Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1)(6)

And that’s the crux of it. I begged him to keep me and protect me. He fulfilled his promise. It’s me who’s ruining this. It’s my own mind warping me, whispering thoughts I have no right to think.

Sometimes, when I drink enough wine, I can forget I’m in a cage, I can forget the pestering scratch.

So I drink a lot of wine.

Blowing out another breath, I look up at the glass ceiling, noticing more clouds rolling in from the north, their puffy forms illuminated by a left-behind moon.

A foot of snow will probably dump over Highbell tonight. By tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the atrium windows are completely covered in white powder and thick ice, the sky hidden from me once again.

Bright side? For now, I still have that single star peeking through the night.

When I was young, I remember my mother telling me that the stars were goddesses waiting to hatch from the light. A pretty story for a little girl who would lose her family and her home in one fell swoop.

At five years old, on a clear, starry night, I was ushered out of my bed. Single file we walked, me and the other kids living nearby, while the sound of fighting erupted in the air. We crept out into a warm eventide, trying to get to safety while danger surrounded us. I cried beneath my parents’ kisses, but they told me to go. To be brave. That they would see me soon.

One order, one urge, one lie.

But someone must’ve known that we were being whisked away. Someone must’ve told. So while I and the others were snuck out, it wasn’t safety that we reached. Instead, before we could even get out of the city, thieves attacked from the shadows, like they were just waiting for us. Blood was cut out of our escorts. Hot liquid sprayed over small, stunned faces. The memory still makes my eyes burn. That was when I knew that I was awake during a nightmare.

I tried to yell for help, to call for my parents, to tell them that this was all wrong, but a leather gag that tasted of oak bark was pressed into my mouth. I cried as we were stolen. Tears trickled. Feet shuffled. Heartbeats lurched. Home faded. There were screams, and metal clangs, and crying, but there was silence, too. The silence was the worst sound.

I kept looking up at those shells of light in the black sky, begging the goddesses to be born and come to rescue us. To return me to my bed, to my parents, to safety.

They didn’t.

You’d think I might resent the stars for that, but that’s not the case. Because every time I look up, I remember my mother. Or at least, a piece of her. A piece I’ve been desperately trying to hold onto for twenty years.

But memory and time aren’t friends. They reject each other, they hurry in opposite directions, pulling the binding taut between them, threatening to snap. They fight, and we inexplicably lose. Memory and time. Always losing one as you go on with the other.

I can’t recall what my mother’s face looked like. I don’t remember the rumble of my father’s voice. I can’t dig up the feel of their arms around me when they held me for the last time.

It’s faded.

The single star above winks at me, the sight blurred from the water gathered in my eyes. In the next second, my star is smothered by roiling clouds that block it from view, making a pang of disappointment scrape the surface of my heart.

If those stars really are goddesses waiting to be born, I should warn them to stay where they are in the safety of their twinkling light. Because down here? Down here, life is dark and lonely, and it has noisy bells and not nearly enough wine.





Chapter Three





In the morning, I get woken up by the damn bell, a headache bursting to life behind my eyes.

I snap open my crusty eyelids and rub away the blur. As I sit up, the wine bottle that was apparently still in my lap falls onto the gold floor and rolls away. I look around and find two of the king’s guards standing watch on the other side of my bars.

My cage takes up most of the room, but there’s enough space for the guards to walk through all the rooms on the outside when they’re doing their rounds.

I quickly wipe the drool from my mouth and stretch, waiting for the bell toll to stop its incessant dinging, my head tender from the alcohol I consumed before I finally fell asleep last night.

“Shut up,” I grumble at it, my hands swiping down my face.

“About time she woke up,” I hear.

I look over at the guards and notice Digby—the older one with gray hair and a thick beard—standing sentinel by the door. He’s my regular guard, and he’s had this post for years. He’s completely straight-laced and serious, always refusing to chat with me, or play any of my drinking games.

But the guard who talked? He’s new. Despite my hangover, I instantly perk up. I don’t get many new ones.

I study the newcomer. He looks like he’s barely seventeen winters old, still with pockmarks on his face and gangly limbs. He was probably just drafted from the city. All males who come of age are immediately enlisted into King Midas’s army unless they have farming rights.

“What’s your name?” I ask, walking forward to grip the bars.

His eyes shoot over to look at me, and he straightens his golden armor, the bell emblem on the chest plate shining proudly. “Joq.”

Digby cuts him a glare. “Don’t talk to her.”

Joq chews on his lip in thought. “Why not?”

“Because it’s orders, that’s why.”