Gold by Raven Kennedy

Author:Raven Kennedy [Kennedy, Raven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2023-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

The woods are all brambles and low-hanging branches, and sweet-smelling yellow leaves dotted with pockets of pink pollen. The morning sun is bright, and I have my back braced against a tree and fingers dug into the dirt.

The gilded, rotted dirt.

It’s getting easy to handle now, this combination of seductive power. Easier to control. To hear, but not let it deafen me. I feel the presence of the rot as if it’s added a new facet to my gold-touch, like a glass crystal held up to the light.

My power has this new connection with the land too. It seems like Annwyn is thirsty for the gold I let drip. Like she soaks it all up and sighs with relief.

But my magic isn’t the only thing I try to work with.

All twenty-four ribbons lie on the ground around me like rays stretching out from the sun. I feel the earth’s beat beneath them, feel the warmth from the dirt and grass. Yet no matter how many times I try to move them, they don’t budge an inch. They stay lifeless. Separate. No movement curling playfully through their lengths.

I miss them.

Tears prick my eyes, but I loop them around my waist with gentle movements, tucking them in safely against me, and tell myself they just need more time.

With that thought, I glance up at the position of the morning sun.

Time to go.

So I gather up the gold, calling it back. I meld it into a ball, rolling the metal between my palms until it hardens, and then I slip it into my pocket.

Slade was right about always keeping some on me. I should’ve been more equipped. If I’d had more at my disposal during that night at Brackhill Castle, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped. Maybe I would’ve been able to stop those men from killing Rissa.

Regret clangs against the walls of my heart.

For a moment, I recall her stubborn face. Her clipped words. The tentative, sharp way she went about becoming an actual friend, as if she was still too apprehensive to be a flower without the thorns.

I liked her prickly personality. I liked those glimpses of softness beneath the barbed exterior. Even though she wasn’t very nice to me in Highbell, there was always something about her that I admired. Plus, Rissa was the one person who understood what it was like living in Highbell all those years as a saddle. We had that connection of the past, no matter what.

Now, she’s gone. Because I wasn’t prepared enough. Because I let my guard down.

I can’t do that again.

After wiping my hands on my pants, I start making my way back to camp, yawning as I go. There was no cozy house for us to stay in last night. Instead, we crowded inside a dilapidated barn with rotted boards and a charred roof, over a hundred of us packed in together on grass and straw.

Just when I’m about to break through the tree line, I hear a branch snap before Emonie

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