Gild (The Plated Prisoner 1)

My heart pounds against my skull with a rap, rap, rap—or is that still the hail against the window?

I turn and bury my face against Digby’s collar. I don’t even care how uncomfortable it is because of his armor. I hold on to him anyway, my whole body a tremor.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I repeat against his chest. He saved me. My quiet, stoic guard just killed a king to save my life.

I hear voices—Midas’s, one of the guards, maybe Digby too. I can’t hear what they’re saying, though, can’t care enough to concentrate on it.

My feet sway a bit, and my eyes pop with flares of black light. More talking. More hail pattering. That song still playing.

“Take her to her rooms,” Midas says—or maybe I imagined it.

Digby’s hands shift me around, and then he’s picking me up, letting my face stay buried against his chest plate.

“You have blood on you. I have blood on me.” My voice sounds far away, small. The blood is such an inconsequential thing compared to everything else. I don’t even know why I point it out.

He carries me away, away and up.

“I need a bright side,” I mumble.

Bright side. I need a bright side to ground me. To keep me from going under.

Bright side...bright side, I didn’t get raped or murdered.

Great Divine, what an abysmal bright side.

Digby stays silent, not offering any suggestions, not that I expected him to. But the sure steps of his boots reassure me for some reason, even though my mind is whirling and those black flares in my vision are getting worse. “You killed a king for me, Digby,” I mutter.

He just grunts.

I close my eyes just for a second, lulled by the sway of him walking. I open my eyes after what feels like just a few seconds, but I realize I’m already on the tallest level of the palace, back in my bedroom, and Digby is setting me down on my bed.

I sit up, bracing my hands on the mattress, my fingers curling into the covers. With one departing look, Digby turns and walks out on quiet footsteps, the creak of my cage door closing softly before he leaves me to my privacy, the lit candles in my room my only companion.

I was going to be raped by a king tonight.

But that king was killed, a blade shoved through his chest just inches away from me. His blood is soaked into my slippers. I can still feel his hot breath against my neck. And the night is crushing me. Crushing me on all sides, as every part of what happened presses against my mind, replaying, picking it apart. Showing me again and again what happened, from the moment I woke up to right now.

I sit here like this for a long while, thinking, listening to the hail and the wind, wondering if I did something in a past life to offend the goddesses—or if I’m so hidden here in Sixth Kingdom, beneath a cover of snow clouds that never leaves, that the stars just haven’t been able to see me.

And for the next hour, that’s all I do, is wonder. With the blood of a dead king still smeared on my shoes, and a shallow wound drying at my throat.

Chapter Fourteen

The sound of a key fitting into my door pulls me from my thoughts. Several sets of footsteps come near as servants file into my cage one after the other. They walk past me, steps determined, as they head for my bathroom, steam rising from buckets in their arms.

A minute later, they all walk right back out silently, the cage closing again, my bedroom door shutting.

I don’t turn, don’t move, but I wait. Listen.

I can feel him behind me, watching, but I keep my back straight, keep my eyes on the window, to the blizzard raging outside.

Finally, Midas walks over, a dark silhouette that stops in front of me a few paces away.

He waits for a beat, and although I can’t see his eyes, I feel the trace of them, feel them land on the slash over my throat.

Midas takes three slow steps and then offers his hand, holding it in front of me, waiting.

I don’t take it.