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

Tensed fingers gripped around my arms make my eyes fly open, body jolting upright.

For a moment, I’m disoriented, mind scrapping between sleep and wakefulness, caught in that groggy, heart-pounding in-between.

With a spewed exhale, my vision adjusts to the darkness of night, and I stare up at Jeo. “What do you think you’re doing?” I bleat, the jarring way he woke me up setting my mood to plummet.

As soon as Jeo sees that I’m coherent, he turns on his heel. “We have to go. Where are your shoes?” He walks away without waiting for a reply and disappears into my dressing room.

What in the world?

“Jeo?” I call. No answer. I run a hand down my face, trying to wipe away the lingering slumber as I attempt to get my bearings in the dark room.

Jeo comes out of my dressing room a second later, and with only the low-burning fire to light the room, I squint at the bundle in his arms.

“What are you doing with my clothes?”

I push the covers aside and get up, still dressed, the cut of my white fabric now horribly wrinkled.

He stops at the bed, tossing down random bits of clothes before he starts shoving them into a knapsack—the same kind of bag that Pruinn carries for his bric-a-bracs.

“Jeo,” I snap, watching him frantically shove everything inside, his own clothing in disarray, blood-red hair sticking up in places like he just rolled from bed himself. “Tell me what’s going on right this instant.”

He looks over at me, blue eyes washed out from the light of the fire. “They breached the castle walls.”

“Who?” The stupid question falls from my mouth, unbidden. Of course I know who. I just don’t know how. I told the guards to have them all killed if they dared to come up the mountain.

“The rioters. They’ll be inside the castle within moments. You must get to the safe house.”

I feel my head shaking, feel the blood drain from my face. “That’s not possible. The guards—”

Fingers grip my arms again, shaking me, just as he did to wake me up. “The guards abandoned their posts. They opened the damn gates.”

“What?”

A nightmare. That’s all this is. I’m still sleeping, and this is a nightmare.

My temples begin to throb again.

I lift my fingers, pressing against the pulse, trying to flatten the pain out. “Send for some food. I can’t think with this incessant headache.”

“Food? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” he asks incredulously. “No food will be sent up on silver platters. Your servants are gone, already fled.”

The remnants of sleep bob in the water, my headache yanking at the anchor.

“Fools!” I curse. “Then the servants have betrayed me as well as the guards.”

“Malina, you ordered your soldiers to slaughter the people. Their people,” Jeo hisses, his fingers digging into my arms, forcing me to be present, to fasten me to the here and now. “That’s their families down there in that city. Their friends. Neighbors. And you commanded they all be killed.”

The accusation in his voice has my shoulders stiffening, lips pursing. “The people are rioting, Jeo! They needed to be punished, and I needed to put them in their place. It’s my duty as queen, and it’s the soldiers’ duty to obey me,” I snap. “The wall guard let them in? Well, I’ll see that they’re all punished too.”

With a disgusted scoff, he uses his grip to push me down and sit me on the bed. He kneels and shoves my feet into a pair of ill-laced boots. “You don’t get it, do you?” Deft fingers begin lacing me up, so tightly my ankles twinge. “You just lost the last of whatever power you thought you had here. They’ve turned on you. Everyone. You need to flee before they get inside.”

My head is shaking again, a mantra of disbelief in control of my neck. “Get my advisors. Call in the palace guards. No one will get into Highbell without meeting a bloody end.”

He finishes lacing me up, standing to jerk me back to my feet, and slings the bag of clothes over his shoulder. He pulls me to the door, while I try to extract my hand from his, but he doesn’t relent.

When I pound a fist against his back, he spins around to face me, eyes blazing. “Your advisors are gone. Most of your guards are gone too, and probably raised up arms to join the mob. It’s over, Malina!”

My throat clogs, fear and denial like clumps of gravel to scrape me up. “No.”

“Yes,” he persists, and that’s when I see past his anger, past his rush, and notice something else.

Fear.

That’s unmistakable, raw, frenetic fear there, his freckles made starker by the cold terror that’s paled his face.

I swallow hard, those jagged pieces of rock cutting down, cleaving my reality.

“What do I do?” It doesn’t even sound like my voice. No haughty confidence, no poised decorum. The tone is ragged. Vulnerable.

Jeo’s eyes soften for a heartbeat, and my own chest compresses at this saddle, at this man I’ve called my own for these past several weeks.

“You didn’t abandon me.”

He shakes his head slowly. “No, my queen.”

“Why not?” I’m not a kind woman. I’m not an easy personality. I’m certainly not warm. And I can’t even boast that I’m good in bed, because he’s my first other than Tyndall. So why he’s shown me so much loyalty is beyond me.

If the roles were reversed, I would’ve been gone. No guilt. No hesitation.

Yet here he is, shaking me awake and packing me a bag, ready to sneak me into safety.

Jeo doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t want to, or he doesn’t know why himself.

“We must hurry,” he says instead, a dagger I’ve never seen before held in his fingers. “Stay with me, and if you hear any violence, I want you to duck your head, alright?”

My heart pounds against my ribcage, threatening to cave it in, but I manage a nod.

“As soon as I open this door, your Queen’s guards will surround us and take us to your safe house. You need to keep moving, no matter what happens. Don’t stop. Okay?”

Dogged eyes look between mine for confirmation, and the moment I nod, he opens the door and pulls me through it. I gird myself, expecting the worst, head spinning like it’s still trying to argue that this couldn’t possibly be real, that I’ll wake up any moment.

But this is no nightmare. At least, not the kind you sleep through.

Just as Jeo said, my guards surround me the moment I’m in the corridor. I keep my head down, shoulders bunched as I’m rushed down the halls. My guards know how to get to the safe house, but it’s not common knowledge. Though if any of them told, if they’re leading me into a trap…

“What if the safe house is no longer secret?” I whisper to Jeo as we hurry side by side, his arm slung around my back protectively.

His grim face lets me know he’s considered this too. “It’s the best option we have left.”

My thoughts spin, trying to plot a way out of this. “The timberwings—”

“All gone. All taken with Midas.”

I curse beneath my breath, nearly stumbling when my too-tight boot catches against one of the new rugs placed on the floor, the glaring white fur an idiotic attempt at covering more gold.

Though when we get to the main floor, I hear it.

A cacophony of rage.

Voices, hundreds of them, bleating outside the castle walls. They’re all shouting something different, words or jeers or wordless hollers, joined in a clamor of unmitigated outcry.

When we race through the main hall, that’s when I hear the hacking. The destroying.

“What are they doing?” I cry out, the slashing and sawing noises growing so intense I can feel it vibrating through the castle walls.

“Getting their due,” Jeo answers grimly, his hold around me going tighter. “They’re splitting Highbell apart brick by brick, stealing the gold that they’ve been forced to see every day while they starve and freeze.”

Sour acid bubbles up my throat and coats the back of my tongue.

I hate the gold that Midas tainted Highbell with, but this…this desecration of my castle, of my home, makes my hands shake. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this.

How did this happen?

How did I lose control so fast?

A horrible booming noise shakes the walls, making the chandeliers sway as if dozens of people are out there heaving a beam to force entry.

“Will the doors hold?” I ask. They’re gilded, not solid, but even so, it should mean that they’ll be harder to break.

“The last of the guards who didn’t abandon their posts are on the other side,” the man covering my left tells me. “They’ll hold it as long as they can.”noveldrama

Jeo makes me go faster until we’re full on running. We head for the doorway that leads to the bell tower, except instead of going through it, we take a sharp right into a corridor that appears to dead end. My guards shove aside a hanging tapestry to reveal a hidden doorway latched into the wall, obscured by wainscoting.

As soon as they muscle-open the secret door, I look down into the yawning darkness of a forgotten passageway. One that hasn’t had to be used by any royal for generations. Now, I’m forced to flee down it.

The way is so dark that all I can see are the first few steps of a narrow set of stairs before the darkness surrounds them. No gold down there. It’s nothing but raw cut stone, drab and gray, soiled with stale air.

“Torches. We need torches!” one of the guards demands, making another sprint out of the room to go get something to light our way.

I watch the doorway he just left through, mind churning with the horrible question of whether or not he’ll actually come back. I nearly jump out of my skin when a tear-stained servant walks past, hair in disarray, panic in her wild eyes.

“Go!” Jeo shouts at her, making her flinch. “You need to run. Hide. Don’t be caught serving in here when they break in.”

The girl doesn’t have to be told twice. She turns and flees, steps drowned out by the ongoing attack outside, wrathful voices echoing through the mountains.

“This can’t be happening…”

No one hears my whisper, but to me, it’s as loud as a shriek.

The seconds feel like hours while we wait, the entire castle shuddering with hammers and scraping with blades as the people pillage whatever gold they can pry away.

All his fault. This is all Tyndall’s fault.

Running footsteps pound down the floor, and my heart leaps into my throat before bursting with relief when the guard returns. He’s carrying three sconces he must’ve ripped right off the walls, and one crudely made torch with torn curtains wrapped around the top of what looks to be a broken broomstick handle.

He immediately passes the sconces to the others, but the end of his makeshift one refuses to light. The gilded curtain is resistant to the puckering flames, no matter how long they hold the lit sconces to it. “It won’t fucking light!” he spits, shaking the useless torch in his hand.

“Just leave it. Three is enough,” another argues.

“Do you know how far down those take us? It’s pitch-black down there! We need all the light we can get or this will be meaningless because we’ll all fall and break our damn necks.”

“Fancy another light-holder?”

Everyone whirls around at the voice, but instead of a servant, it’s Pruinn who walks in, carrying a candelabra, three candles already lit.

“What are you doing here?” Jeo snaps, his arm tightening around me.

Pruinn comes up to us and shrugs. “By the time I made it to the gate, the guards had already abandoned their post. I didn’t fancy being slain in the angry horde, so I came back.”

“Yeah? Well, shove off. You can’t come with us,” Jeo snipes.

Pruinn grins handsomely, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. No, those silver pools are hard and austere, a serrated blade ready to cut.

Jeo doesn’t like him, hasn’t since my first encounter and every impromptu visit thereafter, but now isn’t the time for male dominance plays.

“We don’t have time for this. You want to come? Then you can go first, Sir Pruinn,” I declare.

Jeo tenses and lets me go, but my words are a challenge all their own, and Pruinn knows it. He gazes down into the shadowed depths with an unenthused expression. He covers it up a second later when he gives me a reverent nod. “It would be my honor to lead you, Your Majesty.”

Jeo makes a rude noise beside me that the merchant ignores completely.

My guards move out of the way, but just as Pruinn takes the first step down, a deafening crash comes from the direction of the kitchens.

“They’ve broken in!” one of the guards shouts, setting off all four of the armored men to lift their swords from their scabbards in a swish of metallic scrape.

“Go, Your Majesty! Go!”

There’s no time for me to hesitate or to dread the trek, because the horrible frenzied shouting has multiplied, rending through the air. The screams and chants out there are like a pack of rabid wolves with the scent of blood in their snouts.

Cries like yips echo while glass smashes and footsteps pound in time with my galloping heart. All hesitation on Pruinn’s part is erased in a moment as he rushes down the steps. I barely have time to register the great boom of noise that shakes the ground before I’m shoved forward after Pruinn, my body plunging into the passage.

“You two go with the queen!” one guard shouts. “We’ll close you in!”

My boots skid against the steps, slipping until Jeo’s fingers curl around my arm. “I have you,” he says behind me. “Keep going.”

We shuffle downward, every stair narrow, making my toes hang off the edge. My palm skims against the filthy stone wall at my right, and I stay glued onto Pruinn’s heels, while Jeo stays on mine.

The shouting is closer now, more breaking, more horrible hacking.

Just when I don’t think it can possibly get any worse than this, the two guards who stayed behind suddenly slam the secret doorway shut.

Darkness devours me.