Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

A yellow-nailed finger points in my face. “The customer paid for you, and that’s what he’ll get. Locals have been waiting years for the painted gold girl to grow up. You’re in high demand, Auren. A demand that I’ve grown even more by making them wait—another fact you should be grateful for.”

Good. Grateful. Zakir uses these words, but I’m not sure he knows what they mean.

“Because of me, I’ve made you the most expensive whore in Derfort, and you’re not even in a brothel. The saddles are boiling with jealousy.” He says this like it’s something to be proud of, as if he’s giddy that even other whores don’t like me.

He scratches at a spot on his cheek, eyes gone greedy. “The gold-painted beggar girl of Derfort Harbor is finally old enough to buy for a night to get between her legs. I won’t let you ruin my chance at earning those coins or ruin my reputation on the streets,” he says, voice as rough as storm-chopped waters.

My fingernails prick into my palm as I fist my hands, and the space between my shoulder blades tingles, itching. If it would make any difference to scrape off my skin and pluck out my hair, I would do it. I would do anything to get rid of the gleam of my body.

There have been nights where I’ve tried to do just that while the other kids slept. But unlike the rumors that run rampant in Derfort, I’m not painted. This gold will never come off, no matter how many times I wash or scrub myself raw. The new skin and hair always grows in gleaming just like before.

My parents called me their little sun, and I used to be proud of the shine. Yet in this world full of gawking Oreans and a bereft sky, all I want to do is go dull. To finally find a hiding spot where no one can find me.

Zakir shakes his head at me, eyes bloodshot from late nights of gambling, a perpetual cloud of smoke hovering around him like always. He seems to hesitate for a moment before he leans back with his arms crossed and says, “Barden East has his feelers out for you.”

My eyes go wide. “Wh-what?” I ask, the fearful whisper puffing past my lips.

Barden is another flesh trader here at the port. He runs the eastside—thus the second name that he adopted—but unlike Zakir, who’s somewhat tolerable, I’ve heard that Barden is...not.

Zakir had the decency to wait until I was considered an adult before he made me a saddle for passing sailors and townies. But word around Derfort is that Barden is the worst kind of flesh trader, who has no such decency. He doesn’t deal in punitive child beggars and pickpockets. His wealth is made from cutthroats and pirates, from flesh trading and whoring. I’ve never traveled to the east side, but it’s rumored that the way Barden runs his business makes Zakir look like a saint.

“Why?” I ask, though the word comes out garbled, throat too tight with a threatening noose that seems to be wrapped around my neck.

He gives me a dry look. “You know why. It’s for the same reason the saddles in the brothel started painting their skin different colors. You have a certain...appeal, and now that you’re a woman...”

Bile rises to my throat. Funny how it seems to taste of seawater. “Please don’t sell me to him.”

Zakir takes a step forward, crowding me against the side of the building. My neck prickles with his nearness, the skin along my spine jumping like my fear wants to sprout out.

“I’ve been lenient, because out of all the others, you’ve always made me the most on the streets,” he tells me. “People loved giving coin to the painted girl. And if they didn’t, you could distract them enough to pluck it from their pockets later.”

Shame crawls up my throat. What would my parents think of me if they saw me now? What would they think of the begging, of the stealing, of the scrapping in fistfights with the other kids?

“But you’re not a kid anymore.” Zakir runs his tongue over his teeth before spitting a polluted glob onto the ground. “If you disobey me again, I’ll wash my hands of you and sell you to Barden East. And I’m telling you now, if that happens, you’ll wish you’d stayed with me and behaved.”

Tears prickle in my eyes. My back muscles flinch so hard that my spine stiffens.

Zakir digs into the pocket of his vest and pulls out his wooden pipe. Once he puts it in his mouth and lights up, he levels me with a look. “So? What’s it going to be, Auren?”

For a split second, my eyes move past him to look over his shoulder, to the ships at the harbor again. To those billowing sail clouds tied to the sea.

I was my parents’ little sun.

I used to dance beneath a sky that sang.

Now, here I am, a painted whore in the slums of a sodden harbor, with filth in the air and a silent cry in my throat, and no amount of rain will ever wash the curse of my goldenness away.

Zakir sucks on his pipe, blue smoke wringing out through his teeth with a grunt. He’s getting impatient now. “For fuck’s sake. All you have to do is lie there.”

My body shudders, tears threatening to spill. That’s what the first man told me. “Just lie down on the pallet, girl. This will be quick.” He dropped a coin on the mattress when he was done with me. I left it there, metal worn and tainted with the passing of too many hands, though it wasn’t nearly as tarnished as I was.

Just lie there. Just lie there and chip away, little by little. Just lie there and feel yourself die from the inside out.

“Please, Zakir.”

My plea makes his teeth grind on the tip of his pipe. “It’s going to be Barden, then? You’d rather live on Eastside?”

I shake my head emphatically. “No.”