Gild (The Plated Prisoner 1)

Ropes are wrapped around him, forcing his body straight against the pole. His vacant eyes are still open, looking ahead at nothing, but it was a gaze that was meant for me, a gaze that he offered with his last dying breath.

Someone shouts, “Our ship’s finally got a Sail!”

I don’t know who says it. Maybe the captain. Maybe someone else. I don’t know because my ears are roaring too loudly to hear, my eyes too blurry to see.

“Think he’ll flap in the wind?” someone else jokes. Mocking laughter is as loud as the thunder, as loud as the whips against the growling beasts who pull us.

The ship slides onward, cutting through the tides of the snow drifts, leaving behind dead Highbell guards in its wake.

And Sail’s body hangs, degraded and scorned, like a carved figurehead at the bow, the last of his blood already frozen against his chest. But those eyes of an ocean don’t shut. Though they don’t see anymore, either.

I turn and vomit on the white-washed wooden planks.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

They leave us alone.

For an hour, maybe two, while they’re busy at work, following some invisible navigation they seem to use that tells them where to go in this dark, frozen world.

It’s a lot of shouting and rushing around as they get going, steered by the fire claws, our vessel leading the other two ships that travel behind us.

Soon, we start to fly.

Gliding across the barren ice land, the ships race onward as they catch the sweet spot of speed. Using the strength of the running beasts pulling like wolves on a sleigh, the ships use it to their advantage, whips cracking, until we’re going so fast that all the ships need is the slick ground to carry their velocity.

All three snow pirate ships careen across the expanse of white as sleet continues to fall, whipping at our faces in the wind. The smooth wooden bottoms slide like an unstoppable force, snow spraying up against the sides like cresting waves.

Even with the wind tearing through my hair and the rain soaking my dress, I stay standing, stay gripping the railing, stay staring at Sail’s body ahead.

And that anger, that first spark of it that lit when my ribbons uncurled to shove Mist, it comes coiling up again.

The shocked sadness of Sail’s death was cold. But this, this is hot and red—as red as the band across Captain Fane’s face.

My eyes settle on him, on where he stands at the bow as he shouts orders and directions below. The black feather in his hat is bent back with the open rush of the air, and there’s a glint at his waist, at the knife tucked there.

It’s that knife that I focus on, that I stare at as I let go of the railing at last, my fingers cramping, still missing one glove from where the captain tore it off to touch me.

I don’t care that it’s full night, carrying weighted shadows that suppress my soul. I don’t care that the clouds unleashed a torrent. I don’t care that I’m one woman against a ship load of men. I don’t care that I’m vulnerable, that I’m walking toward the captain alone.

Because Sail was my friend.

And this is n

ot okay.

My ribbons trail behind me as my steps grow surer, my spine straighter. A mantra plays in my mind as I remember Sail’s last comforting gaze.

This is not okay, this is not okay.

No one stops me as I walk forward, no one even looks my way. I’m so inconsequential to them—all of the saddles left on the deck are. A fact made obvious since we’ve been left unguarded. Left to huddle and cower on the deck.

But I won’t do that. Not with Sail strung up like that. I suppose a person has limits, and this is mine.

It’s easy, so easy to make it across the ship. To pass by without anyone bothering to even look my way. It’s the arrogance of men, to think so little of women. And it’ll be their downfall too.

Past hooks of weapons, past coils of rope, past pirates hauling loot, I veer around it all. Until I make it all the way to the bow. Right behind the captain.

All twenty-four of my ribbons move like tentacles. All down my spinal cord, growing in perfect symmetry out of my skin, the inch-wide satin strips rise up on either side of my spine, from the bottom of my neck, to the dimples above my butt.