Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1) - Raven Kennedy Page 0,78
his fingers. “Quiet,” he snaps, pushing so far back that I start to gag.
I’m shoved the last step up the incline of the ramp, sending me sprawling onto the ship’s deck. My already sore body crashes into the wood, and I nearly choke on the fabric lodged in my mouth.
I snatch out the offending gag, coughing and sputtering with breaths as I toss it away. Before I can get up, the other saddles are shoved right alongside me, and we’re all pushed together on the deck like we’re just another pile of the pirate’s plunder.
A hand appears in front of my face, and I look up to find Rissa above me. I glance warily at her palm for a moment. “Well?” she says, clear impatience in her tone.
I reach up and take her hand, and Rissa pulls me up, helping me to my feet before she lets go. I begin to mutter out a thanks, but I’m elbowed at my side.
Turning, I see one of the other saddles—Mist—sneering at me. Her black hair is in knots, her eyes red and swollen. “Watch it,” she snarls, wiping her sleeve where I happened to brush up against her.
And maybe it’s because I just watched my friend get murdered before my eyes, maybe it’s because my nerves are frayed, or because we just became captives of notoriously brutal pirates, but red-hot rage comes galloping up in me, and I’m unable to stop it.
My ribbons, all twenty four of them from up and down my spine, unravel. Her eyes flicker with confusion at their movement—confusion and then shock as they thrust forward and shove.
She goes flying back, toppling other saddles and even some pirates behind her. She screeches as she lands, and then she’s up and on her feet in an instant, not to confront me about my ribbons and how the hell I moved them, but ready to attack.
Her fingers curled like claws, I brace myself for her, but Rissa steps between us before Mist can launch herself at me.
“No squabbling,” Rissa snaps, shooting looks at both of us. “Or have you forgotten where the hell we are?”
With a ragged exhale, my ribbons go limp behind me at her words, but Mist isn’t so deterred. She glares at me from over Rissa’s shoulder, and the intensity of her hate-filled gaze throws me off-balance.
I thought that her flare of temper from before was just from emotions, from stressful circumstances. But this—this expression on her face isn’t that. It’s not distress that’s making her lash out irrationally. Not when her eyes hold such personal vitriol.
“It’s her fault we’re here!” Mist hisses.
I frown, exasperated. “What the hell are you talking about? How is any of this my fault?”
Mist looks around at the other wide-eyed saddles huddled around us. “You heard them. Protect the king’s favored.” She scoffs with an ugly, humorless sound.
I go still. Those words—Sail’s words, called out right as the snow pirates ambushed us. I hadn’t thought, hadn’t even considered, how it would sound to the other saddles.
“When it came down to it, the guards weren’t going to protect us. It was just her. Midas always keeps her safe, keeps her special. Even on this damn journey, she got special treatment, didn’t she? Don’t travel too long during the night, because we don’t want to tire the king’s favored. Don’t eat more rations, because we have to make sure the king’s favored has extra. Don’t go too fast, because the king’s favored wants to ride a bloody horse she has no business being on! It’s all her! All the time!”
I feel the eyes of the other saddles swing over to me like a hook on a string.
“And then when it all went to shit, what did they do? Protected her. Tried to make it so she got away, because the rest of us don’t matter. We’re expendable. Replaceable.” Mist is sobbing now, her petite shoulders shaking. “And now we’re here, captured, and what do you think is going to happen to us?”
Rosh tries to gently take her arm, to shush her, but she shrugs him off, staring at me with that fire, that hate, burning me with it.
“Ruined. That’s what’s going to happen to us. We’re going to be ruined. Until we’re nothing. Slaves to be used and then merchandise to be sold. But the king will come for her. Bargain for her. Save his favored. But not us,” Mist says with a bitter shake of her head as more tears fall. “Not us.”