Page 5 of The Worst of Them

Morgyn leaned in to the bars separating them. “Jealous?”

Cecily snorted, but there was no humor in it. “No.”

She leered. “You could leave your cell too, if you wanted.”

“Don’t want to,” Cecily said.

From this angle, the late afternoon sun cut through one of the portholes and threw Morgyn’s crooked nose into harsh relief. Cecily traced the line of it with her gaze, satisfaction cutting through the permanent coldness in her chest.

She’d put that dent in Morgyn’s nose shortly after arriving at Bridewell, when the woman loudly introduced her to the others as the new whore. Freshly devastated from being denied her death, and harboring a new, terrible, angry rot in her cracking soul, Cecily had thrown Morgyn to the ground and pummeled her into a bleeding mess.

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.