A grim smile touches my lips, devoid of any warmth. I do not know what awaits me at the market, but I know this: whatever it is, I will own it. I will take it apart, piece by piece, until I find the scream hidden at its center.
I will feast. And finally, there will be silence.
2
LEORA
The mud of the Lowtown market is thick enough to swallow sound. It clings to my shins, a heavy, freezing paste mixed with the refuse of the city and the relentless drizzle that falls from Lliandor’s slate-grey sky.
I do not look at the faces of the men walking past the auction block. I look at their hands.
Hands are the only truth in this world. A mouth can lie, spilling sweet promises or feigned indifference, but a hand will always tell you what comes next. I watch a merchant with swollen, red knuckles grip his coin purse too tightly—he is angry, likely to strike out of frustration. I watch a guard with calloused palms rest his thumb on the pommel of his blade—he is bored, dangerous in his idleness.
My own hands are hidden in the tattered folds of my sleeves. I grip the loose thread on the left cuff, winding it around my index finger until the circulation cuts off, until the tip turns purple and throbs. The pain is a small, sharp anchor. It keeps me here.
If I let go of the thread, I might drown.
The air in the market is not just cold; it is crowded. Not with bodies, though we are packed tight enough to smell the unwashed wool and sour sweat of the line, but withfeeling. The terror of the girl standing to my left bleeds into the air like smoke. It tastes of copper and bile. It presses against my temples, a heaviness that tries to pry open my skull and pour her panic into me.
Close the door,I tell myself.Build the wall.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a heartbeat, visualizing a fortress of gray stone, thick and impenetrable. The power—though I do not have a name for it, only a curse—surges in response, a frantic tide rising to meet the pressure. It takes every ounce of my meager strength to keep the barrier intact, to keep their screaming emotions from becoming my own.
I exhale a shaky breath, the air misting before my face. I am so tired. The exhaustion goes deeper than the hunger gnawing at my belly or the ache in my bones from sleeping on the damp earth of the holding pen. It is a spiritual fatigue, a fraying of the soul.
"Straighten up, refuse," the slaver growls.
I snap my eyes open. I don’t look at his face. I look at his hand. He holds a crop, the leather braided and stained dark. His grip tightens. The leather sings through the air.
I don’t flinch. I learned long ago that flinching only excites them. It confirms the power dynamic. Instead, I shift my weight imperceptibly, bracing my core. The crop lands across my shoulder, a line of fire that sears through the thin fabric of my tunic.
I bite my lower lip, my teeth finding the scar tissue there, a familiar groove worn smooth by years of silence. I do not cry out. I do not give him the satisfaction of a whimper. I simply stare at a puddle near his boot, watching the raindrops create concentric circles that ripple and die.
"Useless," the slaver spits, moving down the line to terrorize a weeping boy.
The pain in my shoulder is sharp, clarifying. It helps push back the suffocating cloud of the other slaves' fear. For a moment, there is only the sting and the rain.
Suddenly, the atmosphere shifts.
It isn't a sound. The clamor of the market—the shouting vendors, the braying of beast-mounts, the ring of iron—doesn't stop, but it changes quality. It becomes brittle. Strained.
The air pressure drops, triggering a warning prickle on my neck. The emotions pressing against my mental walls shift from the chaotic noise of general misery to a unified, suffocating frequency ofdread.
Someone is coming. Someone who drinks the light from the air.
The crowd parts. It is not a respectful shuffling aside; it is a frantic scramble, bodies pressing into the mud to clear a wide path.
A black carriage has stopped at the edge of the square, the lacquered wood gleaming like a beetle’s carapace. But it is the figure striding toward us that commands the silence.
He is tall, towering over the humans and lesser elves alike. His skin is the color of burnt charcoal, smooth and flawless, absorbing the dim lantern light rather than reflecting it. He wears robes of crushed velvet the color of dried blood, embroidered with silver threads that seem to writhe like living things as he moves.
A Dark Elf. Not just any Dark Elf. A Khuzuth. A high lord.
I watch his hands. They are pale inside his gloves, long-fingered and elegant. He does not wear weapons. He does not need to. The air around him warps, heavy with the scent of something sweet and rotting—like lilies left on a grave for too long.
He stops ten paces from the line. A warrior in heavy armor stands behind him, her hand on her sword, but the Lord ignores her. He ignores everyone. His violet eyes, glowing with a predatory luminescence, sweep over us.
He is not looking for labor. He is not looking for a bedwarmer. The way his gaze dissects us is clinical, cold. He is looking for ingredients.
