Glow (The Plated Prisoner #4)
Raven Kennedy
About The Book
Please Note: This book contains explicit content and dark elements that may be triggering to some. It includes explicit romance, mature language, violence, death, physical and emotional abuse, past trauma, and the process of recovering from emotional and physical manipulation. It is not intended for anyone under 18 years of age. This is book four in a series.
To those who stand on their own two feet despite their stumbles.
CHAPTER 1
QUEEN KAILA
The air is full of screams.
The entire front of Ranhold Castle is an ocean shore of people washed up on the courtyard. They ebb and flow, frothy cries making waves as they undulate in a shallow mob.
Behind me, Ranhold guards are trying to push out the subjects through the gate, with frenzied command that barely cuts through the chaos. Half the people are trying to come back in to see what’s going on, the other half fleeing for their lives.
Manu and my guards got us outside, but only just. My heartbeat is a hammer, and the breath that I’m sucking in is just as rushed as the adrenaline pumping through my veins. It’s the sort of harried vulnerability that makes me feel no better than a cornered animal. One who’s frozen in snow, unable to move. And yet, what’s really keeping me still are the sounds coming from the castle. Sloshing. Dripping. Clanging. Smashing. More screaming.
Another sharp slap of shrieks erupts when liquid gold suddenly bursts through the front doors. Everyone flinches back, gasping bodies caught in the swell of panic, shoving into the mass behind them as they try to get further away.
Manu and Keon stand in front of me, facing Ranhold Castle, and they both push me back protectively while our guards surround us. Not all of my guards made it out, yet I haven’t wanted to look around to see just how many I lost.
The gold spews from the doorway and curls around the castle walls, gushing down the front steps. Like outstretched hands, it nearly grabs hold of a man, but he gets yanked out of the way by some guards at the very last second.
The liquid metal slams down from its unsuccessful reach like a petulant child smashing fists in a fit against the ground and sending splatters flying. Mottled gashes of gold streak across the snow-covered steps, marring the stone. More of it drips like blood from the window sills, staining the glass and peeking past the frames.
We’re surrounded by the castle’s lantern-lit outer walls, and even though it’s supposed to make us feel protected, it’s only keeping everyone trapped out here together. I’m about to suggest to my brother that we get away in case the gold keeps pouring out and we become trapped with the crowd, but another loud crash happens somewhere inside, cutting me off.
My eyes wildly veer between my brother’s and Keon’s forms, wondering what else inside has been destroyed, who else has been killed. But then, as if that last noise was a signal for the end, the gold that’s gripping the front walls suddenly stops glinting, stops rippling.
It hardens in place as the castle goes suddenly quiet.
The screaming of the crowd cuts off too, everyone waiting with bated breath to see if it’s actually over. I’m not sure how long we all stand there, watching and listening, but the splotches of gold along the grayed, frozen stone are no longer moving, and despite the torches casting off firelight, everything seems darker. Colder.
The movement and sounds may have ceased, yet those things instead spring to life inside of me. My body begins to tremble, my mind a funnel of noisy thoughts swirling around.
What in the Divine just happened?
My shoes are soaked through as I stand here in the snow, my skin pebbled from the awful frigid night air. I wasn’t meant to be outside in this dress. I should be in the ballroom right now. I should be celebrating my engagement announcement and making plans for my control to now spread to Sixth Kingdom.
At the very least, I should be warmer.
When I look down, I see blotches of gold splashed onto my deep blue dress in a motley of gleaming spots. I don’t dare run my finger over it. Not after what I saw in that ballroom.
“Has it stopped?” I ask.
The question is overly simplified for what just happened in there. Has it stopped—it. The berserk gold that just rose up with furious motive. I already know my mind is going to be stuck with the memory of tonight for a long time, that I’m going to replay it over and over again.
I won’t be able to erase the way the gold moved with violent precision. How it dripped down the walls. How it pooled on the ground. How it splashed, and stabbed, and consumed.
“Has it stopped?” I ask again, my voice shriller than I’ve ever heard it.
I’ve never been so close to mortal danger before, and my body knows it. Which is why my pulse is still racing, why the tempo of it is pounding in my ears.
Why I can’t stop shaking.
“I think so,” Manu finally answers as he turns around.
His husband still watches the castle, as if he doesn’t trust taking his eyes off it. As if he expects the violence of the liquid metal to lash back to life.
“Damned Divine,” I hear him say beneath his breath.
Perhaps his murmured curse has pulled the stopper from the bottled-up crowd, because a flurry of voices starts to pour through the courtyard. Automatically, my power sweeps out, pulling their words to me. My magic sweeps down, catching what they’re saying and stringing them up in my mind.
“What’s happened?”
“This is King Midas’s gold-touch.”
“Where’s King Midas? Where’s King Rot?”
“Our prince is dead.”
“Did Midas do this on purpose?”
“But what happened?”
The words flow from their mouths to my ears, where they gather like threads in a web for me to spin. Yet soon, I don’t even need my power to hear them, because the crowd begins to shout, demanding answers in frenzied cries loud enough for all.
“Shit,” Manu hisses, turning toward me. “Maybe you should—”
Someone suddenly shouts, “I know what happened!”
All eyes slam onto the woman, who staggers to the front. She points a shaky finger toward the doors, gold bleeding from their depths like a gaping wound.
“This wasn’t King Midas’s doing!” she spits out, a long curtain of black hair hanging down her back, her dress looking like part of it melted off. “It was his gold-touched pet! She stole his magic!”
I rear back in surprise, her words tangling up in my head.
“Who is that?” Manu murmurs.
A man from the crowd shoves forward. “What are you talking about, woman?”
She straightens up, sweeping a proud look over the crowd. “I am one of King Midas’s royal saddles, and I can tell you all right now that this was all because of Auren. She did this! The gilded whore stole his magic when he gold-touched her, and she figured out she could use it for herself. She lied to him, and now she’s attacked him. I saw it with my own eyes when I was running out!”
Shock cuts like an oar through a surf.
“What the fuck?” Manu hisses beneath his breath as he turns to me.
When the woman places a hand on her stomach, it occurs to me who exactly this is.
Mist. The saddle Midas impregnated.
As her words sink in, I start to shake my head in denial at first, and yet, it must be true, because what I saw in that room… It was like the gold wasn’t in Midas’s control at all, like someone else was doing it…
How did I not discover this secret sooner?
“Look!” someone shouts. “Timberwings! Someone’s fleeing on timberwings!”
“It’s her! The gilded murderer!”
My head angles in the direction of the man who spoke, my gaze following where he’s pointing. I only get a split second before the view is swallowed by the darkness of night, a flash of feathers and talons disappearing into the clouds.
Was that King Rot with Lady Auren?