“Good girl,” he purrs, his carob-colored eyes glazed with greed as his hand skims down the exposed skin at my side. “There will be a time in the next couple of days when someone else from an Order will demand to play with you. He has a taste for rare beauties who have yet to be broken. He will single you out, get you alone, and when he does, you are to kill him. Am I clear?”
I stiffen at the command, unable to hide my shock. “Yes, master. I am your blade to command,” I manage to answer evenly out of habit, despite every cell in my body revolting against what I’ve just been mandated to do.
I have no issue with the kill order, but the Bidding is supposed to be a sanctum, which means no Order members killing or threatening each other. No hunts. No sleight-of-hand. There is zero tolerance for any deceitful nonsense that violates the rules that ensure everyone’s safety. To transgress the sanctum is a death wish. An Order member would earn a quick, easy end for doing so. A blade slave like me though...they’d rip me apart piece by piece for violating the safeties that have been put in place. They’d end me eventually for what Tilleo is ordering, but it would be nothing but brutal horror each and every second leading up to my last breath.
I want to scream, but I can’t. I want to beg Tilleo to take it back, but I know there’s no use. Just like with Ency, Kirid, and Linae, life as I know it is over with only a couple of casually muttered words. Tilleo is asking me to execute a member of an undisclosed Order for touchingme, a blade slave. He’s engineering my execution, and judging by the look on his face as he straightens in front of me, he has no intention of saving me from the fate he’s damning me to. There will be no stepping in on his part and admitting he ordered the hit. No. He’ll claim I’m defective and leave me to suffer and die forhim, a malevolent master who’s been setting me up for failure from the first moment he laid eyes on me.
“Go see a healer before this darkens any further,” he orders with an impatient bark, gesturing to my face. Like the trained pet that I am, I immediately step around him, narrowly avoiding bumping shoulders with Crit, as I walk assuredly out of the hashery and head in the direction of the healer’s wing.
My heart pounds and my thoughts race. Anger unfurls in my chest like a poisonous blooming flower as adrenaline takes root in my veins. There was a time these feelings would make me feel powerful, but I know better now, and it all just makes me feel worse. What good has getting pissed ever done for me? What power have I ever really found in anger and outrage? Iwantto rebel, to resist, but there’s no fighting back here, there’s no winning. All I’ve ever wanted was freedom, but it was never going to be mine. I saw the truth in Tilleo’s face today. That bastard was never letting me leave this place. I’ve been a fucking fool, and now it’s time to pay the price for it.
Robotically, I turn down the maze of arched hallways that encircle the large round training pits at the center of the ludere. My feet move of their own volition as the rest of me tries to come to terms with my imminent death and the joke my life has been up to this point. I thought I would get out. I would pay my debt back to the Order that purchased me, and one day have a life and a home that solely belonged to me. How stupid. I had hoped and dreamed despite knowing exactly where that would lead.
I could try to run, but I’ve seen too many others struck down by dozens of arrows only feet away from the ludere doors. They died nowhere even close to the gates that lead out of Tilleo’s stronghold and into the oppressive and punishing desert beyond. If I can’t run and I can’t ignore the kill order, what does that even leave?
Death.
It all leads to death.
The only question now is by whose hands. Mine? Tilleo’s? The guards? The Order’s? I knew the reaper would find me eventually, but this is too soon.
By the time I step under the arch that leads into the healing chamber, an all-consuming numbness has taken hold and started to spread. A helpless sigh spills out of me at the cruel inevitability smothering my future like a blistering gust on the hottest desert day. I wait for a healer to notice me and fix whatever Crit did to my face, as a dreaded certainty settles in my soul.
Sometime in the next few days, I will die.
I fist my hands once before forcing my body to relax. There’s no running from this; there’s no winning against Tilleo. I will never know what freedom tastes like or figure out who I was before I was forced to become a savage. All the years of training. All the things I’ve done in the name of survival, only to die on these cursed specks of sand surrounded by the blood-soaked great wall that has caged me in for as long as I can remember.
I tell myself that death is better than being sold at the skin markets, but it does little to erase the sting of my bitter reality. I was raised in this hole of despair, and now, despite my every effort, I will die here never knowing anything different. Hope truly is a deadly viper, and at last its poison has finally come for me.
ChapterFive
The soul-jarring trumpet of the great bone horns stationed at the stronghold’s entry fills the halls of the ludere. The sudden thunderous noise makes the healer attending to my cheek jump. I fight the immediate urge to run to join the assembly I’m supposed to be a part of as the healer finishes magically fixing my broken cheek and bruised face. The horns sound off again seconds later, announcing that the great doors are opening and that guests for the Bidding have finally arrived.
“Stop moving, pet. I am almost done, and then you can be off to watch the caravans roll through the gates,” the healer chides, as though I’m some wiggly cria eager to be off and celebrating the arrival of a grand parade.
Fuck the Orders. Fuck this place.
“If you don’t hurry, I’ll be late to my post. Then I’ll be back in here with far more than my cheek in need of healing,” I grumble at the withered old man as anxiety picks up my heart and starts to sprint off with it.
While waiting for the healer to gather what he needed, I spent my time planning the best way to die. It’s made my tongue more loose and cantankerous than I’ve ever dared before. Luckily, the healer seems more bothered by my injury than my impertinence.
The healer huffs with frustration at being rushed, but he knows I speak the truth. He increases his flow of magic into me, and I bite back my blood’s reaction to it, willing away the sting that starts in my gums as the power fills me. I’ve forced my body to keep its secrets all this time, but the rush of magic and my current emotional state makes it harder to clamp down and shut off the way Itrulywant to respond to the pain.
“There, good as new, my pet,” the healer announces, patting my shoulder and offering me a warm, yellow-toothed smile.
If only there were real kindness behind the gesture. I nod once, dismissing the empty show of compassion, and then I rush out of the healer’s wing and race through the ludere toward the front gates. Hair the color of moonlight and deep blue fabric trail behind me as I sprint in the oppressive heat to where I’m supposed to be standing to greet the incoming guests. The sun is starting to dip, which, thankfully, will bring some relief as dusk steps in and begins its slow sensual dance with night. I fly through the main doors of the ludere, aiming for the now open gates that are built into the oppressive walls surrounding Tilleo’s vast property.
Blade slaves run the sands between the ludere and the walls twice a day, but as I aim for the grand gates, instead of looping around the building like I usually do, there’s a surprising current of exhilaration that zips through me. Maybe, if I time it right, I can ride the shadows and sneak out of the open gates. I immediately snort at my own ridiculousness. Better a quick death at the end of a blade than the slow burning death that awaits anyone trying to traverse the Corozean desert on foot. That’s even if Tilleo didn’t have me immediately hunted down and brought back before the elements could claim me. It wouldn’t take him long to realize I was gone either. No, on a night like this, all the eyes out here are sharp and on alert.
Hurriedly, I close the distance between me and the gathering crowd. I entertained the thought of blowing this off and refusing to cooperate with anything Tilleo wants, but I’m still trying to figure out a plan, and the only way I can keep doing that is to play along until I can sort it all out. Spotting the other blade slaves amidst the assembling house slaves and guards, I wind my way in their direction.
I’ve never seen outside the ludere when the outer gates were open like they are now. Eyes all around me are on the lookout for the caravans as I weave through the tightening crowd. I, however, drink in the landscape beyond the cage of this place like it’s a newfound oasis and I’m dying of thirst. All I see is dimming skies, rolling desert hills, and waving heat as far as the eye can see. In the distance, sand stags begin to slowly solidify. The large animals are certain to be pulling broad carriages filled with the members of the different Orders, and I rush to find my place amongst the lines of my fellow savages.
Tilleo has us standing on each side of the path the caravans will enter through. I spot a gap between Kin and Orit and hurry to fill it. Kin nods at me and then turns to watch her future slowly approach the wide open gates. I quickly straighten the panels of fabric I’m wearing, making sure that everything is covered and draped the way it’s supposed to be. I adjust the metal belt at my hips, realigning Tilleo’s crest over the apex of my thighs and the crack of my ass. A welcome breeze picks up the strands of my hair and invites them to dance around me. I rush to smooth them back, going still before my movements catch unwelcome eyes.
The bone horns bellow again, the deep sound reverberating through my body as the first set of sand stags glide lazily through the gates. I marvel at how the beasts move gracefully through the thick, hot sand. I’ve seen the herd that Tilleo owns before, but only from afar. Massive horns jut out from their heads, but they look more like odd antlers with the offshoots being large and flat. I study them, observing that the flat bits create shade that shrouds the front half of the sand stag’s body. Their white coat is wiry and short, and golden sand plummets from it in tiny waterfalls with each step the animals take. They’re twice the size of the biggest fae I’ve ever seen, and there’s a majestic grace to their gait as they effortlessly pull the large carriage sleds behind them.
A sand stag trumpets a deep haunting sound, and I can practically hear the declaration that it’s home and hungry in the robust call. Other stags behind brey in answer, and I wonder what it would be like to work as a team like they do.
