Gild (The Plated Prisoner 1)

Sail starts to open his mouth, but he’s silenced as the captain lowers himself, bending down until he’s directly in front of Sail, eye-to-eye. Brown to blue. Cruel to kind. His fingers skim over the snow, lazily collecting some of it in his bare palm, piling it up with bored movements.

“Now listen very carefully,” Captain Fane begins, his voice low but loud enough to hear. “I’m going to fuck her. Wherever and whenever I wish.” He says it conversationally, easily, as if he were only talking about the weather. “I’m going to use her. Break her,” Captain Fane goes on, completely uncaring when Sail begins to shake with fury.

A shaken sob totters through my throat, slips past my lips.

“I’m going to cut off some of her pretty hair and send it to Midas in a pretty box, because it will amuse me to taunt him. Perhaps I’ll even take the hair from her golden snatch.”

Captain Fane reaches up, the snow he gathered piled high in his cupped palm. He drops it onto Sail’s bare head with a taunting slap, making my guard wince from the cold. Slabs of it slip over his face before dripping off, landing on his already soaked pants.

The captain gathers more snow.

“And after I’m bored with her—who knows when that will be—I’ll sell her to whoever will give me the highest price. But that won’t be for weeks. Maybe even months.”

Another handful of snow is dumped on Sail’s head. Some flakes stick to his hair, some slip down the back of his shirt to soak against his shivering spine. All while Captain Fane drinks in Sail’s expression, like a cat toying with a mouse, and the Red Raids watch, red bands like gaping, bloody grins.

“She’s going to be nothing but a gold, cum-filled husk by the time I’m done with her.” Sail flinches, shaking now so hard, and even his teeth can’t stop their violent chatter. My heart pounds and hammers, like it wants to burrow down, to tunnel itself down into a chasm, hiding far below.

Another pile of snow is collected in the captain’s palm, constant, methodical. “But you won’t care about any of that. And do you know why?” he asks, dumping another heap over my guard, my friend.

Sail’s head bows, as if the weight of it—this chilled humiliation—is growing too heavy.

Slowly, as if that’s all he was waiting for, this forced capitulation, the captain gets to his feet. He dusts the rest of the snow off his hands. My heart continues to hammer. Beating against my ribs, begging.

“You won’t care,” Captain Fane goes on, looking down at him. “Because you’ll be dead.”

A battering ram against my chest. A single moment only long enough to blink. To look.

Sail’s eyes are suddenly on mine again, blue depths of an ocean he’s never seen. And that kind gaze of his keeps speaking. His nod keeps promising.

It’s okay, it’s okay.

But it’s not okay. Not at all. Because before that nod is even finished, the captain has unhooked a knife from the scabbard at his waist and rammed it into Sail’s chest.

Straight through to his heart.

“No!”

I’m running before I’ve made the conscious decision to do so. But I don’t even make it three steps before someone grabs me, a pair of meaty arms closing around my middle.

I scream, a horrible rage tearing out of my throat, my voice an unearthly noise that rents through the air, hollowing out the night, thrashing through the mountain pass, cursing at the covered stars.

My scream makes the nervous horses whinny and the fire claws hiss. It muffles the Gale Widow’s cries, and it blames the fates. Even when a hand slams over my mouth to quiet me, the sound rips out, as if I could make a tear in the world, as if I could shatter the skies.

Blood blooms over Sail’s chest, soaking into his cotton tunic like a scarlet flower gaping. Hot tears roll from my eyes one after the other in uncontrollable tracks, freezing on my cheeks.

The hand falls away from me as I fall on the ground, scrabbling for him on hands and knees. I don’t feel the bite of the ice as I crawl. But his name falls from my lips again and again, as time seems to stop, to inhale with a shocked breath.

His blue eyes are still on me, but blinking, blinking. They flick down to the blade. To the red.

I reach him just as his body curls forward, just as he falls.

Even with my hands landing against his shoulders, Sail still goes down. All I’m able to do is twist him up, to keep his face pointed at the sky.

Mouth dribbles red life, breath like choked water. Blue-tinged lips to match his eyes as they rain.

My heart shatters itself against my ribs. He looks at me, my teardrops landing on his. I sob. He shudders.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I cry. Lying for him, as he did for me.