Gild (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 1)

by Raven Kennedy

  Fulke scoffs, pushing the saddles off his lap so he can lean forward, while Polly and Rissa hurry to stand behind him. “There isn’t time for that, Midas. My army couldn’t possibly catch up to yours. And I’ve told you my stance on the matter.”

  “There is if you send word today and I have my army change course,” Midas counters, as if he already had the cogs turning. My mind churns with the direction of their spin.

  He’s going to make me fuck another king so that he can use an army?

  “It’s against the Orean Covenant,” Fulke replies.

  “Don’t pretend that you haven’t sent soldiers to weaken Fourth’s border.”

  Fulke’s nostrils flare. “Fourth was pushing into my lands, spreading his rot. I’m simply defending what’s mine.”

  Fulke’s defensive temper rises, while Midas looks like the cat who got the bowl of cream. “And I’m simply being proactive. It’s time to cut Fourth off before he can attempt to encroach on territory that isn’t his.”

  I can’t help but stare, appalled. He’s launching an attack on Fourth Kingdom? Nobody launches an attack on Fourth Kingdom. King Ravinger is called King Rot for a reason. He’s powerful and brutal and vicious. What the hell is Midas thinking?

  The allied kings look at each other, both of them contemplating, judging, studying. Like a scholar poring over ancient texts of a dead language, trying to thumb through the pages and comprehend the passages without a key.

  Seconds tick by, a whistling wind from the blizzard bolstering the moment, the noise a representation of the harrowing gale that’s gusting through my insides.

  The same advisor who tried to interrupt before leans forward to King Fulke, speaking quietly into his ear. Fulke’s eyes dart over as he listens, the man pulling back just a moment later.

  A meaty hand comes up to trace over the gold goblet in front of him as Fulke gazes contemplatively at Midas. “We’re allies, Midas. I support you in your endeavor toward challenging Fourth Kingdom’s breach. But one night with a whore is hardly worth the might of my army.”

  Midas lifts a shoulder in an unimpressed shrug. “You’re wrong about that. A night with my famed favored, one who has never been touched by anyone other than myself, whose body alone is worth more than all the riches in your vault. Trading her for the use of your army is more than fair.”

  Fulke’s eyes narrow while my own vision tunnels. My bruising head thrums with a pulse of its own, anxiety whipping it like a cruel horseman, forcing it to go faster and harder with each snap of the lash.

  “One month.”

  The back of my throat burns with Fulke’s counter offer. My fingers dig in harder to the strings.

  “One night,” Midas repeats, unyielding. “One night with her, and you stand with your ally. We share the victory of Fourth and split the land, or I may need to reevaluate your worth to me as an ally.”

  A gasp hitches in my throat. The tension in the room spikes up again to an entirely new level. If I weren’t already watching Fulke, I might’ve missed the shocked flash that goes through his eyes, but I catch it. The thought of him not having Midas to add to his own wealth alarms him. The shock makes way for anger, but not quick enough. Midas saw it too, I know he did. He hit Fulke’s mark.

  “Are you threatening me?” Fulke growls.

  “Not at all. But after an alliance of seven years, and with a common enemy, I’m offering you a way to solidify our collaboration. Having my favored is a gesture of my appreciation.”

  My headache inflates, pressure popping behind my eyes with a snap of my mouth. “No.”

  Everyone’s eyes slide over to me at my sudden outburst, but my heart is pounding so hard that I can’t focus on anything except the pain that somehow traveled from my head to my chest.

  I’m not sure when I jumped to my feet, but I’m suddenly standing, facing Midas with my sliced hands held up in front of me as if I can ward this off. “No, my king. Please…”

  Midas ignores me. Fulke’s eyes trail over my body, half of me cast in snowy shadow, the other in firelight.

  “One night, no interruptions, to do with her as I wish?” Fulke asks in confirmation.

  Midas tips his head. My whole body tips forward.

  I catch myself on the bars of my cage, cut fingers curling around the metal, fusing myself to it in a shaky embrace.

  “I want half of Fourth.”

  “Of course,” Midas agrees, as if it’s a done deal. As if he’d been planning this scenario of negotiation for the entire time Fulke has been here.

  One more sweeping glance crawls over my body. “I’ll agree to those terms, Midas.”

  My king lifts his chin, a victorious tilt baiting his expression. “Your army?”

  Fulke shares a whispering consultation with his advisor for a moment before he nods. “I’ll have them moving by tonight.”

  My soul goes as sour as turned grapes, my stomach crashes with tumultuous waves that lick over my organs in bitter, biting acid as denial floods me.

  He doesn’t ever let anyone touch me. I’m his. That’s what he always says. I’m precious to him. I’ve been his for ten years, and in all that time, he’s never let anyone near me.

  Midas saved me. He pulled me from ruin and put me in a castle. I gave him my heart, and he gave me his protection. One look. He said he took one look at me, and he loved me, and I loved him right back. How could I not? He was the first man to ever treat me with kindness. How can he ruin that and give me to Fulke of all people?

  My throat catches as I grip the bars, my vision tilting in unsteady panic. “No, Tyndall, please.”

  I hear the gasps from Polly and Rissa at my use of King Midas’s first name. Nobody dares to speak so casually to him. People have been beheaded for less. But the name just flies out, unchecked. He used to let me call him Tyndall once upon a time, when I was just a girl and he was my vigilante knight in shining armor. But that was before.

  My slipup is probably my mind’s way of trying to call back his protector role in my life, but I can see from the hard set of his jaw that it was the wrong thing to say.

  His brown eyes cut into me like the knife on his place setting. “You would do well to remember your place, Auren. You are my royal saddle to be ridden by whomever I wish.”

  Tears burn in my eyes. Don’t cry, I coach myself. Don’t break down.

  Fulke tilts his bald head, watching me with unrestrained interest. To him, I’m already his. “I can punish her, if you like. I’ve been very successful at breaking in my own saddles.”

  The first tear slips down my cheek even though I try to keep it balanced precariously on my lid. It tracks down like a noose, a rope of remorse falling limp against my cheek.

  Midas shakes his head firmly. “No punishing. She’s still my favored.”

  I guess that’s my bright side.

  Fulke nods immediately, as if he’s nervous Midas will change his mind. “Of course. I won’t lay a hand on her. Just my cock.” He laughs uproariously, his giant belly jiggling while the advisors laugh nervously.

  King Midas doesn’t join in, because his attention is locked on me. I’m stuck under his gaze, feeling a mix of hurt, fear, and subservience. I could kick myself for whining last night about how lonely I was. This is what I get for not being thankful for my cage.

  “My king…” My voice is quiet, pleading. A last-ditch effort to speak to the core of him, instead of this staunch monarch who’d do anything to strengthen his rule.

  Midas’s brown eyes hold no warmth. Just cold bark of a log forcibly cut from its roots. “I didn’t say you could stop playing.”

  I blink at his words, my lips parting in pain as I drop my hands from the bars. He’s doing this. He’s truly doing this.

  “Now sit pretty on your stool and play your silly music. Leave the men to speak, Auren.”

  I flinch at his words as if he’d come forward and slapped me. My ribbons shudder on either side of my spine, as if they want to hide from his view. Slowly, I turn and wa
lk back to the stool. My legs shake as I sit down, like a rock settling at the bottom of a pond, sediment billowing up, the depth of water keeping me oppressed from the sun.

  I feel detached from my body as I see my bloodied hands lift up to the harp once more. The skin over the vein in my temple twitches, and my back goes ramrod straight, as if the hard lines of my shoulders can be a shield from piercing eyes.

  The song “Shudder Serendipity” falls from the notes unbidden.

  Each pluck of string is another incision that slices into more than just my skin, but into my heart. Every note is a lament, every movement a misery, every cadence a reverberating pang. Tiny drops of blood drip down the chords in sweet sacrifice.

  I play it for my king. My protector. My savior. For the man I’ve loved since I was just a fifteen-year-old girl. I play it, remembering the first time I learned it, when he so sweetly sang along to the pretty rhymes, his voice an accompaniment to the campfire and crickets.

  In time between times

  In dawnlight we danced

  Sipping from shine

  Your lips like romance

  Another tear falls from my eye, the haunting sound of his voice a long ago memory so far away.

  The man who promised to always keep me safe is giving me to another, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Chapter Five

  King Fulke doesn’t leave as originally planned. Not now that he mobilized his army and agreed to help Midas on a secret attack on Fourth Kingdom. Not now that he has a night with Midas’s favored to look forward to.

  Every day that his soldiers march closer to meet up with Midas’s army, it feels like an attack is closer to being launched on me.

  My hands curl over the book I have in my lap. Even though my eyes are on the page, I’m not reading any of the words. I’m too busy eavesdropping.

  I’m acting as a pretty centerpiece where I’m sitting in the center of my cage inside the library. Back straight, ribbons draped across the chaise, I listen to everything that’s being said with rapt attention.

  King Midas and King Fulke have been meeting with their advisors for the past six days in here, poring over maps and strategizing the attack and the following victory.

  Apparently, Fulke’s men should be getting to Midas’s army tomorrow morning. They’ll breach Fourth Kingdom’s borders together, essentially destroying the peace pact of the six kingdoms of Orea.

  Now sit pretty on your stool and play your silly music. Leave the men to speak, Auren.

  Maybe Midas didn’t expect me to take his advice so thoroughly. He’d said it to put me in my place, but all week, I’ve sat and I’ve played while the men have talked.

  They’ve talked, but I’ve listened. Watched. Pieced together their plans against Fourth. It’s almost funny how much people will say in front of a woman they only view as a possession.

  Since Midas decided to have their war meetings in the top floor library for more privacy, that means that I’ve been able to hear everything. It’s been enlightening, to say the least.

  It became very clear very quickly that Midas had been planning this breach on Fourth’s borders for weeks, if not months. And with his ready answer to Fulke’s bargain concerning me? It makes me think that Midas planned ahead for that too.

  Which means...he had me come to that breakfast for the purpose of a lure. I was the shiny coin that Midas placed on the ground at Fulke’s feet. King Fulke couldn’t resist picking me up and slipping me into his pocket, not when he’d been coveting me for so long.

  In his eyes, Fulke not only gets me, but gets the chance at owning half of Fourth’s lands and wealth. I admit, I don’t know a lot about the inner workings of a king’s mind. I don’t know how their advisors advise them. But I do know this: All men, whether they’re a king or a peasant, covet what they do not have. And these two men covet Fourth Kingdom.

  “You’re sure?” King Fulke asks as they sit around the map of Orea carved into the table, gold-touched so that it gleams on every mountain range and river ridge. “Because it must be made clear that Fourth Kingdom was the one in breach. The last thing we want is for the other kingdoms to declare war on us.”

  “It won’t happen,” Midas replies, confident and precise. “They want to be rid of King Rot just as much as the rest of us. The only difference is they’re too timid. They fear him.”

  “Shouldn’t they?” Fulke counters. “You’ve seen his power, as I have. King Rot,” he repeats with a grumble. “The moniker is a true one. My border soldiers speak of the smell that wafts in. They plug their noses with leather stubs soaked in oils. And even so, they say their eyes burn from the smell of decay.”

  A shudder taps up my spine like a chilled fingertip, making my ribbons twitch ever so slightly. King Rot’s reputation precedes him. Tales of how he rots the land to keep his people in line, how he’s vile and cruel. They say he doesn’t act with honor even on a battlefield—that he uses his power to make people fester and decompose, leaving their bodies in his fields for the flies to hatch maggots in.

  “He’s purposely instilled fear to become untouchable,” Midas argues, my head turning ever so slightly to point my ear in his direction. “But he’s not. We’re going to prove that and take back the land he’s edged into.”

  Fulke’s eyes dart up at him from across the table, a meaty hand skimming over burnished summits. “And the Blackroot Mines?”

  And there it is.

  After the shock at the breakfast when I heard Midas declare that he was launching an attack on Fourth, I’d been flabbergasted. Completely confused as to why anyone would want to take the risk of attacking Fourth. I knew it wasn’t just about the fact that Fourth was slowly edging past his boundaries. It couldn’t be. It just didn’t feel right.

  So I did a little sleuthing of my own at night, sneaking into the library and climbing the rungs of my cage, reaching as far as I could to some of the shelves to snatch books in the history and geography section. I couldn’t reach many, but I did luck out and find one with a resources map of Orea on a front page spread.

  And that’s when I spotted the mines. Right smack in the middle of Fourth Kingdom.

  Midas smiles slyly. “The mines will be ours.”

  Even from all the way over at the back of the room, I can see the glint in their eyes. The excited straightening of their shoulders. I don’t know what’s in those mines, but whatever it is, they want it. Badly.

  Fulke nods, appeased, while his advisors look on with matching expressions, like they’re already anticipating the royal coffers growing, rather than the lives and deaths they’re directing. But then, it must be easier to sit in a castle and move cavalry pieces on a map, rather than facing a sword on the battlefield.

  “I want the north side,” Fulke declares, his pale purple leggings and matching tunic only embellished with the leather belt wrapped around his sagging middle.

  Midas arches a brow at him, and his own advisor frowns uneasily, but instead of countering like I expect, Midas tips his head. “Very well. The north side of Blackroot will be yours.”

  Fulke beams and claps his hands together once. “Ah, then we are agreed! Now all we must do is wait for our armies to meet tonight, and win ourselves a kingdom.”

  “Indeed,” Midas says with amusement.

  “What’s next on the agenda?” Fulke asks, turning to his advisor.

  The gangly man in similar purple leggings pulls out a scroll and launches into a list of the things they still need to discuss today, but my mind stays behind, wheels turning over what could be in those mines that has these men so worked up, so willing to breach a peace pact and risk the defeat of their armies. And why now? They’re either very confident, very desperate, or there’s something else I’m not seeing.

  Movement catches my eye, pulling me from my spinning thoughts, and I look over at Rissa who’s dancing by the window.

  In true King Fulke fashion, he brought her and Polly along today. He’s had at least one saddle with him up
here every single day during their council. Rissa and Polly must be his favorites, because it’s usually one or both of them. Sometimes he has them massage his back or serve him food, always at his beck and call.

  Today, the women both have their light blonde hair coiled in thick ringlets and they’re wearing matching dresses that are slitted at the sides from their feet to their hips, with plunging necklines all the way down to their belly buttons.

  Polly has been making sure to refill the wine goblets in the room, earning handsy touches from the men as she does. But Rissa was ordered to dance almost as soon as she arrived. Right now, she’s still swaying over by the window with seductive gracefulness, moving her body to soundless music.

  Fulke gave her the order to dance over three hours ago and hasn’t let her stop yet. Hell, he’s barely even looked at her, aside from the passing glances. All her effort for nothing.

  As I watch her, I notice what the others don’t. Although she dances as if it’s effortless, I can see that it’s not. Every so often, she’ll wince a little, like she’s sore from the nonstop movement. And there beneath her pretty blue eyes, I can see dark circles, revealing her lack of sleep. King Fulke probably keeps her busy all night, and then doesn’t let her rest during the day.

  I hear the men begin to talk about what routes they’ll have their armies take back to their kingdoms after the attack, completely distracted by the sounds of their own voices. I close my book quietly, looking down at it in my lap. The binding is such shiny gold that it could be used as a mirror, and I swipe over it with my hand, feeling its smoothness, looking into my reflection for a moment before my eyes are drawn back up to Rissa.

  I get to my feet, hefting the book in my hand as I stretch slightly, acting as nonchalant as I can. I meander across my cage, heading over to Rissa at the other end.

  When I get closer to the window that she’s dancing in front of, I lean against the bars, holding my book in front of me again to feign reading before I turn my head in her direction. “You know, if you drop to the ground, you can just pretend that you’ve fainted from exhaustion. I’ll back you up,” I tell her, my voice barely above a whisper.