The captain’s quarters aren’t much to look at.
Although, I’ve probably inherited some unreasonable expectations. Living in a solid gold castle will do that to a girl.
But I take in the room, every inch of it, focusing my eyes with unwavering intent, because I need the distraction—the focus. Any diversion other than the captain locking the door behind us. It sounds louder than my cage ever did.
I keep my gaze forward, fixated on the best part of the room. It’s a large set of windows that spans the back of the ship from ceiling to floor, revealing a sea of shadowed snow beyond. Outside, the sky is lightening ever so slightly. This incessant night finally beginning to ebb away.
To the left is a desk, littered with papers and maps. Barrels and stacked trunks are shoved against walls, each of them closed tight, keeping whatever is inside hidden from view. Some are being used as tables, and stuck on top, the weeping of the candle’s tears has overflowed, hardened wax molded against its pillar in frozen trickles.
To the right, at the space where I don’t want to look, is the bed. It lies in wait, shaded partially by the heavy red drapery covering the corners of the posts. The blankets are rumpled, several of the pillows forgotten on the floor, and I really hope the stain on the sheets is ale.
Rissa and I stand by warily as the captain walks to his desk and removes his hat. He rips the red band from around his neck and tosses that too, before picking up a silver flask and tipping it back into his mouth.
His eyes watch us as he takes sloppy gulps. My body begins to shake, like the needles of a Pitching Pine before they’re ripped from their branches and plunge into the ground like stakes.
“Performance,” Rissa murmurs beside me, so low that I almost don’t hear her. A reminder to play a part. To slip into an act, to keep my real self separate from the horrors and closed off inside me, where he can’t reach. Perform. Just perform so we can get through this.
Her low murmur of encouragement is enough to make me stop shaking. To take a full breath. I’m grateful for it, for the way it grounds me and reminds me that I’m not alone, even though I wish she’d been spared of this.
“Captain, your cabin has quite an…amass of belongings,” Rissa says, bringing out her easy, sultry voice. It’s her attempt to lessen the tension, to set the tone of this encounter. Everything she does, from her voice to her movements, is calculated. Purposeful.
Captain Fane ignores her comment as he tosses off his furs over the desk and sets down his flask. “Unfortunately, I don’t have time to play long,” he says, eyeing her body. “Strip and get on the bed.”
I see Rissa’s throat bob, but she doesn’t balk. “Of course, Captain,” she purrs.
Calm, collected, sensual. She’s performing as the embodiment of desire.
Walking over to the bed, she slowly strips with gracefulness and provocative ease. As the captain watches her, I watch him. I see his carnal hunger spike, see him lick his lips.
Rissa doesn’t belong here, on this stained bed, in a room that reeks of alcohol, with maps stuck to the walls with old wax. She’s all soft skin and beauty and poise, and this place is dingy and harsh, with no admiration for her level of worth.
As soon as her nimble fingers release the last button and her dress falls, she climbs onto the bed and waits expectantly for his next order, her blonde hair lying prettily against her skin as she rests on her ankles.
I’ve seen her naked hundreds of times with Midas of course, so I’m used to it, but for a moment, Captain Fane is entranced.
Then he pounces, making it across the room in five long strides.
He’s on her in an instant, crowding over her on the bed. But just when I think he’s going to kiss her, he grabs her by the hair instead and spins her around.
She yelps in surprise as she’s placed on her knees, but the noise is smothered out when he presses her face into the mattress.
My heart starts to race, but Rissa tries to recover, tries to meet him on the battlefield and redirect the act. She turns her head, cheek to pillow, back arched, while groping hands squeeze her bared bottom, pinching her pink. “Oh, Captain, I do like a man who knows how to take charge,” she says in an admiring husky tone.
“Quiet,” he snaps.
Not bothering to remove his tunic, he undoes his belt and loosens his leather pants until they drop to his knees where he’s kneeling behind her. Without warning, he roughly thrusts himself into her.
Hand still fisted in her hair, he moves in and out quickly, like the harsh rap of a hammer. Somehow, Rissa doesn’t flinch or shirk. Instead, she manages to arch back, to pretend, to move with him. She lifts her head up from the pillow and braces her hands on the mattress, continuing to play the part.
But when she lets out a moan to appease him, Captain Fane’s mouth twists down, his eyes flash. He jerks her hair and then releases it to wrap his hand around her mouth instead, cutting the noise off. And it becomes apparent then—he’s not interested in her having pleasure, not even pretending to.
He reaches up the length of her body, his fingers curling around her jaw. When a strangled breath escapes her, his hold on her mouth tightens. “I said stay fucking quiet,” he snaps, the thrusts never slowing.
I’m frozen at the door, my back pressed against it like I’m stuck to the wood, ribbons writhing against endless knots.
While darkness retreats outside, it seems to grow in here. The captain uses her, making everything feel dirty, cruel. At least with Midas, even with my constant simmer of jealousy, the act never made me cringe, never made me hurt for them.
But I hurt for Rissa now.
Captain Fane has lost his entranced look, lost his appreciative gaze. With his teeth gritted and hairy body jerking, all Rissa can do is hold on and stay quiet. But he tries to make her slip up, tries to bring the sounds out so that he can hurt her even more.
Every time a noise slips out of her, even when it’s just a shaken breath, he gets rougher, faster, meaner. Until her blue eyes find me, tears brimming over with the brutality of it all.
She might be a saddle, but she’s a royal saddle. And say what you will about Midas, but he’s not a brute. He doesn’t abuse his saddles. Uses them for his pleasure, sure, but he doesn’t get off on violence.
Her pained, teary face kills me, makes my own eyes burn. I can’t stand to keep watching, standing idly by.
“Captain…” I say, taking a step forward. “You’re hurting her.”
He casts a dark look over his shoulder at me, blond hair in greasy tendrils that hang down to his ears. “Yeah, and you’re next, fuck puppet.”
Fear lodges in my stomach like a stone. It scratches all the way around as it rolls, making me go raw. But when he slams into Rissa so hard that her head smacks against the headboard, I find myself taking two more steps, find myself speaking again. “Stop it.”
Surprise crosses both of their faces at my daring. But the captain’s expression is replaced with his promise of punishment—the same one he gave me before.
He pulls out of Rissa suddenly, making her body fall onto the mattress with a heavy slump. And then he’s coming for me, expression dark, brows drawn.
The backdrop of windows behind him shows that the sky is lighter. The black cloak of night is finally peeling away, revealing the approach of a graying dawn. Captain Fane is a dark figure before it, his silhouette shrouded by the impending morning.
As he rounds the bed and stalks closer, my feet want to retreat, but I hold my ground. I tip up my chin.
He disrespected Sail’s body, and now he’s disrespecting Rissa’s. Rissa, who’s willing to do anything to make it through. Rissa, who would’ve performed and taken everything he threw at her like a professional, because that’s how strong she is.
But as I’ve come to find, I have my limits.
“I told you I wanted quiet.”
Captain Fane backhands me before I can even tense.
The blow sends me flying. I can’t catch myself before I slam down onto the wooden floor.
Pain bursts behind my eyes like shattering lanterns, but I don’t have time to recover before a boot is kicked into my ribs. Hard.
I cry out, a strangled cry ripping out of me like an embedded string. It pulls loose, stripped from my throat, leaving the taste of copper in my mouth.
With me on the floor in a pained daze, I barely feel it when he reaches down and tears the front of my dress. I fight him off, curling over into a ball, my body instinctively trying to protect itself, my arms coming up to hold the bodice of my gown together.
He straightens up with a cruel scoff. “Midas obviously didn’t know how to train his whores,” he says as his hands drop down to the pants still wrapped around his ankles. “Good thing I do. Now stay there and watch silently, pet.”
With a cruel smirk shot in my direction, he picks up his leather belt and stalks over to Rissa. For no reason other than to be a complete and utter bastard, he swings it, cracking the leather against her back in a brutal hit.
A shout pours out of her mouth, and the depraved asshole snarls at her to be quiet again, as if this is her fault. His mouth curls, his dick bobs, and then he’s shoving into her again, like he actually idolizes her agonized cries.
Still sprawled on the floor, my entire side radiates pain from where he kicked me. I tenderly feel the spot where his boot landed, and I hiss out a breath. It hurts, but I have to get up. I have to, because Rissa is sobbing, because the windows are finally glowing with light, the sun finally dawning, bringing forth an ashen day.
I force myself to breathe as I struggle to my feet. My cheek throbs, my side screams in protest, but I manage to get up—even if I am slightly hunched over. I pull up my torn bodice, trying to keep it from falling off my chest, forcing my hands to stop shaking.
I look to the bed again and see that the captain has wrapped his belt around Rissa’s throat as he fucks her, her tears soaking the hair at her temples.
Anger appears in me, like my own rising dawn.
My hands fist and my jaw locks. I know it the second that the sun officially crests the horizon, because with it, so does my resolve.
My skin prickles.
I move forward, the murky morning filling the room with a dimmed haze. But even with such weak daylight, I feel better. Like I always said, I’m a bright side kind of girl.
The moment I step into the stream of muted dawn, the prickling on my skin intensifies, warming me up. My shoes scrape against the wooden floor as I limp toward the bed.
Rissa’s shiny eyes find me, her face wrinkled in pain, red from the pressure he’s cinching around her windpipe. My fingers straighten and flex.
When Captain Fane groans in pleasure, the sound digs into the soil of my fury and makes it sprout into a bud of hate.
He notices Rissa’s attention on me, because he turns his head, following her gaze. When he sees me walking toward him, he smirks. “Can’t wait your turn, hmm? Fine. I’ll have you now. See what all the fuss is about with Midas’s Golden Cunt.”
He drops his hold on the belt, making Rissa fall back coughing and choking. He starts to approach me with an excited gleam in his eye. “I’m going to enjoy making you hurt.”
His fist comes up, ready to hit, or grab my hair, or make me kneel, or toss me down. I don’t know for sure what he means to do as that hand comes for me so fast, but it doesn’t matter.
Because I’m faster.
Without hesitating, without thinking, I rush, not away from him, but closer. I cut the gap between us like a knife plunging forward, and then I slap my bare palm against the skin at his neck.
That’s all it takes.
Even though he doesn’t realize it yet.
The captain blinks at me, like he’s confused, like he’s wondering why his raised hand has stopped, why it isn’t coming down to punish, why he isn’t already subduing me.
Our faces are inches away, and I can feel his putrid, alcohol-laced breath puff out. I can feel the shudder that travels the length of his body.
His lips part, like he wants to ask what the hell is happening, but all that comes out is a mangled choke. It stutters from his throat for a split second before cutting off unnaturally.
He goes still as my hand squeezes tighter around his neck. Behind me, I hear Rissa gasp. Because there, at the spot beneath my palm, a change starts to spread across his skin.
Like a ripple, it extends from his neck where I’m touching. It billows out, like smooth water, cresting over his shoulders, pouring down his arms, spreading over his torso, dripping down his legs. I feel it seep beneath, sinking past his skin, puddling into his organs, flooding through his veins.
His face is the last to go.
Because I want him to watch. I want him to see. I want him to look at me and know that my eyes are his punishing promise.
The last thing Captain Fane is able to do is widen his gaze in shock. But he doesn’t have time to blink or breathe. Not again. Not ever.
One second, his skin is ruddy, his tunic stained, his cock purple, his eyes brown. And the next, he’s frozen in time, every inch of him, from the beads on his beard to the toes in his boots, all of it gleaming, resplendent, vindictive.
Because I just turned the motherfucker solid gold.
