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

Slade is leaning up against the bedroom wall with one foot kicked up behind him, casual as can be. With his arms crossed in front of his chest and his sleeves rolled up to show off his strong forearms, he looks ridiculously sexy with his ruffled black hair and perfectly molded clothes.

Even with the shadowed light, I can see the amusement in his expression, and I’d be able to appreciate how sizzlingly gorgeous he is if it weren’t for the fact that my face is now flamed with embarrassment.noveldrama

I just had to sniff the damn pillow.

“Well, I doubt that will be very comfortable to sleep on,” Slade muses.

Snapping out of the shock of being caught, my body jerks upright, and I try to act properly, like I wasn’t just clawing through his bedsheets, though mortification bleeds through my voice. “It was an accident.”

“And the rest of you was rooting around in my bed because…?”

“I was trying to get my ribbons out of your blankets,” I explain, as if that somehow makes this any better.

His eyes fall to my hands where I have the golden lengths bunched in my fists, but the ribbons immediately go limp like I made the whole thing up and they weren’t doing anything at all.

Traitors.

I shove them behind me and cross my arms, trying to gain some semblance of calm, though my heart is pounding hard enough to rattle my ribs.

Creases of light fold in from the gaps between the curtains, casting shards of glowing lines between us. We regard each other in silence for a moment, while my nervous embarrassment grows.

“I’m sorry,” I rush out. “Fake Rip let me in, but I should’ve stayed in the sitting room. It was incredibly rude of me to come in here.”

He tilts his head. “So why did you?”

My mouth opens and closes, but no words come out, because what am I going to say? Well, I just wanted to snoop? That doesn’t seem like a good answer.

When I don’t reply, he says, “You just decided to come in here and rumple up my blankets because you were bored?” His tone isn’t impatient or angry, even though I’ve clearly overstepped. If anything, he’s just amused, though there’s an underlying wariness too. His green eyes seem darker than usual, his shoulders tight with a tension that won’t let go.

The blush on my cheeks burns hotter at his teasing tone. “Are you angry?”

“Very,” he replies steadily, and my heart drops until he adds, “but not with you.”

I swallow hard, unsure how to respond to that.

“What are you doing here, Auren?”

“Here, as in…Ranhold or…?”

I’m stalling. I know it, he knows it, but I can’t seem to help it. Not now that he’s here in front of me.

Mirth flashes across his face. “Here, as in my personal chambers.”

Our conversation from the library replays in my head again. “I…well, I came here to see you.”

He may look relaxed to others, but I’ve paid enough attention to Slade to know that’s not the case. He’s watching me in that intense way of his, like he’s studying every inch, noting every gesture.

“Why?”

I twist my hands into my skirts in a nervous gesture because this is so much harder than I thought. Or maybe I just didn’t really let myself think it through because I didn’t want to chicken out.

“Auren?” he prompts.

He’s always doing that, isn’t he? Prompting me, pushing me, and it’s exactly what I need. But I’m not only hearing him now, I’m hearing him then. When he gave me words and fight and a choice.

Listen to your instincts and stop holding back.

I can’t wait to see the rest of you.

You’re so much more than what you let yourself be.

Do you want to stay?

My throat thickens like I’ve gulped mud, but I manage to look him in the eye. “I’m here because I wanted to say something to you.”

The only indication that I’ve surprised him is in the way he slides his propped-up foot onto the floor, as if he’s bracing himself for what I have to say. “…Alright.”

Before I can lose my nerve, I take a deep breath. “When I was five years old, war came to Bryol, where I lived in Annwyn. It arrived with fire and smoke and death. My parents tried to sneak me out with the rest of the children on the street, but our escorts didn’t last the hour. We were stolen long before we ever reached safety.”

Slade’s attention intensifies, like this was the last thing he expected. Even a part of me is surprised that this is how I’ve chosen to open up. Then again, maybe this is exactly what I needed to say.

“Even though I didn’t have my magic yet, hadn’t even sprouted ribbons from my back, I was too recognizable to be bought by any fae. So, I was smuggled into Orea—I still to this day don’t know how. All I know is, one night I was in Annwyn, and the next, I was here in this world where I didn’t belong, where the sky didn’t sing and the sun wasn’t right. I was bought by a man in Derfort Harbor who smelled like alcohol and pipe smoke. A man who taught me how to steal and to beg. That same man who later made me into a street rat saddle, who made sure I opened my legs for any paying customer who wanted a night with the painted girl.”

Slade goes entirely still.

His eyes are trained on me as fierce as a hawk, and that intrusive power of his seems to tremble the air while it cloys forward to press against my skin. Like a feline’s rough tongue come to lick against invisible wounds.

“I didn’t run away until I was fifteen, and then…” My eyes drop down to my gloved hands. “Well. It doesn’t matter. Things didn’t go well for me.”

The first teardrop falls from my eye, the brined water of old hurts turning gilded the moment it slides down my cheek, though I dash it quickly away.

“I’m telling you this so that you can understand. When Midas came along, I was broken. I’d never known a kind touch by a man. I’d never known what love was or even real friendship. I didn’t even know myself yet. I may not have been innocent, but I was naive—unsure of who I was, who I could be.”

Vulnerability pierces me right in my chest, but I know I can’t stop now. Even though I’ve run out of breath, I have to keep on exhaling, keep on purging, or else I’m going to suffocate in my own poison.

I lift a shoulder. “I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. For a long time, I convinced myself that was what love and friendship was, because I didn’t know any better.”

From across the room, I see Slade’s pale throat bob with a hard swallow, the roots of his power twisting around his neck. “And now?” he rumbles.

“Now, I know that I was a girl clinging to my own stagnancy, because I was terrified of being thrown back into the world that had abused me. I couldn’t face the truth that Midas was abusing me too, just in a different way.” My admission is a heavy burden lifting from my tongue, every word weighed down. “If Midas ever loved me at all, he buried it beneath his love for gold and the love for himself. Buried it so deep that he doesn’t even remember what he covered.”

Slade’s hands hang at his sides, and something ripples in his eyes. Something I can’t read. “What are you saying, Auren?”

Everything.

I’m saying everything.

Because there’s no time. Because I’m supposed to leave. Because he’s leaving too.

I take a deep, shaky breath. “All my life, I have been coveted or bought or possessed because of the gold that drips from my fingers and lusters my skin. I have been used and kept, and I learned to accept that life. I learned to accept that the best I deserved was Midas and that I shouldn’t ever hope for more because I knew just how much worse it could be.”

An angry look slashes across the shadows of Slade’s face, his mouth pressing together above his stubbled chin.

My wet lashes drag against my cheek with every blink. “But then you came along. And never, not once, has anyone looked at me the way you do.”

He goes tense, breath bated to hear what I have to say. There’s a long pause held between us, like hands cupping water, desperate not to let a single drop leak out. “And what way is that?”

“Like I’m a person instead of a trophy. Like you don’t just look at me and see gold,” I answer honestly. “That’s never happened before,” I admit with a sad smile. “You challenged me to be more than what I’ve been made into. You showed me how to see the world without my blindfold.”

He shifts on his feet, allowing a slash of light shining from the balcony doors to land across his black-clad chest. “Good.”

“But when you did that, you didn’t just open my eyes. You shifted my vision entirely, and now, all I keep seeing is you.”

My voice cracks with the truth, but I let it spread, let it split, just as I’ve been torn down the middle for weeks. It’s so hard, standing here in this raw honesty, bleeding out words. But for better or for worse, I’ve chosen a path in that forked road.

“I was going to just run away. To continue denying and doubting this…thing between us. I kept telling myself that you lied to me, that you’ll fool me like Midas did, that you can’t be trusted. But you’re under my skin and stuck in my head, and I’m furious with you for that.”

Slade rears back and his eyes flash. “Why?”

A shaky sigh slips from my lips. “I’m furious because every waking hour, every sleepless night, I’m trying to convince myself that running away is the best option, but I’m failing at it. I have these things inside of me now, this anger and this fear and this want, and I should walk away—I should. But it’s not enough to just get away from Midas anymore, to run and hide. Because you dug around and unraveled me, and now, I want more.”

Tears gleam across my cheeks as they fall. I don’t think Slade is breathing. There’s this look on his face that’s somehow a perfect mix of determination and devastation. His power crackles, and although I brace myself for a wave of sickness, it doesn’t come.

“Auren,” he rasps, just a slip of my name that somehow sounds like a promise rent from his soul.

“I keep blaming you for things so that I can push you away. But you’ve done nothing wrong. Not really. You’ve challenged me and pissed me off and lied, but it’s nothing I didn’t do right back. You’re not the villain in my story.”

“I am,” he says without remorse, his sharp jaw tight with tension. “But I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.”

“I believe you,” I say immediately, because it’s true. I do believe him, not just in this, but in everything. I can only hope that doesn’t make me the fool.

The moment I say that, Slade takes a step forward. Just one, yet I feel the air between us condense and thicken. As if all these words I’m saying are filling up the divots we’ve created by digging in our heels.

I watch him and he watches me, and in my head, I hear him saying, you are my own good. In the tingle of my lips, I’m feeling the heat of his mouth when he kissed me.

“All my life, men have had me, but I have never had a man.”

The barest of breaths sucks in through his teeth. A stillness passing between us like a fragile pane of glass.

“I am no man.”

“No. You’re more,” I agree. “Because no matter what I do, you cling to my skin and burrow into my conscience, and as angry as I am at you for that, I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. I am sick to death of repression. Of denial. Of holding back. After twenty damn years, I don’t want to tell myself no.”

“So don’t,” he says, practically cursing the word. “What do you want, Auren? Admit to me what you really want.”

There’s an internal compass inside of me that laid still for so long, stuck behind its arc of glass, listless and without hope. But it’s been spinning since the moment I left Highbell, begging me to follow my instincts. To move toward something better.

It’s time I start following that compass. I just didn’t expect for it to point to him.

My pulse pounds and my hands tremble, because when denial drains out of you, it leaves you shaken and scared. What are we without our white lies and protective walls? I’m laid bare, heart raw and vulnerabilities wrenched open, thoroughly ruined while somehow feeling inexplicably right.

Which is why I let that last wall tumble down when I look Slade in the eye and say, “You, Slade. I want you.”