THE MONSTER THEY MADE #2
That was also the day she’d realized the guards wouldn’t kill her.
Though beating Morgyn had been satisfying, Cecily had unknowingly threatened the prison’s hierarchy.
After that, Morgyn had set to antagonizing her with every bit of power she had—getting the cooks to give her spoiled food or encouraging other inmates to commit cruelties that pushed her to retaliate with fists and drawn blood, using anything and everything as a weapon.
Morgyn had assumed the guards would put her to death.
Cecily, too, had hoped they would. She later came to learn that it wouldn’t have even been the first time Morgyn had gotten someone killed.
But the guards had only cut off Cecily’s long braid as punishment, leaving her hair unevenly shorn above her shoulders.
Cecily loved her hair, and when she didn’t immediately drop dead from the disgrace of losing it, she’d maimed one of the guards.
They hadn’t killed her for that either, but only put the sign on her door warning that she was a rabid beasty with claws and teeth.
Then she’d built so many walls around her tattered heart that it became an entire house complete with a footman at the front door.
Morgyn still had it out for her and wouldn’t stop until Cecily was either beaten down or dead. As Cecily refused to be beaten and probably couldn’t die, it made things rather tense.
Morgyn sucked her teeth, looking down on Cecily as one might grimace at a roach. “I’m surprised you weren’t the first to work your way out of the brig. A ship can’t really be so different from a brothel.”
Most of the women offered themselves to the guards so they could leave their cells for fresh air, and the men were happy to acquiesce.
Cecily didn’t care what they did, but she resented the assumption that she should partake simply because her record said she was a prostitute.
Morgyn knew of her resentment and liked to stoke it into fury because it amused her to watch Cecily struggle for any scrap of self-control.
Of course, Cecily had never had much self-control to begin with. Bridewell had left her with even less.
“The crew wants to know why you’re the one holding out,” Morgyn went on. “They’re taking bets, you know. On which one will get you first.”
“Morgyn, please,” Hester said, and Cecily thought it was nice that she tried appealing to any good nature she believed Morgyn might have.
Cecily pulled away from the wall, unsticking her dress from whatever bodily fluids had crusted there from however many years’ worth of prisoner transport. Oily strands of hair fell into her face as she leaned forward.
Then she laughed, just a breathy puff of air, and the brig fell silent.
The women might ignore her, but they were always aware of her, like birds that scattered from a beast in the woods.
They watched as she rose, her fingers gripped around the edges of the heavy manacles as they slipped over her thin wrists.
She limped to the bars on numb legs and leaned close, saying loud enough for the others to hear, “I could kill you.”
Morgyn gave a pitying smile. “Oh, sweet Ces. That’s such a tired threat.”
There was no fear in her eyes. There had been, once, after Cecily had beaten her bloody. She’d tried to kill her that day, and Morgyn knew it. So did everyone else. But for all the times she had uttered the threat since, she never carried through.
But Cecily was tired and needed Morgyn to fear her again, if only to gain a little more peace. So she merely tilted her head and asked, “Are you sure?”
Then she let the shackles drop. They clattered to the wooden planks at her feet, the locks wide open.
Morgyn gulped. The others craned their necks to see that yes, Cecily had somehow picked the locks on her manacles.
She’d done it this morning with the shiv she kept hidden in her boot.
It was nearly as long as her finger, made from a chicken bone she’d sharpened into a needle-thin point with a single cutting edge.
It had taken her weeks of carving with a rusty nail in the darkest hours of the morning to whittle it into something usable, and then hours more to finally open a lock with it.
The shiv appeared in her right hand while the other lashed out to grab Morgyn’s shirt and haul her against the bars.
“Tempt me, I beg you,” Cecily hissed, aiming the small weapon at Morgyn’s throat.
The woman struggled, but her chains were too short to allow her to reach through the bars.
“If I can pick the locks to my shackles, I can open my cell door. And if I can open my door, I can open yours.” She pulled Morgyn closer, letting the metal bars press deeper into her cheeks.
“And if you don’t shut your damned mouth, I will let myself out, slit your useless throat, and then do the same to anyone else who wants to mock me for refusing to be the desperate whore you think I am. ”
Morgyn winced, straining away as blood bloomed along the edge of the shiv at her neck.
Cecily nearly carried through, but she wouldn’t—not when she teetered on the edge of damnation.
With so many prices she was willing to pay for peace, cold-blooded murder was not one of them, no matter how tempting.
Because on the chance she might die at any time, she wanted to see her father.
Needed to be with him. For that, she needed a soul.
But surely her father wouldn’t begrudge her a few threats.
She opened her mouth to cut Morgyn with words that were sharper, louder, and more heinous than the snide jibes she so often weathered. But then came Hester’s quiet plea: “Cecily.”
Cecily hesitated for only a moment. Then she released Morgyn and shoved, sending her careening into the bars on the opposite side of her cell.
“Perhaps not today,” Cecily said. “I fear I’d lose control, and it’d be over far too quickly.
” Flipping the bone through her fingers, she looped her arms through the iron bars as though she might pass right through.
She flashed a wicked smile. “I’d rather take the time to see you gutted properly.
I want to hear you choke on your blood for a good long time. ”
Morgyn glared up at her from the floor, one hand covering the cut on her neck as she growled, “Monstrous bitch.”
Cecily merely winked, picked up her manacles, and returned to her spot on the floor as quiet mutters drifted through the brig.
Nestling into the shadows where no one would look at her, she pressed her hands to her chest, feeling for her heart. Somehow it was still there, still alive, though aching, hollow, and frozen through.
Hester slid closer and reached through the bars to place her hand on the splintered floorboards. She was too far away to touch, but the intent was the same.
Cecily stared into her sad eyes, trying to convey without words that she was sorry. But while Hester was a peacekeeper, Cecily couldn’t conduct herself with the same care. She only regretted disrupting Hester’s peace, but no one else’s.
“Life will be good,” Hester whispered, her voice so low that the words were just a movement of her lips. She said it often enough that there was no point in arguing. Life was exactly as it was going to be, and Cecily didn’t hope for anything better because hope only made her a fool.
This was what she was told she deserved, and she’d learned to expect nothing more.
Afternoon light burned toward evening outside.
With the manacles hanging around her wrists, their open seams secured against her belly, she shoved her boot against the cell door, which swung in rather than out.
It hadn’t opened in the weeks they’d been on board, but she didn’t trust that wouldn’t change tonight—or any night.
Palming her shiv, she let her eyes slip shut, her head lolling against the grimy boards behind her.
Monstrous bitch.
The words nestled beneath Cecily’s skin, ugly, barbed, and true, where they tangled with visceral memories of blood and fire that could easily trick her into thinking she was back at the only night she’d ever spent in a brothel.
She felt the cool press of glass in her palm, heard it shatter right along with her heart and soul, but it wasn’t real. It was never real.
She fled from the memories, ignoring the women’s whispers and the rocking ship as she returned to the little home in her head where all was happy and right, and she did not have to be a monster.
The footman raised his hand in greeting. She’d nearly mounted the front steps when her world exploded with cannon fire.