Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1)(55)

The stricken tears that blot in my eyes are cold. So, so cold.

“I’m so sorry, my lady,” Sail says, defeat and anger in his gaze.

Apart from his armor, the pirates stripped him of his helmet too. With stark fear on his expression, he looks even paler than usual. Only the bruises and blood give his face any color at all. The grim terror he holds is so unlike his familiar joviality, so different from the open kindness normally worn on his face.

“It’s not your fault, Sail,” I say quietly, trying to ignore the way the pirate to my right grips my arm so tightly that it cuts off my circulation. My body wants to shake in terror, but I staunch the urge like a pressed hand against a flowing wound. Suppressing it. Holding it in.

“Yes, it is.” Sail’s voice wobbles, and my heart cracks with the sound of that trembled concession. Cracks deeper with the way his throat bobs, as if he’s trying to swallow down his panic, trying to push through, despite our circumstances.

And all I can think of are the stories he’s told me as we rode side-by-side these long nights. Of his four older brothers, who ran barefoot and wild down the slums of Highbell. Of his tough but fierce-loving mother, who swept them out of the house with the end of her broom and a scowl but would walk all night alone searching for them when one didn’t come back in time for supper.

He doesn’t deserve this. He made it from the shanties to the barracks, to a personal guard of the king’s favored, all without a coin in his pocket. He’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, and he doesn’t deserve to be shoved up a hill by a pirate with no name.

Sail looks over at me, his blackened eye growing darker, puffier with every passing second. He looks tortured. Not for himself, but for me. That apple in his throat bobbing again. “I was supposed to guard you. To protect you—”

“You did,” I say fiercely, cutting him off. I refuse to let him blame himself for this. “There was nothing else you could’ve done.”

“Alright, shut the fuck up, you two, or we’ll shove gags in your mouths.” The pirate holding me shakes me to emphasize his words, turning me limp, despite the steel I try to hold in my spine.

Sail’s blue eyes flash with anger at the sight of the pirate being so rough with me, but I shake my head at him, telling him not to react, not to fight.

We fall silent as we’re shoved onward. The scar at my throat throbs, like a pained premonition. A physical pessimism, as if it knows my life is being held against a knife’s edge once more.

My ribbons itch to wrap around it, wanting to protect the vulnerability there, but I keep them down, keep them wrapped around me.

Behind us, the mountain pass is a looming backdrop. Howls of wind rush out from that gap between the crests, pushing us even further away. I turn my back on its dark outline, hating the sight of its mocking mouth gaping at us, wide open, as if to laugh.

Too far. Much too far away. Our only chance at escape, and we never had any real hope of reaching it. Even the mountains know it.

The laughing wind continues to blow.





Chapter Twenty-Five





Sail and I are dragged uphill.

We make heavy, sloppy tracks as we go, snow shin-deep, threatening to topple us with every step. But the Red Raids carry on easily, as if buried legs and pushed steps hold no difficulty for them at all.

Just a few dozen steps, and yet with the effort it takes for each one and with the pirate’s jostled hold on my arm, it’s enough to leave me panting by the time we crest the top.

I’m too busy catching my breath for a moment to take in the sight. But once I manage to look at the flat land below, my eyes widen. Beside me, I hear Sail suck in a breath.

Gone is the emptiness, the flat landscape of nothing except the snow-white expanse that the Barrens are known for. Instead, it’s been overrun.

There are three large pirate ships made of white wood below us. They sit on the snow drifts like ships docked in an ocean’s harbor, except they have no sails. Where waves of water and windy skies normally drive a boat out to sea, these ships are more like massive snow sleds, pulled not by wind or tide or oars, but by an entirely different force.

“Fire claws,” Sail says in shock and awe beside me.

My wide eyes hook onto the snowy felines below. They’re massive. Ten feet tall at least, with hooked fangs dripping down past their lower jaws, the ends shaped like shovels, used to scrape at snow and ice.

But the most remarkable part of them, aside from their sheer size, is the glowing flames that lick around their paws. Some are lit, some not, some have all four footsteps blazing red, while on others, only a single burns, as if they have one foot standing in the doorway to hell.

That explains the balls of fire we saw in the distance.

When one of the Red Raids raises his whip, cracking it over a line of the creatures to make them move the ship forward, a massive growl emits from the entire row of them, baring their ferocity in a unified growl. The noise cuts through the air and soaks into the ground, vibrating my very feet.

That explains the thunder.

“I thought fire claws were a myth,” I say.

The pirate beside me chuckles. “More like a nightmare,” he says, and even with his face covering, I can tell he’s smiling. “One swipe of their paw and they can kill a man—or woman.”

I look back at him, struggling not to shiver.