Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

“Well. Yes...” Patch Beard answers, that blush still on his cheeks.

“Right, so can you please move so I can go inside? I’d hate to have to tell the king that you barred his favored saddle from entering her own wing. I’m sure he wouldn’t be too pleased about it.”

The young guard blanches and whips his head toward Gray Hair. “You’re insulting King Midas’s favored,” he says through his teeth.

“I am not,” he argues. “I thought she—”

Patch Beard cuts him off, looking back at me. “Go right on ahead, miss,” he says as he reaches over and opens the door grandly.

I make sure to give him a sweet smile as I walk past. “Thank you.”

When the door snicks shut behind me, I hear the two of them immediately start to bicker, making a snort rise in my throat. I didn’t expect that to actually work, but I’m certainly going to take advantage of it.

I look around the small, empty entryway and hear a noise coming through the door to my right. Walking over, I peer inside from the doorway and find a large room. There are two white pillars standing along the back wall like bookends holding together the windows. The space is basked in the brooding light of frosted window panes, while icy blue paint and matching rugs makes it seem cold despite the fire burning in the hearth.

Egg-shaped chairs woven with straw are hanging from the ceiling, deep enough to fit a few saddles at once. Some of them are doing just that, lounging on plush pillows inside like the strange swinging seats are their shared cocoons.

My eyes dart from them to the decadent piles of more pillows on the floor in the corner, all white, blue, and purple. There’s a skinny table filled with food platters and pitchers of drink on the opposite wall, and several chaises scattered around the middle of the room. All in all, it looks decadent, if a little messy.

I pick out most of the saddles I traveled here with, along with a few new faces, but none of them have noticed me yet. The ones in the swinging egg chairs seem to be dozing, lazy legs hanging out, the hems of silk dresses dragging against the carpeted floor.

They’re all so...comfortable together that I have to tamp down a pang of jealousy. What would it have been like if I’d been included with them while we lived in Highbell? If I’d been allowed to visit the saddles, if they hadn’t resented and hated me, my life would’ve been far less lonely. I know they argue and fight—I saw that while we were with Fourth’s army—but they’ve formed friendships too. Even if some of them hate each other, at least they have each other. I had no one. Have no one.

A giggle to my right cuts off my pity party, and my gaze swings over to one of the chaises to find one person I do not want to be friends with.

Polly seems to notice me at the same exact time that I notice her, because her crystal blue eyes flash to me, the giggle dying on her lips. Beside her, the male saddle, Rosh, stiffens. Three more saddles sitting in the other lounger turn to look at me as I make my way over.

“Nice dress,” Polly sneers, lips curling up in a malicious smile as she looks at my bent and awkward bodice.

A bit of heat rises into my cheeks at her scathing look, but I shrug it off. “My ribs aren’t a fan of Fifth’s clothing.”

She snorts derisively, her body slumped against the purple cushions, blonde hair in disarray. “Pain is beauty. But I guess you wouldn’t know.”

The other saddles cackle. More heat blooms in my cheeks.

“Pain shouldn’t be the requisite of beauty.”

“Spoken like a true pampered whore,” she lobs back, though her eyes are glassy, unfocused. “What are you even doing here? You’re not welcome in our wing.”

I glance warily at the other three women, who are watching me with a kind of bored interest. “I wanted to see how you were all settling in.”

Polly rolls her eyes. “Liar.”

“Fine,” I concede with a shrug. I don’t want to talk to her any more than she wants to talk to me. “I came to see Rissa. Do you know where she is?” I ask, looking around.

Her shrewd, albeit slightly bloodshot eyes, narrow on me. “Why do you always want to talk to her lately? You aren’t friends.”

It’s like a kick to the gut, like she saw what I was thinking before I walked over here, and she wants to drive the knife in.

“How do you know we aren’t friends?” I ask defensively.

“Because Rissa is my friend,” Polly replies, her cheeks blooming with an angry blush that surprises me.

One of the other saddles laughs—Isis, the statuesque one with black hair. “Are you jealous of the gilded cunt?”

I bristle at her words, but Polly does too. “Shut your fat mouth,” she snaps.

Isis just laughs harder, so much so that she ends up falling into the saddle sitting beside her, making that woman erupt into laughter too. They flop onto the floor together in a heap of uncontrollable giggles, and then—