Gleam (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 3)

by Raven Kennedy

  “This is going to make you all better, Auren,” he soothes in my ear. My stomach churns over the words, wanting to hurl them back up. “It’s been too long since I’ve felt you. You’re going to love it.”

  Bile smashes up my throat, burning the back of my tongue.

  Here.

  Like this.

  He’s drugged me, brought me to a beaten man’s bedside, and is going to try to take advantage right here, right now, like this.

  Disgusted anger lashes through the haze of dew and comes hurtling upward. All my limbs and ribbons may be jellied and sluggish, but for a split second, I fight through it.

  With a noise I didn’t even know I could make, I bring my ribbons up and slam them into him in a sudden burst of strength.

  Midas goes crashing back into the wall and falls to the floor, but the move makes me fall too. My ribbons crumple as I land hard on my hands and my knees, yet the pain feels like bubbles popping against my skin, even that distorted.

  A pained curse flies from his mouth, and my head whips up. “You will never touch me again!” I growl, not even recognizing the sound of my voice. “I hate you. I fucking HATE YOU!” I scream, my throat shredding, the room splitting.

  Midas sits up, a hand lifting to swipe at the back of his head, fingertips coming back bloody. When he sees the red stain on his fingertips, his eyes flash up to mine with fury. “How dare you harm your king!”

  I’m running off pure adrenaline, anger perched on my ribs and fueling my fire. “You’re not my king! You’re not my anything! I despise you,” I spit out, my voice like venom expelling out to blind him with my enmity. “I thought you loved me, but you only love yourself. I know what it feels like now to truly be cherished and respected, and those are two things you’ve never done,” I pant, each word as sharp as claws. “You’re nothing but a false king who uses and manipulates everyone in his life because you secretly loathe yourself.”

  Something sinister coalesces in his eyes, gathers on his brow, settles in the depths of his darkened eyes. I kneel there shaking and raw, glaring at him through all the bits and pieces of me scraped open.

  The energy I expelled has left me weakened, my ribbons flopping on the floor like beached fish. My vision flares as another wave of heat passes through me to instigate some forced thirst of desire that I refuse to have for this man.

  I gasp and clutch my head, trying to fight past it, and that’s when Midas pounces.

  One second, he’s across the room, and the next, his fist is in my hair and he’s slamming my front to the ground. Hard.

  I cry out, my cheek cracking with the impact that I’m sure would be worse if it weren’t for the drug coursing through my veins.

  “You know what it’s like to be cherished and respected?” he snarls in my ear, his body pressing me down. “So you did fuck that grotesque horned commander, didn’t you? You let that Fourth filth touch what’s mine.”

  “I’m not yours!” Spittle and fury expels from my mouth as he holds me down. “And that Fourth filth is ten times the male you could ever be!”

  With gritted teeth, I try to make my ribbons lurch up and shove him away again, but it’s like trying to move limbs that have had their circulation cut off for too long. They flop clumsily, too affected by the drug.

  Midas snatches them up in his other hand and wraps them around his fist like a leash pulled tight.

  “I tried to do this the easy way, Auren. But you’ve left me no choice.”

  I’m wrenched up to my feet like a rag doll, my vision tipping, pinpricks scurrying down my skin. I look up just as Midas shouts for the guards to come in, but I don’t glance at the door.

  No, my attention is on Digby.

  Digby, whose swollen eyes are suddenly wide open and latched onto me with recognition. I almost cry out at the sight of them. The brown of tree bark, scalded by the rays of a summer sun.

  I see his throat work, how it bobs beneath his messy gray beard, and then his cracked lips move to say, “Miss Auren,” and I really do cry out this time.

  He’s alive.

  He’s awake.

  “I’m going to save you,” I vow, the words coming from a stripped and slivered throat, a bleeding tongue of slurring whispers.

  But he hears it.

  Our moment is cut short when the guards come in, and Midas lifts me up by my ribbons and hair, shoving me face-first against the wall, too fast to stop.

  “Hold her.”

  A collection of firm hands come up, taking over Midas’s grip. Prisms of rainbow light stretch across my vision, though the bright rainbows don’t fit here in this violent dimness. My bleary eyes take in a profiled face with a thick brown sideburn. Scofield. When did he get here?

  I’m held against the wall just as Midas ordered, and I want to struggle, I want to scream, but I’m floating on a stream of lethargy with no way to cross the current.

  “You brought this on yourself, Auren,” Midas says, making my heavy lids blink.

  “Wha—”

  That’s when I see the sword in Midas’s grip. A golden blade, so sharp it seems to cut through the air as he lifts it right over Digby.

  That’s when I start to struggle. Only the pure surge of panic makes it possible. I shove at Scofield and the others, but I can’t get them off.

  “No! Digby!”

  With frenzied, wide eyes, I see Midas look at me and lift the sword. My throat closes, cinches tight like the knot of a noose, and I screech at him to leave Digby alone, leave him alone, alone, alone...

  But the drug has altered my depth perception, because it’s not Digby he brings the sword down on.

  It’s me.

  I was so aware of being held against the wall, solely focused on trying to fight the effects of the drug and get to Digby, that I didn’t even realize that the guards still have my ribbons pulled taut. That they’re stuck in the mercy of crushing grips.

  A split-second warning of terror is all I get.

  Then, Midas brings the sword down on them, the edge of the sharp blade slicing into their golden lengths, and my entire sense of self fractures.

  All I know is utter agony.

  Utter, eclipsing, unmitigated agony.

  I don’t just scream.

  I rupture.

  There is no dulled pain this time. When that sword hacks through my ribbons, I feel everything.

  The bite of the blade cleaves into the top where they grow between my shoulder blades, and my vision cleaves with them.

  I’m in complete shock, pain exploding beneath the blow of the torture. My ribbons jerk and recoil, screaming a silent scream that fuses into my spine and rattles down every bone.

  In speckles of splintered vision, I see three of them flutter to the ground at my feet. Their ends are frayed and uneven, tiny droplets of golden blood weeping from their mangled ends.

  I stare at them, mind not quite grasping what this means, and they twitch in response, like the tail of a lizard cut from its body, still spasming where it lies.

  A horrible, wailing, guttural bellow tears from my chest. “No, no, no, no! Not my ribbons, not my ribbons!”

  “You caused this. You will not attack your king,” Midas hollers back, a manic wildness raving out of the cold determination of his tone.

  With desperate panic, I try to steel the rest of my ribbons, try to sharpen their edges and turn them as firm as solid metal, but I can’t. Not with the drug, not with the exhaustion, the shock, the pain.

  I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—

  My sobs quake and wrench and threaten to topple. “Oh goddess, please...”

  Midas raises the sword and brings it down again.

  And again.

  And again.

  More ribbons fall at my feet, more screams explode from my throat and rip me in two. At some point, vomit heaves out of my mouth, leaving me to choke on acidic torment. I am nothing but flashing pain as he severs my very soul from m
y body.

  I cry. I scream. I beg.

  I spit and flail and fight, and my vision fractures, my body unable to hold myself up beneath the weight of the pain.

  None of it matters. The guards still hold my ribbons taut. Midas still brings the sword down and cuts a part of me away, strand by golden strand, another limb lost.

  I don’t know how long it takes.

  Seconds? Minutes? Hours? I black out, become a convulsing mass of wailing stupor whose only cognizance is misery.

  And then...

  He cuts off the last one, and I shatter.

  Right there on the floor, pieces of me left like bits of useless rags. Like the strings of a harp that can no longer play. Like the strands that once wove me together.

  I’m dropped, body left in a heap to lie on the hard stone floor, but I don’t feel it. I don’t notice the blurred forms of the guards as they start to file out. I only see my ribbons, lifeless and lackluster. Just like me.

  “You did this to yourself.”

  My eyes roll up to Midas’s towering figure, to the hard set of his jaw. To the cruelty in his eyes.

  He passes off the sword, straightens his tunic. “Disobedience has consequences, Auren. I needed to cut away this disobedient disease I’ve let fester in you. This was what you led me to do,” he tells me, peeling me raw.

  The tears that fall down my cheeks cut me open, drip by drip, hot gashes that slice through my face and sting all the way to my essence. Midas’s mouth thins, eyes flickering with some unknown emotion that’s probably as close to softening as they can get.

  “Don’t disobey me anymore, Precious. I hate seeing you like this.” His gaze shifts over the inert ribbons, down my throbbing spine. “This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”

  Infuriated outrage flares in the mouth of my beast, but I’m far too numb to spew it. He didn’t just chop off meaningless streams like trimming off a bit of fabric. My ribbons weren’t just attached to my back, they were attached to my fucking soul.

  The moment he sliced them away, he took something integral. He gouged in and ripped a part of me away, and now…

  I’m empty. Mangled. Nothing but a radiation of agony.

  The maimed edges along my spine are choppy and blunt, short and twitching with spasms I can’t control. Each mutilated end pokes out from my back like snapped wings plucked bare of feathers.

  With a shake of his head, Midas straightens himself up, already convinced that his every action was justified. “I’ll have a mender tend to you later. Take some time to rest, Precious,” he says softly before he turns and walks out, and I flinch when his shoes step on my ribbons, as if I can feel the phantom pain of their massacred lengths as they’re crushed under his heel.

  When the door slams shut, the sound tips me over the edge, and my consciousness casts me into a cold oblivion.

  I fall willingly into the darkness with a plea for escape, while twenty-four pieces of me are left to wilt and wither in gilded grief. I shudder as my back drips and my eyes weep, knowing I’ll never be whole again.

  Chapter 42

  AUREN

  The pain doesn’t let me stay unconscious for very long. I’d gladly lie here on the cold floor where I can dream instead of wake, but I’m not that lucky.

  That’s the thing about escapism. In whatever form, it always ends, and then we’re forced back into a reality that’s not nearly as satisfying.

  A whimper precedes my vision, lips parting before my lids can. When I blink blearily, I note how dark the room is, the high window showing me a single star.

  This too? I ask the goddess in her twinkling watch. I had to endure this too?

  My eyes blur from a soul-deep pain that stems from the stolen threads of my back. With my cheek pressed against the rough stone floor, an exhale rattles out of me.

  Numb. That’s how I feel when I stare at the pieces of me lying listlessly on the ground. Their gold seems duller, long lengths looking like a puddle of fabric, lacking all of their personality and liveliness.

  My palm scrapes against the floor, arm stretching to reach for the one closest to me. I manage to drag it toward me, holding it in front of my face. I stare at the jaggedly cut edge, swipe along the curdled blood that’s dried like clumps of gold paint.

  The ribbon droops between my fingers, a weary vine ripped from its roots. I try to move one of them on instinct, but...nothing. Nothing except an endless throb of pain from each snipped stem.

  “Miss Auren.”

  I jolt from the voice, but it makes my back tighten, which causes a frenzy of sharp pain to run up and down my spine. A curse flies from my mouth before I suck in enough air to breathe through it.

  “Steady.”

  My eyes fly up to him, and it just goes to show my state of mind, because I forgot we were in the same room. “Digby.” My voice cracks, throat ruined from my screams.

  He’s still lying on his cot that’s attached to the wall, but he’s managed to roll over onto his side so that he’s facing me. Just seeing him looking at me, alive, makes me crumple all over again, and I’m wracked with emotion too full to contain.

  Behind his gray beard, I see his lips tremble, his eyes holding a sheen of sadness, and it hits me right in the chest. The sight of him like this, beaten and bruised, left in a cold, dark room for who knows how long, it kills me.

  “Don’t cry.”

  Just hearing his gruff voice makes me cry harder. Teardrops dapple my face, each one a grievance left to splatter on the ground.

  I force myself to sit up so I can see him better, gritting my teeth past the pain that shoots down my back, the tattered ends of deadened ribbons spiking with agony.

  Digby’s lips thin as he watches me curse and pant and wince, but I manage to get into a sitting position, though my stomach is roiling by the time that I do. With my back too tender, I scoot over to the corner, and then let my shoulder and arm slump against the wall so that I don’t graze my wounds.

  Swiping away the tears on my face, I look at Digby, knowing that if he’s not trying to move, then he must really be hurt.

  Dragging my eyes over his wrinkled old uniform, I wonder exactly what kind of injuries he’s sustained.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” I whisper.

  He nods.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  He shakes his head in answer.

  The smallest smile tips my lips. “There’s my guard of few words,” I tease gently, even though it feels forced, even though every breath I pull in shoots pain down my back.

  Digby grunts in response, but I can see that his own mouth twitches too. It’s a farce—this tiny bit of comfort. But it’s the only bit we’ll have.

  “What happened?” I ask, voice hoarse and twinging. “How did you get here?”

  His eyes flicker. “Saw you get taken.”

  “By the Red Raids?”

  Digby nods and says, “Rode straight here to alert the king so he could send help. I’ve been in this room ever since.” His voice is even more grating than mine, and I wonder if it’s from disuse. When I calculate how long he must’ve been in here, hurt and alone...

  My stomach clenches between fists, wrung out until I can taste bile on my tongue. “He never should’ve done this to you,” I say, the anger in me fighting with the drugged haze in my system.

  “I failed you, my lady. He was right to lock me up.”

  “Stop with the my lady shit, and don’t you dare think that any of this is justified. It’s not.” None of it.

  My eyes fall unbidden to the floor again, to the ribbon I’m still clutching in my hand.

  Digby’s gaze follows, but he doesn’t speak about them. Maybe he can sense that I’m barely holding on by the ruined stubs that hang limp along my spine. For once, I’m grateful for his penchant for few words.

  Yet even though he doesn’t bring it up, I see his hand curl into a fist, though his pinky doesn’t move. From fing
ernail to second knuckle, it’s stained like he dipped it in an inkwell. Claimed by the bite of frost, probably while he rode to Fifth to help save me.

  How much more of him has been deadened? What other parts of him are hurt irrevocably because of Midas and me?

  I close my eyes and let my head drop against the wall beside me, the cold stone pressing against my tender cheek. “Sail died,” I whisper, and even now, I feel my chest constrict at saying those words aloud.

  “He was a good soldier.”

  “He was a good man,” I reply. “He died protecting me, and now you...”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he retorts. “I want you to worry about you. I want you to be safe even when I can’t stand guard.”

  Water rushes into my eyes, and my bottom lip trembles. My heart isn’t just beating—it’s taken a beating too.

  “I’m so sorry, Dig,” I say softly, my throat squeezing shut. When I open my eyes again, he’s still looking at me, no blame in his expression, no hate. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get you out of here. Strike a deal with Midas to get him to let you go.”

  But Digby shakes his head. “I’m your guard, Miss Auren. My place is with you,” he declares, as though it should be obvious.

  Something sharp and small stabs right through my heart. Who knew loyalty could hurt so much?

  “Now isn’t the time to be stubborn.”

  “I’m not.” He rolls his neck a bit so he can look up at the ceiling. Maybe it’s just as hard for him to look at the tattered remains on the floor as it is for me. “The second I was assigned the post to be your guard, I found my purpose, my lady. All those other shits weren’t good enough to watch over you.”

  I let out a shaky smile. “You really were the only one I could ever trust in Highbell,” I tell him. “Even when I was just a snotty girl complaining about being bored, or all those hours of practicing the harp, you were always there. You were my steady.”

  He swallows hard again like he’s digesting my vulnerable words. Then, “You were bad at playing that thing. Had to come in with bits of kerchief stuffed in my ears.”