Glint (Plated Prisoner Book 2)

Winter winds howl outside my dark window.

I can hear it whipping the castle’s flags, wailing through the cracks in the glass, hail pelting the stone walls.

It’s strange to see such a brutal ice storm raging in the night, while I soak in the heat of my bath. Steam still rises in steady tendrils, filling my bathroom, making it hard to see. Sweat beads like drops of glitter on my skin, my every muscle warm and languid as I laze in the water.

But a shout pulls me from my dozing rest.

Jerking my head up from the rim of the tub, my brows pull together tight. I look through the steam, but it’s thicker than before, and the noise of the storm outside is growing louder.

I hear something, someone, maybe a voice.

Looking left and right, I call out, “Midas?”

But I don’t get a reply, and I can’t see anything past the steam. It’s hot, cloying, and I realize that the water I’m submerged in feels like it’s heating up.

I look down as something coats my fingertips beneath the water, like the thick soap I poured in earlier to make bubbles. I lift my hand out of the tub, water dripping off, rippling around me where it lands.

Except when I hold my hand close to peer at it through the haze of the steam, I see that it’s not soap clinging to my skin.

All four of my fingertips are coated with liquid gold.

“No…”

My other hand comes up quickly, grabbing hold of my leaking fingers, squeezing them as if I can staunch the metallic drip.

But my left hand is seeping gold, too.

There’s a bright flare that makes me squint, and I turn to look up at the window. It’s lit up with daylight now, like the night was somehow blown away by the force of the storm.

Panic fuses to my pulse.

I shake my hands violently, but all that does is send golden droplets flying, some of it landing across my face like a splatter of paint.

“Shit.”

The gold starts to slip down my wrists, past my elbows, my shoulders, my breasts. I jerk upright, feet nearly slipping in the tub, my heart slamming against my chest like it’s trying to get out.

“No!” I shout, but the gold doesn’t listen.

More of it smears down my belly, slips down my legs, bleeds into the creases of my skin.

“Auren.”

My head snaps up, and there’s Midas, but he’s pissed. Furious. Enraged. His brown eyes don’t hold any comfort right now, and I know it’s my fault.

“Help me,” I cry.

Midas just watches as the gold spreads and spreads until it encases my body completely, like I’m mummified with it. I was gold before, but not like this. This is polluting me, like an infection spreading, taking over.

Nothing of me will be left.

A whimper escapes when I realize that the liquid is now hardening in place, gilding me into a solid statue.

“Midas!” I cry, a sob shaking the chords of my voice. “Midas, do something!”

But he shakes his head, eyes gleaming now, so clear that I can see the reflection of my body in them. He isn’t mad any longer, but the new expression on his face holds no comfort. If anything, it makes my fear worse.

“Keep going, Precious. We need more,” he says quietly, firmly.

I try to jerk my feet up, try to step out of the tub so I can run, but the gold has already hardened beneath the soles of my feet. It’s locked my ankles and knees, weighed down my legs. And the bathwater…it’s turned solid too.

I’m frozen in place.

With every frenzied breath I take, the gold that coats my skin becomes harder, thicker, stronger.

Tears began to fall from my eyes, but those are gold too. They spill over, dripping down like the melted wax of a candlestick, solidifying against my neck.

My ribbons are panicking, twitching behind me, but they’re heavy, soaked-through. Ends bent and sharp, they try to scrape off the hard layer from my skin like a chisel to stone, but they can’t. They can’t, and as soon as they touch the insidious coating, they get stuck, like ants to sap.

Seeing my ribbons curled at odd angles, stuck, trying to jerk free to no avail, it makes fear lock around my heart with a cold, merciless grip.

My terror-filled eyes snap up to Midas. “Do something!” I plead, but it’s a mistake.

As soon my mouth opens, gold slithers past my lips, coating my tongue and teeth. A strangled cry pops out of me, the sound like bursting bubbles of magma as the liquid clogs my throat.

It slinks down to my gut, rises up to my eyes, vision tinted, the sharp metallic scent filling my nose. It ensnares my bones, sheathes my heart, takes over my mind.

The next moment, I’m completely solid from the inside out.

Unable to breathe, or blink, or think. I’m like Coin—the bird in the atrium, never again to sing, to fly, stuck in place on my perch.

Midas’s hand comes up to cup my cheek, fingernails tapping against the metal. “You’re so perfect, Precious,” he says before leaning in, placing a whisper of a kiss against my lips that I can no longer feel. I want to cry, but I can’t, because my tear ducts have solidified too.

The steam in the room is so thick now that I can’t see anymore. The gold in my ears makes it so I can’t hear either.

But I scream. I scream and scream and scream, though no one can hear me, because my throat is plugged with gold. I’m going to choke on it, be trapped in it for all eternity.

Something against my chest pinches, and my eyes fling open wide from the pain.

I come awake with a thrash, flailing arms and gasping breath like I’ve just broken through the surface of that solid gold sea.

Sweat has soaked through my shift and leggings, and my hair is plastered against my scalp in damp tangles.

Around me, my ribbons are flapping and snapping with unease, some of them wrapped around my body and constricting around me in a painful squeeze.

I jerk upright and halt their frenzied pulls, make them loosen around me. I start to tear them away from my limbs and torso, untangling myself with shaking hands, trying to escape the hold of the nightmare.

The way Midas had looked at me… My eyes burn as I try to shove the vision away. Not real, I tell myself. It wasn’t real.

It’s not until I extricate myself from the last of my ribbons that I’m finally able to take in a full breath.

“Bad dream?”

I jerk on my pallet and look over, finding Rip getting dressed. I wonder if he’s what woke me or if it was just the pinch of my ribbons.

A glance at the front of the tent shows me it’s still dark, my internal clock telling me that dawn is still an hour or two away.

“Umm, yeah,” I say with some embarrassment, my mind still trying to shove the dream away. “You’re up early,” I note, then feel immediately stupid for saying such an inane thing, considering what happened between us just a handful of hours ago.

I wonder when he came back to the tent to sleep after I passed out, or if he ever slept at all.

“I want to get the army moving,” he says, strapping a belt around his waist. “We’ve been going the long way, but I’m anxious to get to Fifth Kingdom now.”

Something that tastes like remorse sits on the back of my throat. My tongue is poised with an apology, but something holds me back. Pride? Embarrassment? An argument to defend what I did? I don’t know.

I sit up, keeping the furs tucked around me as I look at him.

He kissed me, and I still don’t think my mind has fully processed it. My body, on the other hand, seems to have memorized every single moment.

But why did he do it?

Just like last night, before I managed to fall into a fitful sleep, my mind spins with warring emotions. I feel like every single thought I have argues with itself, and I don’t know which side is right.

Because that kiss, that soft, somber kiss, it didn’t feel like the machinations of an enemy commander.

It felt like deep-seated want.

“Rip…”

He cuts me off, tone cold, eyes not looking anywhere near me. “I suggest you get up and get ready. We move out as soon as dawn breaks.”

I get no time to reply before he walks out. With a defeated sigh, I push up and get dressed, and by the time I step outside, there are already two soldiers waiting there to break down the tent.

I mutter an apology for keeping them waiting and head to the fires for food, only to find that those have been put out early too. I find Keg next to a cart, passing out dried rations, which sends the men grumbling. The porridge may not taste any better, but it’s hot, and that does wonders for morale when you’re stuck marching through frozen wastelands.

“Morning, Gildy,” Keg says, passing me a hard roll and a dried strip of salted meat.

“Morning.”

Keg’s usual banter is cut short, since all the soldiers are in a rush, the tents being broken down, horses being drawn, impatience thick in the air. I take my cue and wander away to leave him to it, biting off bits of food so chewy it makes my jaw ache.

When I get to my carriage, I’m surprised to find Lu there helping my driver hitch up the horses.

Lu turns with a cocked brow when she sees me. “Gildy Locks,” she says before turning to tighten the strap she’s working on.

“Morning, Lu.” I run a gloved hand over the horse’s neck, admiring his sleek black hair.

Finishing, she pats the horse on the back and faces me. “Someone pissed in the commander’s stew. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

My face grows hot. “No.”

I must fail miserably at trying to keep an impassive expression, because she grunts. “Mm-hmm. Thought so.”

I suddenly become very interested in the horse’s mane, making sure to keep my eyes trained on it.

“Can I give you some advice, Gildy?”

I shift on my feet. “Umm…sure.”

“Own your shit.”

My gaze snaps over to her. “What?”

Lu sighs and glances over at the driver, who just climbed up into the carriage’s seat. “Take a walk, Cormac.”

Pausing in his almost-seated position, the man lets out a sigh, but he turns and climbs down, walking away without argument. It’s more than a little impressive that she can give an order and men will follow it.

When we’re alone with the horses and a slowly lightening sky, Lu leans against the wall of the carriage to face me. She watches me for a moment, like she’s studying me, reading something in my eyes. “We’re women in a man’s world. I’m sure you know how that is.”

I dip my chin. “I do.”

“Good,” she says with a terse nod, the shaven blades in her scalp stabbing down with the movement. “Then you know that we have two options.” She lifts a finger. “The first is, we can conform. Be what they want, act to please. It’s the safe option.”

I fidget on my feet. Every part of me is listening, attention rapt, though uneasiness mingles alongside my intrigue. “And option two?”Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

She holds up a second finger, but instead of doing it on the same hand, she raises her other. I don’t know why that feels significant, but it does.

“Option two is harder. It’s harder for us,” she admits, looking me straight in the eye. “There will always be someone who will try to make us choose option one. But don’t. Don’t lie down to make it easier for the world to keep you under its thumb. Own your shit and choose yourself.”

She drops her hands, and I know right then that she knows what I did—that I sent that letter. What I don’t get is why I’m not shackled in chains, tossed in the prisoner’s cart with the rest of Midas’s guards.

“You and I are different, though,” I tell her thickly. “You’re a warrior, and I’m…” My sentence trails off because I don’t even know.

I don’t know what I am now.

I do know what I was. I was a little fae girl who got ripped from her world. I was sold to flesh traders. I was used as a beggar before I got old enough to be used in other ways.

I was hopeless.

Then with Midas, he changed that, and I got to be something else, something I’d always hoped to be.

Safe.

But is that enough? Is it enough now, to just be that?

“You’re what you choose to be,” Lu tells me, and for some reason, I feel like crying.

My throat bobs as I pull the hood over my head, the sky bringing a gray, overcast dawn with a prickling on my skin. “What does this have to do with Rip?” I ask quietly.

She lifts a shoulder. “Nothing. Everything. You’ll have to decide that, too, Gildy.”

Lu pats the horse again, slipping a hand into her pocket before pulling out a couple of sugar cubes that she feeds to them. “I will tell you one more thing, though.”

“What?”

She smiles down at the nuzzled snout of the horse before turning that expression on me. “That fae female I saw in the fight circle?” she begins, her voice just a murmur in the cresting dawn. “She was a warrior too. And in my professional opinion, she could be a great one.”

Lu leaves, as light on her feet as always, a bird taking flight.

I get into the carriage silently, and my hand comes down to press against my waist, fingers tapping over my ribbons with a small smile at my lips.

Warrior.

Yes, I think I would like to be that.