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

I follow a step behind Midas as he leads the way out of the ballroom and into the great hall. His guards are waiting for him, and they peel away from the wall when they see us coming, falling in behind with matching strides.

I’m a pulped mesh of exhaustion, yet corners of anxious anticipation sharpen my edges. Even with the food I’ve eaten, I can feel my body weakening with every step until I have to look down at my feet to keep them moving.

Midas takes me out of the great hall, down a corridor and to a set of stairs. I try to memorize the path so that I can relay it to Lu later in case she hasn’t found the way yet, but it’s a struggle to pay attention because of how drained I feel.

I squeeze my stinging eyes shut and then miss a step from my lack of concentration. Luckily, my ribbons help catch my fall.

“Careful, Precious,” Midas murmurs.

I take my time down the steps, gripping the railing in a tight hold. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I blow out a breath of relief.

I’m tired. So tired.

A brisk cold in the air makes me shiver, and I take a second to look around, though aside from the shadowed lighting, the space is unremarkable. Just plain and gray, like a servant’s passageway.

Midas keeps walking down the corridor, and I swipe my hand over my forehead to get rid of the sweat gathered against my hairline. “Are we close?” Even my voice sounds weary.

“Yes, we’re here,” Midas tells me, and I jerk my head up to look as he comes to a stop in front of a plain wooden door.

He nods to one of the guards, and the man steps forward with a key, shoving it into the lock. My heart is pounding in my head, in my temples, in my veins.

I feel so sick with worry. Or maybe I’m just plain sick. Too much power use has left me to feel like every drop of gold my skin created was me slowly bleeding out.

I try to push past the feeling, but it just keeps getting worse, my limbs tingling, my vision bending.

When the door swings open, Midas looks at me with a smile and then strides inside, while I gulp in a breath and tell myself to get my shit together. Stumbling forward, I pass through the threshold, because I don’t care how sick I feel, nothing is going to keep me from seeing Digby. Not even myself.

As soon as I’m inside, the guards close the door behind me to leave us in privacy.

I take two steps before coming to an abrupt stop.

My mouth opens in a soundless pant, eyes sweeping over the dimly lit room of plain gray floors and walls, a crescent window too high to reach, a cot on the floor.

I blink, trying to register what I’m seeing, though it’s difficult past the haze that’s descended in my mind.

“Digby?”

The steps I take forward are like slogging through deep sand, each lift of my feet a weighted struggle. My vision has gone tunneled, drops of black ink staining around the edges.

When I reach the bedside and look down, my stomach slants like the steep pitch of a roof, meant to make everything slip off before it can settle. My legs and face both crumple, and the only reason I stay upright is because I manage to catch myself on the wall, palm abraded against the stone as I stare down in horror.

The man lying on the bed is unrecognizable.

It’s not skin I’m looking at, it’s a map of mottled bruises showing where each injury travelled, the passages that took them from black and blues to yellows and greens. Swollen cheeks, split lip, fingernails gone black, and gray hair darkened by grime and plastered against his forehead.

My hand slaps over my mouth like I want to stifle the agony that courses through me, but I could never cover that up.

Because Digby is broken.

This is not the man I remember. This isn’t my strong, gruff, stoic guard. The person lying on this cot is a mess of injuries and pain, skin too many colors to count. If it weren’t for the wheezing from his lungs, I would think he was dead.

My wet eyes begin to drip, tears scalding my cheeks as my world tilts. My hands hesitate over him, hovering over his tattered and filthy uniform, the golden fabric tarnished and torn. I’m too afraid to touch him in case it causes more pain, so I reach out with one ribbon to gently brush against his arm.

“Why is he like this?” I ask, my voice coming out in a hoarse whisper, though it thunders in my chest. When I don’t get an answer, I round on Midas, but spinning that fast makes my dizziness worse. “What did you do?” I’m able to shout it out this time, the thunder audible as it rents through the air.

Midas leans against the wall with his hands in his pants pockets, looking back at me with a dispassionate gaze. “Me?” he asks, and then he starts to slowly shake his head. “Oh, I didn’t do this, Auren. You did. Whenever you broke a rule. Every time you tried to pull away from me, you did this. I warned you.”

My mouth drops open, but he pushes off the wall and strides over to me, stopping just an inch away. I lift my chin and glare at him, though the outline of his face has starbursts of fractured light around it, prisms of refracting colors that wobble every time I blink.

“You think I don’t know about you sneaking out of your room? You think I don’t know about your visit to Mist last night?” he demands, something lurid and callous in his voice. “That was very stupid of you.”

Nausea roils in my stomach, beads of strain brining against my brow.

“She sent word to me the moment you left her rooms,” he informs me before his hands clamp around my arms, the grip digging in with a painful pinch. “She’s loyal. Which is what you should’ve been.”

“I was!”

And look where that got me.

Midas shakes his head in disgust. “You’re lucky you’re indispensable to me, Auren,” he says, tone warped with a warning that bows between us.

Wrenching out of his hold, I stumble back, my shoulder hitting the wall. My body is suddenly burning hot, my vision murky, bogged down by a fog that isn’t there.

“What are you going to do to Mist?” I demand. “Are you going to let your new betrothed kill her?” My voice echoes, bounces off the walls—or is that just happening in my ears?

He narrows his eyes. “All you need to focus on now is how your actions have affected this man.”

With acid crawling up my throat, I look back at Digby, my vision swaying. Like walking across a capsizing ship, I try to get to him. I unravel my ribbons so I can drag him out of here, but I trip over them, knees landing on the hard ground as I cry out from the impact. Bursts of color explode in my vision, my limbs zinging with electric pulses.

On my knees, I lean toward my guard, my hands coming up to gently shake his shoulder. “Digby, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

I shake him a little more, but I’m so terrified of hurting him more than he already is. “Digby, wake up!” Panic comes in the lash of my voice and the crack of my jaw.

A horribly hot wave washes over me, making me feel strange, growing worse when the dizziness strikes me again.

And that’s when I realize…

“Something’s wrong.”

Palpitations thrum erratically against my ribs like an off-tempo beat. I can taste the flaring light that’s prisming my vision, and my body keeps flushing with this uncomfortable heat. This isn’t just me feeling power-drained. This isn’t just shock from seeing the state of Digby.

Something is very, very wrong.

Midas comes around to stand in front of me, his shadow oppressive. “I’m sure you’re feeling strange, but you’ll get used to it.”

“What do you mean?” Slurred words, heavy lids. “What did you do?”

“It’s just the effect of the dew. You must be reacting poorly since it’s your first time, especially since you’re depleted. I made sure you had quite a high dose.”

Horror crashes over me.

A gasp tears from my lips, ragged fear leaking out.

I’m choppy and uneven, snatched up in the blades of a water mill, yanked from the depths just to be flipped over and dropped back down again.

I struggle to get to my feet, using the edge of Digby’s cot to pull myself up. “You…you drugged me?”

I start to gag, like my mind is trying to jumpstart my body into dispelling the dew he slipped into me, but I know it’s far too late for that. I feel it everywhere, from my tingling toes to my sparkling vision.

“I’ve tried everything to get through to you. It’s partly my fault for being too busy to deal with you sooner, but now I’ll have things well in hand.”

“You fucking bastard!” I lob back, pure fury straightening me up, the ends of my ribbons wobbling as they try to help me stay upright.

Midas comes nearer and places an unyielding grip on my quaking chin. “Just breathe through it, Precious. Stop fighting it. The dew will make you feel good if you just relax.”

Make me feel good.

Flashbacks of visiting the saddle wing for the first time come rushing forward. I remember the bloodshot eyes and giggles. The languid bodies and carnal craving.

Oh goddess…

My eyes squeeze shut, prickles of tears crushed in the corners, left to leave me sodden and stuck. That horrible heat flushes across my skin again, and I groan, not in pleasure, but immeasurable dismay, because this can’t be happening. I can’t let this horrible drug make me feel lust toward him.

I would rather die.

“Shh, it’s okay, Precious. I’ll take care of you. With the dew, you’ll be so much more relaxed from now on.” Hands move, squeezing my tense shoulders, bunching the knotted muscle with his unwanted touch.

“No…”

He ignores me, stroking the curve of my arms, petting up and down, down and up. My body is in a riot, flooded with too much dew, magically drained and exhausted, adrenaline spiked with shock. It’s all too much, my senses a chaos of crisscrossed directions that leave me with nowhere to go.

Midas pulls me to him, hitting me with his scent that always carries a hint of metallic sharpness. The dew wants me to give in to him. I can feel its lecherous claws digging in, and he’s counting on me to fall under the weight of its inebriated delirium.

“This is going to make you all better, Auren,” he soothes in my ear. My stomach churns over the words, wanting to hurl them back up. “It’s been too long since I’ve felt you. You’re going to love it.”

Bile smashes up my throat, burning the back of my tongue.

Here.

Like this.

He’s drugged me, brought me to a beaten man’s bedside, and is going to try to take advantage right here, right now, like this.

Disgusted anger lashes through the haze of dew and comes hurtling upward. All my limbs and ribbons may be jellied and sluggish, but for a split second, I fight through it.

With a noise I didn’t even know I could make, I bring my ribbons up and slam them into him in a sudden burst of strength.

Midas goes crashing back into the wall and falls to the floor, but the move makes me fall too. My ribbons crumple as I land hard on my hands and my knees, yet the pain feels like bubbles popping against my skin, even that distorted.

A pained curse flies from his mouth, and my head whips up. “You will never touch me again!” I growl, not even recognizing the sound of my voice. “I hate you. I fucking HATE YOU!” I scream, my throat shredding, the room splitting.

Midas sits up, a hand lifting to swipe at the back of his head, fingertips coming back bloody. When he sees the red stain on his fingertips, his eyes flash up to mine with fury. “How dare you harm your king!”

I’m running off pure adrenaline, anger perched on my ribs and fueling my fire. “You’re not my king! You’re not my anything! I despise you,” I spit out, my voice like venom expelling out to blind him with my enmity. “I thought you loved me, but you only love yourself. I know what it feels like now to truly be cherished and respected, and those are two things you’ve never done,” I pant, each word as sharp as claws. “You’re nothing but a false king who uses and manipulates everyone in his life because you secretly loathe yourself.”

Something sinister coalesces in his eyes, gathers on his brow, settles in the depths of his darkened eyes. I kneel there shaking and raw, glaring at him through all the bits and pieces of me scraped open.

The energy I expelled has left me weakened, my ribbons flopping on the floor like beached fish. My vision flares as another wave of heat passes through me to instigate some forced thirst of desire that I refuse to have for this man.

I gasp and clutch my head, trying to fight past it, and that’s when Midas pounces.

One second, he’s across the room, and the next, his fist is in my hair and he’s slamming my front to the ground. Hard.

I cry out, my cheek cracking with the impact that I’m sure would be worse if it weren’t for the drug coursing through my veins.

“You know what it’s like to be cherished and respected?” he snarls in my ear, his body pressing me down. “So you did fuck that grotesque horned commander, didn’t you? You let that Fourth filth touch what’s mine.”

“I’m not yours!” Spittle and fury expels from my mouth as he holds me down. “And that Fourth filth is ten times the male you could ever be!”

With gritted teeth, I try to make my ribbons lurch up and shove him away again, but it’s like trying to move limbs that have had their circulation cut off for too long. They flop clumsily, too affected by the drug.

Midas snatches them up in his other hand and wraps them around his fist like a leash pulled tight.

“I tried to do this the easy way, Auren. But you’ve left me no choice.”

I’m wrenched up to my feet like a rag doll, my vision tipping, pinpricks scurrying down my skin. I look up just as Midas shouts for the guards to come in, but I don’t glance at the door.

No, my attention is on Digby.

Digby, whose swollen eyes are suddenly wide open and latched onto me with recognition. I almost cry out at the sight of them. The brown of tree bark, scalded by the rays of a summer sun.

I see his throat work, how it bobs beneath his messy gray beard, and then his cracked lips move to say, “Miss Auren,” and I really do cry out this time.

He’s alive.

He’s awake.

“I’m going to save you,” I vow, the words coming from a stripped and slivered throat, a bleeding tongue of slurring whispers.

But he hears it.

Our moment is cut short when the guards come in, and Midas lifts me up by my ribbons and hair, shoving me face-first against the wall, too fast to stop.

“Hold her.”

A collection of firm hands come up, taking over Midas’s grip. Prisms of rainbow light stretch across my vision, though the bright rainbows don’t fit here in this violent dimness. My bleary eyes take in a profiled face with a thick brown sideburn. Scofield. When did he get here?

I’m held against the wall just as Midas ordered, and I want to struggle, I want to scream, but I’m floating on a stream of lethargy with no way to cross the current.

“You brought this on yourself, Auren,” Midas says, making my heavy lids blink.

“Wha—”

That’s when I see the sword in Midas’s grip. A golden blade, so sharp it seems to cut through the air as he lifts it right over Digby.

That’s when I start to struggle. Only the pure surge of panic makes it possible. I shove at Scofield and the others, but I can’t get them off.

“No! Digby!”

With frenzied, wide eyes, I see Midas look at me and lift the sword. My throat closes, cinches tight like the knot of a noose, and I screech at him to leave Digby alone, leave him alone, alone, alone…

But the drug has altered my depth perception, because it’s not Digby he brings the sword down on.

It’s me.

I was so aware of being held against the wall, solely focused on trying to fight the effects of the drug and get to Digby, that I didn’t even realize that the guards still have my ribbons pulled taut. That they’re stuck in the mercy of crushing grips.

A split-second warning of terror is all I get.

Then, Midas brings the sword down on them, the edge of the sharp blade slicing into their golden lengths, and my entire sense of self fractures.

All I know is utter agony.

Utter, eclipsing, unmitigated agony.

I don’t just scream.

I rupture.

There is no dulled pain this time. When that sword hacks through my ribbons, I feel everything.

The bite of the blade cleaves into the top where they grow between my shoulder blades, and my vision cleaves with them.

I’m in complete shock, pain exploding beneath the blow of the torture. My ribbons jerk and recoil, screaming a silent scream that fuses into my spine and rattles down every bone.

In speckles of splintered vision, I see three of them flutter to the ground at my feet. Their ends are frayed and uneven, tiny droplets of golden blood weeping from their mangled ends.

I stare at them, mind not quite grasping what this means, and they twitch in response, like the tail of a lizard cut from its body, still spasming where it lies.

A horrible, wailing, guttural bellow tears from my chest. “No, no, no, no! Not my ribbons, not my ribbons!”

“You caused this. You will not attack your king,” Midas hollers back, a manic wildness raving out of the cold determination of his tone.

With desperate panic, I try to steel the rest of my ribbons, try to sharpen their edges and turn them as firm as solid metal, but I can’t. Not with the drug, not with the exhaustion, the shock, the pain.

I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—

My sobs quake and wrench and threaten to topple. “Oh goddess, please…”

Midas raises the sword and brings it down again.

And again.

And again.

More ribbons fall at my feet, more screams explode from my throat and rip me in two. At some point, vomit heaves out of my mouth, leaving me to choke on acidic torment. I am nothing but flashing pain as he severs my very soul from my body.

I cry. I scream. I beg.

I spit and flail and fight, and my vision fractures, my body unable to hold myself up beneath the weight of the pain.

None of it matters. The guards still hold my ribbons taut. Midas still brings the sword down and cuts a part of me away, strand by golden strand, another limb lost.

I don’t know how long it takes.

Seconds? Minutes? Hours? I black out, become a convulsing mass of wailing stupor whose only cognizance is misery.

And then…

He cuts off the last one, and I shatter.

Right there on the floor, pieces of me left like bits of useless rags. Like the strings of a harp that can no longer play. Like the strands that once wove me together.

I’m dropped, body left in a heap to lie on the hard stone floor, but I don’t feel it. I don’t notice the blurred forms of the guards as they start to file out. I only see my ribbons, lifeless and lackluster. Just like me.

“You did this to yourself.”

My eyes roll up to Midas’s towering figure, to the hard set of his jaw. To the cruelty in his eyes.

He passes off the sword, straightens his tunic. “Disobedience has consequences, Auren. I needed to cut away this disobedient disease I’ve let fester in you. This was what you led me to do,” he tells me, peeling me raw.noveldrama

The tears that fall down my cheeks cut me open, drip by drip, hot gashes that slice through my face and sting all the way to my essence. Midas’s mouth thins, eyes flickering with some unknown emotion that’s probably as close to softening as they can get.

“Don’t disobey me anymore, Precious. I hate seeing you like this.” His gaze shifts over the inert ribbons, down my throbbing spine. “This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you.”

Infuriated outrage flares in the mouth of my beast, but I’m far too numb to spew it. He didn’t just chop off meaningless streams like trimming off a bit of fabric. My ribbons weren’t just attached to my back, they were attached to my fucking soul.

The moment he sliced them away, he took something integral. He gouged in and ripped a part of me away, and now…

I’m empty. Mangled. Nothing but a radiation of agony.

The maimed edges along my spine are choppy and blunt, short and twitching with spasms I can’t control. Each mutilated end pokes out from my back like snapped wings plucked bare of feathers.

With a shake of his head, Midas straightens himself up, already convinced that his every action was justified. “I’ll have a mender tend to you later. Take some time to rest, Precious,” he says softly before he turns and walks out, and I flinch when his shoes step on my ribbons, as if I can feel the phantom pain of their massacred lengths as they’re crushed under his heel.

When the door slams shut, the sound tips me over the edge, and my consciousness casts me into a cold oblivion.

I fall willingly into the darkness with a plea for escape, while twenty-four pieces of me are left to wilt and wither in gilded grief. I shudder as my back drips and my eyes weep, knowing I’ll never be whole again.