Right now, he looks every bit the menacing monster that the rumors paint him as. Even I’m a little scared, and I know he won’t hurt me. At least, not physically.

  “I’m fine,” I say, though my voice is throaty, quiet.

  The prod of his aura reaching out toward me takes me by surprise, and I gasp at the feel of it caressing over my skin. “Oh?” Rip asks me with a cock of his brow that lifts the row of blunt spikes there. “Then stand up straight.”

  “Oh sure, I’ll just lift a horse too while I’m at it. Maybe run all the way to the Barrens,” I grumble.

  “Mm-hmm,” Rip says, clearly cocky about proving his point.

  He turns back to the guards, who seem to have made his shit list. “You’re lucky I’m not an enemy. You’re lucky my king has signed an alliance with yours. Because you’re both incompetent idiots who have no business guarding her,” Rip growls, his voice the low boil of a brewing anger, and that anger seems to stoke my flushed skin, makes my chest tighten. “Leave, before I tell your king how you behaved.”

  The guards gape. “But the favored—”

  “I will walk her to her rooms, and she’ll be far more protected by me. Unlike you two, I would never back up if a threat approached.”

  My stomach does a flip, and a surge of emotions rises in me. I should be irritated that he’s stepping in when it’s none of his business, but instead, I’m...relieved. I’m relieved that he’s here, relieved that he’s defending me in his own way. Relieved that he’s Rip.

  “Commander—”

  “If King Midas saw how useless you were just now, he would bolt your arms to golden beams. But I’ll let you in on a secret.” He leans in close to their faces, the spikes on his arms like talons ready to strike, while the scales on his cheeks glint beneath the waning light. “I’d punish you far, far worse.”

  I hear one of the guards gulp.

  “Now go the fuck away.” He jerks his chin up, and that’s all it takes. The guard with the key thrusts it at Rip before the two of them turn and flee like their feet are on fire, steps rushing off until the noise fades completely.

  I’m left alone with Rip, and as we regard one another, time seems to go still, flattening out between us like an iced-over lake.

  I swallow, and his eyes trace down my throat, the skin at my neck flushing as if I can feel his gaze like the drag of a nail. Why does it all of a sudden seem as if my heart is a fawn picking her head up from behind a leafless shrub? Like I’m prey already entangled, not by teeth or claws, but by spikes. By the thorns hidden in the twist of the brambles I so willingly walked toward, my heart’s blood coating each barb.

  There’s no mistaking it. Right now, at my weakest and my most vulnerable, the truth lies bare, like a maiden stripped down to nothing.

  No matter how many times I try to lie to myself, no matter how many times I try to shove him out of my mind, the truth is in the blush of my skin and the ache of my chest.

  This male with the bottomless eyes has already snared me.

  Chapter 15

  AUREN

  The ticking time between us is marked only by the beats in my chest, one that seems to match the thrum of the pulse in his neck.

  Even though we’re standing in this wide entry, white beams crisscrossing overhead like the leather straps over his chest, it feels as if we’re in a tiny enclosure together, eating up every available space.

  Rip assesses me where I’m slumped over the railing, and if I didn’t feel so awful, I might care about how weak I look. Yet my mind is far too burned out, so all sorts of caring have gone straight out the frosted window.

  “Are you alright?” he asks quietly. His tone is different. So very different from the one he used with the guards. The sound of his smooth voice somehow seems to coat my body, like mist over a starlit pond.

  “Me? I’m great. Perfect. Never better,” I reply sardonically, though my words are too sloppy, too slurred.

  Rip narrows his eyes. “Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk on power.” Much to my embarrassment, an incredibly loud snort erupts out of me as I begin to laugh at my own bad joke. Then I just start laughing harder at the frown on Rip’s face, until my entire body is shaking with mirth, making it even more difficult to stay upright. Yep. I’ve finally cracked. My senses drained right out along with my magic.

  When the corner of Rip’s mouth twitches with amusement, my stomach flips at the sight. My laughter ebbs away with the pull of the tide, my hysterics drying up like an abandoned shoreline.

  Warring desires have me unsure of whether I want to get away from him...or get closer.

  Bad idea. Bad, horrible, terrible idea.

  Yet my tiredness has stripped me down, because I just want to breathe. To stop planning, stop pretending,
stop worrying, and just be for a moment. Though this is treacherous water, and I never was a good swimmer.

  Suddenly nervous, my eyes dart around with the need for a distraction, with the need to do...something, just so I don’t take a step toward him, because I don’t trust myself right now.

  “I need to go to my room,” I spout, voice belying my nervousness, my need to flee.

  I jolt upright and move to take a step, but intense dizziness hits me, and my jellied legs give out. My feet slip from beneath me like the carpet is suddenly slick, and a bubble of alarm pops from my mouth as my legs buckle.

  Before I can fall, Rip’s strong arms go around me, one beneath my knees, the other behind my back, and I’m swept up before I can even lose my center of gravity.

  I look up at him with wide eyes. “I slipped.”

  A soft laugh ripples out of him, as cool and refreshing as running water over timeworn rocks. “I noticed,” he replies, echoing the same conversation we’ve had before. When it was just the two of us standing beneath a blue mourning moon at the edge of an arctic sea.

  Things seemed simpler then.

  The spikes on his arms are gone, sunk back into his skin faster than a blink so they didn’t pierce me. I’m incredibly aware of his arms around me, of the way he doesn’t falter as he holds me up, as if he could hold me for eternity and never let go.

  Why does that make me want to cry?

  “You caught me,” I say, though my voice comes out in more of a whisper, the sound of an unsaid question drifting inside of it.

  He tips his chin down, eyes coating me like shade against a scorched day. “I’ll do that anytime you need catching, Goldfinch.”

  Now I’m dizzy for an entirely different reason. I peel my gaze away from his, my chest capering like a flock of playful birds spinning together in the sky.

  “Shit,” I say, mind catching up as I realize how bad this is. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

  The muscles in his arms tighten, but his face goes unreadable as he begins to walk me upstairs. “Because your golden king wouldn’t like it?”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not that, it’s... Look, could you just put me down?”

  “And let you fall? No.”

  I’m far too flustered now. Even my ribbons are wringing, tugging against the loosely tied bows. Feeling the planes of his chest against my arm and his strong grip on my body brings a sixth sense of awareness. How can I emotionally distance myself when he’s holding me up?

  “I could’ve golded you—I mean gilded. I could’ve gilded you,” I stutter, face growing hot.

  “You’re sure you’re not drunk?” he says with a teasing grin.

  Great Divine, when he looks at me like that, when he flashes that subtle, secretive smile, it transforms his entire face. He’s a smoldering, sexy warrior with transcendental beauty, and I like being in his arms far too much.

  I lick my lips, and his eyes flick down to watch, making my stomach flutter. “Not drunk, but I’d really love to be right about now.”

  His smile widens, and I find my own lips twitching, corners tilting up like they want to join his for the dance.

  “But I could’ve gilded you,” I repeat. “Then you’d be a statue stuck right here on the stairwell, and I don’t think gold’s your color, Commander.”

  “I disagree. Gold has quickly become my favorite.”

  I gape at him, too dumbstruck to say a damn thing.

  My gaping is so effective that my unblinking state of surprise sends my head into another exhausted dizzy spell. I slump further into him. “Ugh.”

  Rip adjusts his hold on me, and I have to work not to let my neck fall back. “You’re very floppy.”

  I rest my head against his firm, muscled chest. “You’re very hard,” I counter.

  A rich, dark laugh slips from his mouth. “You’ve no idea.”

  My face instantly flares as he smirks, the creases of his cheeks lifting the glint of his scales and making him look so damn gorgeous that all I can do is stare.

  He’s...flirting with me. And based on the giddy feeling in my chest, I can’t even deny that I like it. A lot.

  Feeling this forbidden want is a different sort of freedom, like crossing the border of a new land. I instantly find myself wishing that things were different, that we had met under other circumstances. That we didn’t have King Ravinger and Midas and omissions jutting up between us in an impassable terrain...because I think I might’ve liked the trek.

  How different would things be if he’d told me the truth about who he was? If I hadn’t felt like he was following in Midas’s footsteps with tricks and manipulations?

  My anger rises up again, and not even entirely at him, but at the tangled web we’re caught in, because I feel so robbed. Robbed of something...something that could’ve been mine.

  A lump rises in my throat, and no matter how many times I try to gulp it down, I can’t. “You shouldn’t touch me,” I confess, even as my gloved hands curve around his shoulders. “I’m dangerous.”

  His eyes sparkle with amusement, crinkling at the edges, making him look so much younger, so much less hindered and gruff. “You look it.” I scowl at him, but that just seems to entertain him even more as he walks me up the stairs.

  “I am dangerous,” I insist, though maybe my declaration is a bit discredited at the moment. “Well...maybe not right now, since I’m depleted. And not at night, since my power doesn’t work then, and not—”

  “So your power does only work during the day? I thought so.”

  I press my lips together, internally kicking myself, but it’s too late. I was right not to trust myself right now. Not just with my emotions, but apparently my secrets too. Although, he already knows the main ones, and he hasn’t revealed me. Yet.

  A ball of worry rolls around in my gut. “Are you going to use that information against me?”

  Rip looks down at me as he continues to walk, his aura thrumming around him like a syrupy murk.

  His beard is thicker again like it was when I first met him, rather than the stubble that he goes back and forth with. The black hair over his pale jaw makes me want to reach up and touch it, just to see what it feels like. Is he sharp even there? Or is it softer, like the ruffled hair on his head seems to be?

  Despite the fact that he’s walking at a brisk pace, he’s not jarring me in his arms. His movements are fluid and graceful, not at all what you’d expect by looking at him. But Rip has always been unexpected. Like when he replies, “My intention is never to use you, Goldfinch.”

  For a moment, I can’t say anything. My hands tighten ever so slightly on his shoulders, a nervousness braced from my body to his. “You know, I think I believe you. Even though I shouldn’t.”

  I feel the slightest bit of tension loosen from his bunched muscles. “Yes, you should.”

  One of my ribbons slips from its bow, the golden length looping around his arm, and an entirely too pleased look crosses his face. “Your ribbons seem to like me.”

  “Well, they don’t have brains, so…”

  The richest, deepest laugh I’ve ever heard lumbers through him and wraps around me. I almost lean toward the sound, like I want to bury myself beneath its bark.

  Dangerous. I know this is dangerous, to be this close to him, especially in my current state. I’m not equipped, my walls not erected, and I need those walls to keep from toppling right into him.

  So with a lot of willpower, I force myself to look away, breaking the heady connection with a tug on my ribbon.

  As soon as I cut myself off from him, from the moment, I hear him sigh, chest rising and falling beneath my shoulder and carrying his breath of disappointment. “Which rooms are yours?”

  Of course he needs to know that, but I feel suddenly shy to tell him.

  Sensing my hesitation, he says, “Mine are on this level on the opposite side, with the snowflake door.”

  I pretend not to soak up that info
rmation. “Just down this hall and up one more flight of stairs. It’s the door across from Midas’s.”

  Almost there, and then I can shut myself away and hide from the way Rip affects me.

  “Hmm.”

  My eyes cut up. “What does that hmm mean?”

  He ignores my question as he turns in the direction of my rooms. “Why is your power depleted?” he asks instead.

  Always this back and forth that we fall into, of flinging questions at each other and hardly catching answers.

  He’s tense beneath my ear, but the leather shirt he’s wearing is supple, much softer than I would’ve guessed. “Because I used too much of it,” I find myself saying quietly.

  “And Midas drove you to this point?”

  “He has a reputation to uphold as the Golden King,” I say with far too much bitterness slipping off my tongue.

  Rip seems to catch the taste, biting down so hard that I hear his teeth grind. “You shouldn’t let him use your power anymore.”

  The judgment in his tone makes me go tense. “You don’t understand,” I say, my mind immediately snagging onto Digby. “I have to.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he retorts. His aura pulses again, but this time, it’s erratic, irritated. Well, that makes two of us, because I know what I’m doing, and this playacting at obedience is necessary.

  As he makes his way up the last staircase, I remember how this will look and what’s at stake. “We’re nearly there. You should put me down before the guards see.”

  Flared, brutal eyes snap to mine. “I don’t give a flying fuck about Midas’s guards.”

  His abrupt vitriol cuts my expression into a frown. “Rip.”

  “We’ve been over this. You couldn’t even stand upright, Auren. I’m not putting you down,” he tells me, his voice the rough scrape of rocks, hard and unyielding. “I don’t care if Midas hears about me touching his favored. In fact, I hope he does.”

  I sigh at the stubborn bastard. “It’s not just about Midas. I’ve made a mistake by making you think it’s okay to touch me,” I say quietly, unable to look at him. What if it hadn’t been dusk? One touch. That’s all it would take, and the implications of that terrify me. “It was selfish of me. But for your own good, you need to stop.”