Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

My lips press together in a hard line, fingers itching to reach out and touch her. “You punished the one who mattered,” I promise her.

You punished him.

Giving in to the need riding me, I take another step forward and reach out to caress her cheek. “Come back, Goldfinch,” I murmur, her bright eyes making mine burn, though I don’t look away.

Something shudders through her at my touch, her waning aura trembling, and then she blinks, the strange glow of her eyes receding.

“Slade?”

Hope leaps in my chest. “That’s right, baby. Let the magic go.”

Just when I think I have my Goldfinch back, Auren’s eyes flare with panic as she curses

the gods. “I can’t. I don’t know how to let it go!”

Fuck.

I grab her trembling arms, trying to steady her while my own power beats at me, reacting to her terror. “Breathe, Auren.”

The room quakes, gold jumping and jerking in an erratic fit. “I can’t control it, I can’t—”

“You can,” I tell her, because I won’t accept anything else. She didn’t defeat Midas just for her own power to turn on her. “Try, Auren. It’s your power, it answers to you.”

She winces, her skin gone hot to the touch as she tries, but when the floor ripples again, her anxiety surges back full force.

“It’s going to hurt you!” she cries, shoving at me. “Go, Slade, I can’t...I can’t hold it back much longer, and I don’t know how to stop it!”

Refusing to let her push me away, I grab both of her cheeks and say, “Look at me.”

Her fearful eyes well up with tears. “You have to leave.”

And let her drain herself to death? Never.

“I already told you. If you think I’m leaving without you, you’re out of your damned mind,” I growl.

The gilded ceiling begins to drip like rain, the walls warping, the floor roiling, and Auren trembles with all of it, her aura so muted that it’s nearly snuffed out.

“Auren, your aura is fading fast, you have to let go!” I shout, voice rising to be heard above the groaning gold.

There’s a plea in her streaming eyes. “Leave. Please,” she says, slumping in my arms, her legs failing her.

I barely duck as a stream of gold falls just to the left of me, crashing to the ground. “Dammit, Auren, you don’t have time. Let go!”

But she either can’t anymore, or she won’t. My power is going fucking crazy, magic leaking from my feet, cracking the gold beneath me. When her aura nearly winks out, the roots around my chest claw inward like they’re trying to burrow straight through my damn heart.

Terror grapples my entire body, severs right down to my soul. She can’t die. She fucking can’t.

I won’t let her.

So I do the only thing I can think of before it’s too late and she lets the power drain her completely.

Leaning forward, I breathe her scent in, relish in the heat emanating from her skin. “Forgive me,” I whisper, because I loathe myself for what I’m about to do—for taking the choice away from her. But when it comes to her life, I can’t just sit back and let her sacrifice herself. Not for me.

My lips press against hers, even now, the supple warmth of them enough to take me to my knees. The moment she parts her mouth for me, I breathe out the rotted power within me. I let it sink in past her lips, feel it slip down her throat and root beneath her skin.

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.