A shockwave seems to pass over the pirates at Captain Fane’s revelation.
First, there’s stunned silence. I feel hundreds of eyes settling onto me, appraising me, before their shock gives way to something else. Something worse.
Shouts rise up, louder than even the fire claws’ growls. I jump from the sound, trying to tear my hand away, but the captain’s hold only tightens around my wrist.
He turns back to me, elation clear in his eyes. “Look at her. Even her dress is gold. This hair, too.” He drops my wrist to snatch up some of my hair, fisting it in his grip. “The golden pet of Highbell.”
The captain turns back to his men, his hold unrelenting. “We snatched Midas’s favored.” The pirates chuckle, pleased, so immensely pleased with themselves.
“He’ll pay you,” I blurt, my voice finally coming out, though it’s quiet, stretched thin. He drops his hold from my hair, my scalp pulsing in time with my hammering heart. “His guards, his saddles…me…he’ll pay you whatever ransom you want. Just don’t hurt us.”
Captain Fane smirks. “Oh, I’m not going to ransom you. I can fetch a far higher price elsewhere.”
His words hollow out a pit in my stomach, dark and bottomless.
“I’ll be keeping this one ’til we sell her off to the highest bidder. Put the word out.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Quarter replies with a nod. “King Midas’s favored? There will be plenty who will be wanting her.”
“The rest of them can be divvied up to entertain the men for their hard work,” he tells his second-in-command. The pirates near enough to hear whoop out in celebration. The saddles cry.
Captain Fane’s eyes look down where Polly is still unconscious in a heap in the snow. “And put ’em to work, too, to earn their way. They need toughening up.”
Quarter nods. “Consider it done, Cap.”
The captain nods, a wicked gleam in his gaze that flicks over me. “I’ll enjoy having Midas’s gold-plated prisoner kept in my cabin.”
My trembling body starts shaking even harder, chin wobbling. I can already see the pain he intends to inflict, the force he aims to assault me with. It’s all there, in his eyes.
His hand comes up to grope my breast, fingers pinching, touch revolting. I try to shove him off, but he just laughs and squeezes harder. “Aye, I’ll like breaking this one in. Midas’s fucking favored,” he laughs, like he can’t believe his good luck. “I wish I could see the look on the bastard’s face when he finds out I took her, used her, and then sold her off.”
Tears fill my eyes, blurring the world, drowning my chest. I can’t breathe. I can’t even feel my limbs. This isn’t happening. This is a nightmare. I’m going to wake up. I just need to wake up.
Captain Fane’s fingers tighten, pinch, making me cry out. “Mmm, noisy too. I like that.”
He starts to tug at the collar of my dress, scratching at my chest, but a voice shouts behind him. “Don’t fucking touch her!”
Captain Fane stills. His hand drops. Slowly, he turns around. “Who said that?”
One of the pirates walks up to a still kneeling Sail. “This one, Cap’n.”
My eyes fly to Sail just as the pirate sends a brutal kick at his back.
My guard goes sprawling forward, his face hitting the snow. Captain Fane stalks over to him, and dread catches, airborne and ruthless, infecting me instantly.
“What’s your name?” the captain asks, stopping in front of him.
Sail struggles to raise back on his knees, his jaw clenching as he looks up, defiant and bruised. “Sail.”
At his answer, Captain Fane tips his head back and laughs. “Reds, did you hear that? We finally got a Sail for our sail-less ships!” Mean amusement floods the icy plains. Red flames flicker through the black night.
“Alright, Sail. You have something to say? You must, since you hollered out like a cat in heat.” More pirates laugh, and Sail’s pale cheeks probably would’ve blushed if they weren’t already chapped and red with cold.
But he doesn’t cower. He looks up at the captain, expression soaked in hatred. The Barrens go quiet, as if watching, every eye trained on the scene.
Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything, Sail.
But Sail doesn’t stay silent. “I said, don’t touch her,” he repeats, his tone livid. A band around my heart constricts.
Captain Fane chuckles as if amused. “Look, Reds. We got a brave one, here. How rare for Midas’s army.” The pirates laugh. The other kneeling guards hang their heads, humiliation and cruelty falling on them alongside the snow.
But Sail’s fingers curl into fists in front of him, his gaze steady. “She’s the king’s favored. He’ll pay handsomely for her if she’s returned to him unharmed. Despite what you said, Midas will pay much more for her than anyone else. He’s the only one that has the means to.”
“Aye, the king with the golden-touch,” Captain Fane says with a jeering, bitter edge at the mention of Midas. Hate. There’s hate there in his tone. And maybe envy.
“Perhaps it’s time that the king learned a lesson,” the captain muses. “Time to ensure that there’s something that he can’t buy. In fact, maybe I’ll even just keep her for myself, to make sure of it.”
Sail starts to open his mouth, but he’s silenced as the captain lowers himself, bending down until he’s directly in front of Sail, eye-to-eye. Brown to blue. Cruel to kind. His fingers skim over the snow, lazily collecting some of it in his bare palm, piling it up with bored movements.
“Now listen very carefully,” Captain Fane begins, his voice low but loud enough to hear. “I’m going to fuck her. Wherever and whenever I wish.” He says it conversationally, easily, as if he were only talking about the weather. “I’m going to use her. Break her,” Captain Fane goes on, completely uncaring when Sail begins to shake with fury.
A shaken sob totters through my throat, slips past my lips.
“I’m going to cut off some of her pretty hair and send it to Midas in a pretty box, because it will amuse me to taunt him. Perhaps I’ll even take the hair from her golden snatch.”
Captain Fane reaches up, the snow he gathered piled high in his cupped palm. He drops it onto Sail’s bare head with a taunting slap, making my guard wince from the cold. Slabs of it slip over his face before dripping off, landing on his already soaked pants.
The captain gathers more snow.
“And after I’m bored with her—who knows when that will be—I’ll sell her to whoever will give me the highest price. But that won’t be for weeks. Maybe even months.”
Another handful of snow is dumped on Sail’s head. Some flakes stick to his hair, some slip down the back of his shirt to soak against his shivering spine. All while Captain Fane drinks in Sail’s expression, like a cat toying with a mouse, and the Red Raids watch, red bands like gaping, bloody grins.
“She’s going to be nothing but a gold, cum-filled husk by the time I’m done with her.” Sail flinches, shaking now so hard, and even his teeth can’t stop their violent chatter. My heart pounds and hammers, like it wants to burrow down, to tunnel itself down into a chasm, hiding far below.
Another pile of snow is collected in the captain’s palm, constant, methodical. “But you won’t care about any of that. And do you know why?” he asks, dumping another heap over my guard, my friend.
Sail’s head bows, as if the weight of it—this chilled humiliation—is growing too heavy.
Slowly, as if that’s all he was waiting for, this forced capitulation, the captain gets to his feet. He dusts the rest of the snow off his hands. My heart continues to hammer. Beating against my ribs, begging.
“You won’t care,” Captain Fane goes on, looking down at him. “Because you’ll be dead.”
A battering ram against my chest. A single moment only long enough to blink. To look.
Sail’s eyes are suddenly on mine again, blue depths of an ocean he’s never seen. And that kind gaze of his keeps speaking. His nod keeps promising.
It’s okay, it’s okay.
But it’s not okay. Not at all. Because before that nod is even finished, the captain has unhooked a knife from the scabbard at his waist and rammed it into Sail’s chest.
Straight through to his heart.
“No!”
I’m running before I’ve made the conscious decision to do so. But I don’t even make it three steps before someone grabs me, a pair of meaty arms closing around my middle.
I scream, a horrible rage tearing out of my throat, my voice an unearthly noise that rents through the air, hollowing out the night, thrashing through the mountain pass, cursing at the covered stars.
My scream makes the nervous horses whinny and the fire claws hiss. It muffles the Gale Widow’s cries, and it blames the fates. Even when a hand slams over my mouth to quiet me, the sound rips out, as if I could make a tear in the world, as if I could shatter the skies.
Blood blooms over Sail’s chest, soaking into his cotton tunic like a scarlet flower gaping. Hot tears roll from my eyes one after the other in uncontrollable tracks, freezing on my cheeks.
The hand falls away from me as I fall on the ground, scrabbling for him on hands and knees. I don’t feel the bite of the ice as I crawl. But his name falls from my lips again and again, as time seems to stop, to inhale with a shocked breath.
His blue eyes are still on me, but blinking, blinking. They flick down to the blade. To the red.
I reach him just as his body curls forward, just as he falls.
Even with my hands landing against his shoulders, Sail still goes down. All I’m able to do is twist him up, to keep his face pointed at the sky.
Mouth dribbles red life, breath like choked water. Blue-tinged lips to match his eyes as they rain.
My heart shatters itself against my ribs. He looks at me, my teardrops landing on his. I sob. He shudders.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I cry. Lying for him, as he did for me.
And with his last breath, he nods.
