Gild (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 1) by Raven Kennedy (digital book reader .TXT) 📗

door, one of them holding up a thick fur coat for me. “Thank you,” I murmur, taking it from his outstretched hand before I slip it on. I don’t turn back to the queen, but I can feel her stare follow me all the way out into the night.

I clutch the coat tighter.

It’s heavy but soft, the fabric lined with leather and fur to keep me warm during the brutal nights. I lift the hood over my head as I walk down the front steps, feeling the last of the castle’s warmth leave me. But feeling the tension start to leave, too.

My chin tips up as soon as I pass the doorway, and my face points at the sky.

Ten years.

That’s how long it’s been since I’ve stepped foot outside.

The cold wind drifts over me with a lazy current, whispering across my face like a gentle welcome. The guards share a look, their feet shifting from side to side as I stand there, not moving, but I ignore them.

Because this moment—this is mine.

When I chose to hide away, I was barely more than a girl. Vulnerable. Battered. Scared. Utterly sick of what the world had to offer.

So I hid in a cage, and I was content to do so. After the things I endured, I wanted it. I accepted the bars, embraced them, even—not to keep me in, but to keep others out.

But I missed this. The fresh air in my lungs. The smell of the breeze. The cold against my cheeks. The feel of the ground beneath my shoes.

I missed it so damn much.

“My lady,” one of the guards says hesitantly. “We should go.”

I let my eyes scan the dark sky above me for one more moment, the clouds glowing gray before a hidden moon. But I swear, for one fleeting second, I see a glimpse of a star winking at me.

So I wink back.

Chapter Sixteen

The seat of the carriage is velvet, the wood-paneled walls lined with leather, the floor plush with woven carpet. The entire thing is luxurious and golden, though I’m sure after being stuck inside of it for the long journey, it’ll start to feel cramped.

For now, I’m content looking out through the window and feeling the chilled air pass through the gap in the frame as our procession moves away from Highbell Castle.

A dozen other saddles are traveling in separate carriages, all of us called to join Midas in Fifth Kingdom, while the guards on horseback escort us down the long winding road along the rim of the frozen mountain. It’s achingly slow, but I don’t mind the pace right now. I relish in the peace of the night, in the steady steps of the horses as they pull me forward, away from the cage in the palace, toward something new.

As we get further away, the clouds begin to gather, the weather ending its short reprieve. Rain starts to come down like strings, the iridescent lines freezing as they fall.

But our group travels on, the guards simply pulling up their hoods, the horses long since adapted to Sixth Kingdom’s cold, not even balking at being made to travel downhill on a snowy, slick road in the dead of night.

When the carriage slides from a patch of ice or jolts over a rock in the road, my heart jumps into my throat, but my escorts trek on, and I do my best not to imagine that I’m one bad step away from careening right off the side of the mountain.

Fortunately, the guards and horses slog through the snow with competence. We’ll be traveling all night, just like Midas ordered. We’ll sleep during the day, giving the scouts the best advantage when keeping watch.

It will be slow going, two weeks, one and a half at the very best, and that’s if the weather holds—and the weather never holds. Not here. Definitely slower than Midas and his men, but our party isn’t used to travel or being exposed to the elements, so the going will be slower, more cautious.

As I watch our painstaking way down the mountain, my breath fogs up the glass of the window, forcing me to wipe the condensation away with my gloved hand. Gloves that I’m going to become very familiar with, that I probably won’t ever take off until I’m tucked inside Fifth Kingdom’s castle. A small concession when I’m out here in this frigid world, so exposed.

By the time our caravan makes it down the winding mountain road, it’s fully dark. No hint of moon or stars behind the thick canopy of clouds, only the lanterns hanging from the carriages offering light to guide our way.

We cross Highbell’s bridge, hewn from the shale hollowed out from the mountain behind us. Hooves clop over the sturdy bricks as we make our way across, the bridge built over the chasm between mountain and valley.

And at the other end of it, Highbell City. Built in front of the forest of the Pitching Pines—trees so tall that you can’t see their tops when you look up, so large that it would take several men with outstretched arms to span the width of a trunk. The trees stand proud, growing pine needles of blue and white, shedding down like teeth of icicles, dripping with sap at the tips to grow longer, sharper.

But those trees, hundreds of years old—maybe even thousands—they offer the city a break from the wind that comes in down from the mountains, the branches taking on the brunt of the wintry gusts and brutal blizzards, shielding the buildings behind them.

The city itself is dwarfed by them, looking almost comical next to each other. Even in the dark, I can see the light of even the tallest buildings completely dominated by the trees at their backs.

And all at once, I’m too far, too closed off. Maybe it’s just now really hitting me that I’m out, I’m truly out of my cage. No Midas, no expectations, no role to play. I’m out of