A breeze picks up outside, stirring the folded piles of what looks like midnight blue silk, sprinkling sand on the shiny surfaces of the elegant fabric. I’ve never seen anything so rich and decadent, especially not something the masters would ever give us blade slaves, but I count eight stacks of fabric, and I know this is what we’ll be draped in tonight. Wilik smacks me upside the head, and I immediately turn from the lush silky togs and look straight ahead like I know she wants me to. She tsks and grumbles her frustration over having to work through my thick tresses, but a direct order from the masters prevents her from shearing my head free of the menacing strands like she used to do when I first got here.
“I think I’ll do something different...something special for tonight’s festivities,” Wilik declares, and I tense as she starts smoothing the front strands back. Her cruel, beady black eyes study me over her long hooked nose. Lips so thin they can barely be called lips at all twist up in a smile, and that’s more threat than amusement seeping from the grim gray of her skin and features.
“There’s no need to go through any trouble for me,” I bite out, wincing at the desperate edge in my tone. “Fighting plaits have always been more than adequate,” I go on, softening my voice and hoping I didn’t just make this worse by sounding like I was trying to command her.
Wilik is quiet for a beat, and when she grabs a chunk of hair from the side of my head and starts to braid, I relax slightly.
“Nonsense,” she coos at me spitefully. “You should lookextraspecial tonight; all of the girls should. You’ve spent too much time as a raw diamond, Auset. It’s time to shine you up, show the Orders what kind of stock the ludere breeds.”
I close my eyes at her declaration and focus on my breathing. She’s punishing me, setting me up in the worst way, and I want to use the comb in her hand to rip out her throat for it. Special is a problem here. Pretty is even worse. Too much of one, and the others will pick you off in order to increase their odds. Flaunting both could land any blade slave in a station worse thanhired sword. I barely escaped the skin markets before. Tilleo thinking that I’d killed Dorsin was the only way I’d wedged my foot in the door of the ludere, and I’ve fought witheverythingI have to stay here ever since.
I’ve never alpha’d the pack. I’ve never fallen behind in the ranks either. I’ve worked to stay right in the middle. Not too good, but good enough to make it to the Bidding. Good enough to be bought by an Order...for a reasonable price. A price it won’t take my entire life to pay back. A price that someday, after my hands have soaked too long in other fae’s blood and there are more wrinkles on my face and pains in my limbs, I’ll be allowed to discover what freedom truly tastes like.
I dream of that day, savor what I think the flavor will be like on my tongue.
It’s what gets me through every day in this sunbaked hellhole.
Someday I’ll be free.
Wilik yanks my hair hard, and I hiss and tilt my head the way she wants. The nasty pixie could just use her words—by the stars, she has plenty to say about everything else around here—but no, she relishes the power she has over us while we’re sitting on her stool. I’m going to kill her, or at least I like to imagine all the ways I can use her tools of torture against her while she does her best to rip the hair from my scalp. The plaiting we’re forced to sit through every week is the only time I’m grateful for possessing so much hair. Otherwise, thanks to Wilik’s rough treatment, I’d look patchy like Kin and Ency do. I want my price to be lower but not so low that I end up in a bad Order.
Wilik smooths the front of my hair back with some kind of cream I’ve never felt her use before and then wraps a thick braid from one side of my head over the top like a band. She grabs another thick braid from the other side of my head and crosses it over the opposite way before sewing it all in place. Once that’s done, she begins to dry the long locks draped down my back with a brush that painfully twists and pulls as she magics everything into the shape that she wants.
A shiver crawls up my spine as Wilik works. She’s only ever put in this much effort to make me look special one other time. Those memories rear up unexpectedly, forcing my heart to start pounding as sweat begins to bead on my brow. I close my eyes and think through this morning’s drill instead, doing everything I can to push thoughts of that day as far from me as possible. I don’t care how much this all calls to what happened before, I refuse to unlock that box and examine those scars no matter what.
Taria and Orit walk in, and Figg gives them the same threatening warning about the togs the masters have selected for us this evening as they wait their turn to suffer at Wilik’s hands. A few more brutal yanks later, Wilik magics her stool out from under me, and I glare at her as I barely manage not to fall on my ass. You’d think she’d be more careful, surrounded by fae who’ve been taught how to kill without compunction, but she must be thirsty for death. Maybe when I’m finally sipping on freedom, I’ll come give the pixie a mouthful of what she’s clearly been craving all these years. Wilik smirks back at me, her dull dark eyes promising more pain the next time I’m at her mercy, but her days of battering this batch of blade slaves is numbered, and we both know it.
Orit snickers at something Taria says, and the petite huntress glares at her friend.
“They come for every Bidding for a reason,” Taria defends, hurt gleaming in her bright brown eyes. Her skin is so dark it will never reveal a blush, but I suspect one invisibly heats her cheeks all the same.
“It’s pure nonsense to even think it, Taria,” Orit sneers. “The Scorpions come for the food, drinks, and the willing slits. Then they leave each Bidding with their Order intact exactly as it was when they arrived. Thinking you’re going to be bid on bythemis the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Figg and Wilik both snort disdainfully, the sound a firm agreement with Orit’s scathing words. Taria’s eyes fall to her feet, her lips pursing for a beat as though she wants to argue, but she stays quiet and simmers in Orit’s scorn.
“None of us have been to a Bidding before. Who’s to say what will or won’t happen?” I chime in, the defeat in Taria’s eyes pulling at something in me.
“Sot told me exactly what happens,” Orit jeers, as though getting on her knees for a guard who spills useless information down her throat as well as his seed places her above me in life.
I scoff but don’t say any more as Figg limps out from behind the table, a blue dress clutched in her arthritic hands, the color so deep it looks as though it’s been kissed by the night. Her small wings flutter at her back, the oddly frail looking appendages suddenly flapping hard to lift her round body in the air so she can fit the dress to me.
A flurry of giggles sound out from the bathing chamber, and more girls stumble into the already cramped space of the adornment room. Some of my fellow savages, as Tilleo likes to call us, look as though they’ve gotten into the stores of spirits that none of us are supposed to have access to. I know they’re all simply excited for what’s to come, for the promise of change and the chance to escape this place, but I find myself looking at each of them and wondering who won’t make it. There were so many of us when I first came here. Now it’s just down to eight of us females and eight males. I run my eyes over the faces of the other girls who I’ve fought against and trained with for the last six years. My feelings are mixed, just like they were in the bathing room. I’m happy to never see any of them again, and yet they’re all I’ve ever really known. Them and this place.
In the past, some Orders have purchased multiple blade slaves from Tilleo, so I suppose it would be possible that I may end up somewhere with one of these girls or, more likely, one of the guys. However, I’m not sure if that thought reassures or troubles me. It could be nice to know someone wherever it is that I’m going. Then again, it’s not as though there’s any sense of loyalty between any of us in this fight for our survival. Why would it really matter if one of the many faces in my new life is one I happen to recognize?
Figg fusses with a metal belt, her short arms making it difficult to wrap it around my hips the way it’s apparently supposed to be worn. I look down to see what the masters have ordered her to put us in, and I balk at the dress that’s barely more than a couple long strips of fabric. The dark blue silk is soft against my skin, but there’s not nearly enough of it. My wide worried eyes land on Figg’s, and she glares a warning at me not to say a word.
Heat moves up my neck and into my cheeks as I survey the silky fabric that forms a V down my shoulders to barely cover my breasts. Below my navel, the two lines of fabric become one to cover my slit. In the back, the same V of dark blue fabric drops to the small of my back before it morphs into a single thin panel that covers the crack of my ass. Figg secures a metal belt that seems to be designed to help keep the front and back strips of silk from moving and revealing too much.
A small metal crest in the shape of a shield sits on top of my cunt, with thin chains of silver metal attaching it to the same crest that sits at the top curve of my ass in the back. The crest is Tilleo’s, a fanged boar’s head in front of two crossing swords. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, but it’s marked into almost everything here at the ludere. I suspect we’d be wearing his mark too if it wasn’t something that could identify us and lead potential enemies right back to him in the event that one of us was captured while out on a hunt.
The small chains are cold against the bare skin of my hips, and I’m all too aware that a strong breeze or quick twist of my body will expose parts of me that aren’t on offer to any Order, regardless of what they might think they own. Some masters have encouraged us to offer all that we can to secure a place with an Order. Others have warned us that spreading our legs can work against us in the Bidding. Either way, I never took to the enticement training we were required to have here at the ludere. No matter how hard I was punished for it, I would not be convinced that my cunt ever needed to be involved in how I killed.
The other girls are quiet as they look over what they’ll soon be draped in too. Taria shivers and Orit wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls the small fae closer to her side. Solemnity blankets the adornment room as the truth of our circumstances chases away the excitement that was just sparkling in the air. The giggles fade to silence as Wilik starts to work on someone else, and Figg tugs the dress I’m wearing until it lies against me the way she wants. With a grunt, I’m dismissed, and I stride out of the room, making a concentrated effort not to open and close my fists as anger slowly bubbles in my stomach.
“Don’t sit and crease yourself or lean against anything and dirty the dress either,” Figg calls out after me. “March straight to the hashery and wait for your assignment. The caravans start arriving in the next few hours. I’ll have you caned if there’s a spec of sand on you,” she threatens, and I huff with annoyance and wave her threats away.
The ludere is located somewhere in the Corozean desert; it’s impossible not to have sand everywhere, especially when the wind charges in at night like a herd of wild sand stags. I don’t know a life where I’m not covered in a layer of fine grit and sweat, or when Figg isn’t threatening us to stay clean. Given everything that’s happening tonight, she might follow through this time though. The Kings know, her patience is at an all-time low.
