Gleam: The dark fantasy romance TikTok sensation that’s sold over a million copies (Plated Prisoner Book 3)

My fingertips feel raw.

It’s been months since I played the harp, and it shows. After hours of sitting at that stool, plucking discordant strings with bare hands while my gloves stayed in my lap, my fingers are now tender and offended, puffed up with indignation.

The thing is, I like music. I like that I can control the thrum of every note, steer every melody. Perhaps I like it in the way a bird likes to sing. But being ordered to play, like a pet performing for background noise, makes me resent the act altogether. I want to sit at the harp because I want to. Not because I’ve been mastered.

In a way, it’s good, what happened tonight. Midas’s asshole tendencies rearing its ugly head, the public embarrassment, even Slade’s reaction. It’s good, because it reminds me to stay on track. Reminds me why I need to find Digby and get the hell out of here and to not put my faith in males.

Prove it, I told him.

He didn’t.

Midas walks me back to my room as soon as dinner ends. His temper burns like a double-ended candle, flaring hot with anger on one side and arrogance at the other. I’d be trembling in my slippers right about now if I were still the same girl in Highbell, and that’s what he wants. The giant always expects the ones at his feet to scramble for his bidding, if only not to get trampled on.

As soon as we reach the hall, the guards in the corridor whip open my bedroom door so that we don’t even break stride as we enter. I go straight to the balcony doors and toss them open, not caring that the piled up snow blows into the room, scattering like salt over a sloppy dinner plate.

I need the fresh air. I need the openness these doors represent. Because after tonight, after that display of dominance, my spirit needs the reminder.

I’m not trapped.

I’m not weak.

I’m not his.

The door shuts with a snap, the sound dancing with the crackle of the fireplace as the flames gnaw and bite at the burning wood.

I turn around, hands clasped in front of me, and Midas grips me with his gaze like he wants to shake me from the inside out.

“You acted abominably this evening.”

I want to snort at the hypocrisy, but I keep my lips sealed like wax on a letter.

The right side of his face glows orange, making his tanned skin speckle with the flames. “Do you have any idea what Queen Kaila must think of you?”

As if I care. But he certainly does. Midas obsesses about appearances and how to use them to his advantage.

“I’ve allowed you a lot of freedoms, Auren. But I will not abide disrespect, and after our discussion, you should know better.”

My chin rises, right along with that feathery companion that seems to have nested in my anger. “Digby did nothing but be a loyal guard for years. You have no right to threaten him.”

He laughs.

It’s a cruel, cold laugh that contradicts the firelight he’s bathed in. Midas eats up the space between us until he’s blazing at my front while the reminder of an escape chills my back.

“Being a king gives me every right in the world. I own the rights, the rules, the laws. You’ve pleased me with your work this past week, but that stunt you pulled tonight won’t be tolerated.”

My winged anger sits up, a dark trill in the back of her throat that sounds like a promise.

“Explain to me what the hell you were thinking letting that disgusting man touch you last night?” His words lash, one after another. “If he was any other soldier, his severed head would already be draining in your bathtub for you to gild.”

Tepid bile crawls up the back of my throat, my stomach churning with the visual of that. Of Rip’s—Slade’s—head cut right through his neck, pale skin glossed over with the paint of red blood. It wouldn’t be the first time Midas has carried out something that gruesome and ordered me to gold-touch it as an example to others.

Midas leans down, and I blink the vision away, breath stuttering in my chest as his fury soaks up the oxygen in the room. “If you let anyone ever touch you again, you won’t like what happens. To you, to the other person, or to Digby.”

“I nearly collapsed on the stairs, and your guards wouldn’t help.”

“And they shouldn’t!” he bursts out. “No one is allowed to touch you except for me. That’s twice now this commander has disrespected me.”

A line digs between my brows. “Twice?”

“He lifted you off the horse when he brought you back,” he seethes. “I should have ordered an arrow to shoot him down right where he stood.”

And had the might of Fourth’s army attack him back? Not likely.

“Did you fuck him?”

The question lands like a crack renting the earth.

I blink in surprise. “What?”

“You heard me.” His tone is the low rumbling of a shaken ground, possessive fury coiling through every word. “Did. You. Fuck. Him.”

A churning, bitter hate coats my eyes, glossing it with a golden haze, and my angry beast roars in my ears. “No.”

Back and forth, his eyes flick between mine, fatal jealousy boring through them and snapping past his teeth. “Do you want him, Auren?” he croons with loathing. “Do you want that grotesque, ugly, spiked-up, magic-tainted monstrosity to bend you over and fuck you like a whore?”

The air decompresses, collapsing in on me like it’s broken up into shards that slice my lungs. I can’t think past the clamor in my skull, not with my outrage blaring so loudly.

How dare he.

How fucking dare he.

“You were watching him. I saw you.”

“Yeah?” I bite out. “Well, I saw you fucking your royal saddles all the time in front of me, so I think you can handle a glance.”

“Watch it,” he warns.

My tone drips with snarky disdain when I answer, “I did.”

It happens so fast.

One second, I’m standing there mouthing off, and the next, Midas’s hand connects with my face hard enough to rattle my brain.

I stagger back, head snapped to the right, my cheek flaming from the punishing blow. Tears drip unbidden down the aching flesh, like my eyes want to caress the spot he just smacked.

Time seems to stop.

A line forms between us, a fissure of cracked earth broken through from the force of a single hit.

He’s never struck me before. Never.

The pinching he did earlier was a shock in itself, but even so, that was a controlled punishment. A pointed reminder to stay in line, like a master yanking on a leashed collar, and very in-line with his usual temper.

But this is different. This was Midas losing control in a wave of anger, and he prides himself on his control.

Stunned silence stains the room in a void of dark shadows as I take in what just happened. The roaring creature inside of me takes it all in too, her beak bared to flash a row of razor-sharp teeth.

There seems to be a crashing sea of fury rising up, and my anger relishes in it, ready to swim beneath its depths. My entire body trembles with the force to hold her back. I can feel those waters closing in on me, a whirlpool ready to pull me under.

That love-stained girl inside of me is gone. The one whose heart was broken with the pieces used to pin her up like a bug to a board. She was burned down with the force of his palm. Her ashes are now nothing but soil to sprout the stems of the wickedness that seems to suddenly bloom brighter.

I take a fortifying inhale and turn back to look at Midas. At the man whose greed has so ruined him that he doesn’t even realize it. He’s swam out so far in a gilded sea and doesn’t even see it’s drowning him.

I hate him. I hate him so much that I know the truth gleams from my eyes.

A pregnant pause billows between us like a roiling cloud.

Midas’s eyes are wide, face pale as he looks at me in shock. Abruptly, his breath shatters the air. “Shit…”

Hands come up to my face, and his palm cups my jaw, thumbs stroking down my throbbing cheek. “Precious…I…I didn’t mean that. I was angry. I didn’t… Shit!”

Anguish bleeds through his tone, and my stomach tightens at the thundering noise. I try to jerk out of his hold, but his grip tightens, like he’s afraid to let me go. Afraid I’ll disappear into thin air.

That’s exactly what I intend to do.

He tips my head up, forcing me to look at him. “You make me so crazy, Auren.” I nearly scoff. Those are words to lay fault at my feet. “I’m not used to you behaving this way, but that was wrong of me. I lost my temper, but you know how much I love you. How much I need you.”

His touch gentles on my face, thumb wiping away the tear tracks like he wants to erase my every emotion, control everything I do, everything I feel. He wants to wipe me clean like a slate.

I almost feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for me too, that this is how we’ve ended up. However, once I’m gone, I can start over. I can have a life. But him…

By losing me, he loses everything.

“This is getting out of hand,” he says, tone quiet, the last of his vitriol expended and soaked up by my face. “Let’s go to bed. Let me take care of you. Let me show you how much I love you.”

I blink, incredulous horror spiking my pulse as I realize what he’s implying. Does he actually believe I’m going to have sex with him right now?

He either doesn’t see the look on my face, or he’s sure he can turn this around by physically distracting me, because the next thing I know, his mouth is descending, ready to capture mine for a kiss.

My abated anger rushes back like a held-back tide.

As fast as it takes to blink, my ribbons are up, curving around my front like a cocoon of ribs. With a powerful push, they shove him back, and Midas goes stumbling, nearly landing on his ass.

He stares at me with wide-eyed shock, eyes glancing warily at the ribbons poised at my sides, held up in the air with cocked ends. All that’s missing from their stance are fangs dripping with venom and a rattle in their tails.

“Don’t touch me.” My voice singes, landing against his ear and making him twitch with the burn.

Midas recovers by straightening himself, shifting on his feet warily. “You’re worked up,” he says placatingly, and although he’s trying to sound calm, to seem sure of himself, there’s a tremor in his hands as he tugs down his golden tunic, fingers running over the buttons. “It’s understandable.”

I say nothing. I’m too busy breathing shallowly through my nose while my ribbons strain at my back, tugging against my muscles like they want to rip from my skin and tackle the bastard.

“You know I love you, Auren,” he says quietly, shoulders slumping down in a rare show of remorse. “You’re the most precious thing to me in the world, but I let my temper get the better of me. You embarrassed me at the table in front of the queen, and we need her alliance,” he says, as if I care. “And I don’t like the way the commander thinks he’s entitled to touch you without my permission. Make sure it doesn’t happen again, and just…behave, alright? I don’t want this constant tension between us.” It’s nearly a plea, as if I’m causing him strife.

My eyes stay hard as stone. “I want to see Digby.”

“Soon,” he promises, eyes darting to the throbbing spot of my cheek. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk later, alright?”

The moment he leaves, the very second my door is shut with a click of a turning key, I stumble out onto the balcony and slam the door behind me. Then I pick up the snow-sodden pillow left out on the chair, and I scream into it with a pent-up bellow of rage.noveldrama

It doesn’t seem to come from my own mouth, but from the throat of the beast.

I scream and scream and scream, and the sky thunders back with an answering roar that makes the mountains shudder.

Yet the creature born from a withered heart and suppressed fury isn’t satisfied. My ribbons writhe around me with spitting savagery, so I throw the pillow down and then wrap their lengths around the banister.

I haul myself off the balcony in three simple swings, executed solely by my pent-up rage. Then I’m stalking through the snow, running toward the decrepit stairs that will lead me to that forgotten antechamber with its locked doors and frigid air.

Because I can’t stay still. I can’t stay in that room where he laid his hands on me.

I have to move, or I’m afraid whatever this thing is inside of me will claw out of my skin and devastate everything in its path.

I have to find Digby.

I have to escape before I finally snap and become the monster I’m trying not to be. And the only way I can drown out that demand for violence and bloodthirst is to focus on my plan.

It’s the only thing keeping me from plunging into the flames that burn pure gold.