Glint (The Plated Prisoner, 2)

From internationally bestselling author and TikTok phenom Raven Kennedy comes the second book in a stunning fantasy series inspired by the myth of King Midas, perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas and Jennifer L Armentrout.

For ten years, I've lived in a gilded cage inside King Midas's golden castle. But one night changed everything.

Now I'm here, a prisoner of Fourth Kingdom's army, and I'm not sure if I'm going to make it out of this in one piece. They're marching to battle, and I'm the bargaining chip that will either douse the fire or spark a war.

At the heart of my fear, my worry, there's him―Commander Rip.

Known for his brutality on the battlefield, his viciousness is unsurpassed. But I know the truth about what he is.

Fae.

The betrayers. The murderers. The ones who nearly destroyed Orea, wiping out Seventh Kingdom in the process. Rip has power sizzling beneath this skin and glinting spikes down his spine. But his eyes―his eyes are the most compelling of all.

When he turns those black eyes on me, I feel captive for an entirely different reason.

I may be out of my cage, but I'm not free, not even close. In the game of kings and armies, I'm the gilded pawn. The question is, can I out maneuver them?

Raven Kennedy is an international bestseller whose love for books pushed her into creating her own worlds. The Plated Prisoner series, a dark fantasy romance, has sold in over twenty countries. It became a New York Times, USA Today, Sunday Times, and Spiegel bestseller, hit #1 in the Amazon store, and has sold over six million copies worldwide.

Glint the second book in Raven Kennedy’s Plated Prisoner series, picks up right where “Gild” leaves off and follows Auren as the world she thought she knew begins to crack wide open. At the start, Auren is still reeling from being taken from King Midas, the man she has loved and trusted for years, and placed under the control of King Ravinger—better known as Slade—the feared king of Fourth Kingdom. On the surface, she is a political pawn, a bargaining chip caught between powerful rulers. Inside, she is a confused, hurting woman clinging to the belief that Midas will save her and that everything happening is just a temporary nightmare. Auren has spent her life believing that Midas rescued her, cherished her, and protected her by gilding her and keeping her close. In “Glint,” that belief begins to fray as distance, danger, and new perspectives push her to question whether being locked in a cage of gold was really love at all.

Life in Fourth Kingdom is brutally different from the pampered isolation of Midas’s palace. Auren finds herself traveling with Slade and his notorious Brass Legion, a hardened group of warriors, through harsh landscapes, battlefields, and rough camps. The people around her aren’t dazzled by her golden skin; many see her as suspicious, weak, or simply another problem to manage. At first, Auren clings to her old habits: loyalty to Midas, fear of stepping out of line, shame about her power. She still thinks like a prisoner who needs permission to exist. But the rhythm of camp life, the bluntness of soldiers, and the constant presence of danger slowly start to strip away the illusions she lived under. Outside of Midas’s influence, she begins to see how other kingdoms suffer under his ambition, how his decisions ripple outward, and how little she truly understands about the world beyond her cage.

A central part of Glint is Auren’s evolving relationship with Slade. He is rough, sarcastic, and unapologetically intimidating, the kind of man who makes people flinch just by walking into a room. Auren initially views him as a villain—a kidnapper, a threat, someone standing between her and the man she still believes is her savior. Slade, however, refuses to treat her the way Midas did. He does not call her “precious” or put her on a pedestal; instead, he challenges her, pushes her to ask questions, and makes it clear he does not see her as a helpless ornament. Their interactions are full of sharp banter, frustration, and a tension that slowly shifts from pure hostility to something more layered. Auren’s attraction to him unsettles her, because it collides with everything she thinks she owes Midas. As she spends more time with Slade and sees the loyalty he inspires in his people, her certainty about who the real monster is begins to wobble.

Auren’s golden power also becomes more central in this book. In “Gild,” her gift was mostly something she hid or used in small, controlled ways. In “Glint,” circumstances force her to rely on it more often, and each use reveals just how strange and potent it really is. Her golden ribbons respond to her emotions—fear, rage, desperation—making it clear that her magic is tied to her sense of self. As battles erupt and threats close in, Auren’s instincts push her to defend herself and others, and her ribbons act with increasing strength and autonomy. This growth is both liberating and terrifying for her. She has always believed that Midas’s touch made her special, that she was an extension of his power. Now she begins to see that her gift may be something separate, something older, something that belongs solely to her. That realization forces her to confront a major question: if her power is hers alone, then how much of her life, identity, and worth really came from Midas—and how much did he simply claim?

Beyond Auren’s personal journey, “Glint” widens the lens on the politics and tensions of the kingdoms. The story moves through Fourth Kingdom’s territory, showing the impact of war, the strain between rulers, and the way rumors about Midas and his golden girl echo through soldiers and citizens. The Brass Legion, with its mix of personalities and loyalties, gives Auren a new environment to observe. She encounters people who have suffered under royal games, seen friends die, and lived with consequences of decisions made far above their heads. Through them, she starts to understand that her life of gilded safety came at a cost she never saw. Slade’s role as king becomes clearer, too. He isn’t just a brutal war leader; he is someone constantly calculating, guarding his people, and preparing for conflict with Midas, whose hunger for power is much larger than Auren ever realized.

Emotionally, Glint is a book of unraveling and rethinking. Auren revisits her memories of Midas through a new lens, noticing moments that once seemed harmless but now look like control, manipulation, or disregard. The things he withheld from her—the truth about politics, the reality of war, details about her own magic—start to feel less like protection and more like deliberate ignorance. Still, her journey away from him is not simple. She loved him deeply for years, and love does not vanish at the first sign of betrayal. Auren wrestles with guilt over doubting him, shame for feeling drawn to Slade, and fear that she is being ungrateful to the man who gave her a life when she had nothing. This internal conflict gives the book much of its emotional weight. It shows how hard it is to walk away from a person who has hurt you when that person also once felt like home.

The pacing of Glint blends quieter character moments with bursts of action. Travel scenes, campfire conversations, and tense strategy meetings sit alongside ambushes, confrontations, and magical displays. In the quieter passages, Auren slowly grows closer to some of the soldiers, begins to joke, listens to their stories, and starts to see herself not as a precious object, but as part of a group. These interactions, small as they are, chip away at her sense of isolation. For the first time, she experiences a version of life where she is not locked away from others but moving among them. This contrast with her sheltered existence in Midas’s palace highlights how much she has lost by being “protected” for so long.

A recurring theme in Glint is the idea of cages—visible and invisible. Auren’s physical cage in Orea was golden and beautiful, easy to recognize as a prison. But outside of it, she learns that there are subtler cages: loyalty, fear, dependence, and the stories people tell about themselves and their rulers. Midas kept her in a gilded cell, but he also trapped her mind with the belief that she could not survive without him. Slade challenges that narrative, sometimes harshly, forcing her to consider that her freedom may have always been hers to claim, if only she had dared. As Auren recognizes the shape of these mental cages, she begins taking small steps to push back: using her power when she chooses, voicing her opinions, and letting herself feel anger instead of burying it under gratitude.

By the end of Glint Auren is no longer the entirely trusting, sheltered woman readers met in “Gild.” She has seen enough of Midas’s world from the outside to know that he is not the flawless savior she believed in. She has glimpsed the strength and danger of her own power and felt the pull of something new with Slade. She is still far from fully free—there are threats everywhere, secrets she does not yet understand, and a looming confrontation that promises to tear apart what remains of her old life. But a shift has begun. Her faith in Midas is cracked, her awareness of herself is growing, and the golden ribbons that once only defended her are starting to look like tools she might one day wield on her own terms. “Glint” is, at its heart, the book where Auren’s loyalty begins to loosen, her vision widens, and the first glimmers of who she could become—beyond her plated prison—start to gleam through the cracks.