Xavix poured the gold onto the empty plate. Thick hexagonal coins hit the brass with a loud clatter that then reverberated as a more melodious sound throughout the tent.
The chains in my grip strained. The scale plate that I stood on lifted off the ground. I swayed, holding on to the chains tighter to keep my balance. As the gold kept falling onto the other plate, my plate kept rising, slowly swaying in the air.
I watched the coins bounce off each other and pile up. The higher my plate rose, the heavier the feeling in my stomach grew. It looked like there might be just enough gold in Timur’s satchel to balance the scale. Then by the twisted laws of this land, I would become his.
The last coin dropped onto the pile. The plates were almost at the same level, but not quite. The long arrow attached to the middle of the horizontal bar wouldn’t align with the vertical bar yet.
I released a tentative breath, realizing that if I had to have a master, I’d far rather prefer anyone else to the creepy shrouded figure that looked like a ghost and moved like an apparition.
“Weeell…” Xavix stretched the word out, shaking the empty satchel over the plate in the undying hope of more coins miraculously dropping from it. Now that he’d laid his eyes on all this gold, the prospect of declaring the deal as failed clearly pained him.
Hope pulsed inside me, too, only of a different kind. The creepy ghoul didn't own me. Maybe this whole thing would still turn out okay for me somehow? Maybe someone like Mazrawould get me instead? She didn’t look too bad, did she? She didn’t have any yellow flowers on her.
“Wait. Take this too.” Timur slipped the massive ring off his thumb and tossed it onto the pile of gold on the scale.
The plates moved. The scale arrow tipped, trembling, then aligned with the vertical bar, indicating the perfect balance between the plates.
“Sold!” Xavix declared, spinning his scroll over his head. “To the magnificent Timur of…” He stuck his scroll out, pointing at my new fucking owner in an invitation to introduce himself properly.
But the figure under a shroud just shook his head, the fabric of his hood swaying in front of his covered face.
“Just Timur,” he insisted, then stretched his hand out to me, clearly expecting me to get off the scales.
I didn’t take the hand he offered, jerking away from it instead.
“No…” I scrambled backwards, tripped over the edge of the plate, and fell off the scales.
Without my weight to balance it, the other plate crashed to the ground. The gold coins spilled from it, scattering over the black sand.
“Gold!” The opportunists from the crowd dove for it.
“Stay back!” Xavix shouted, frantically gesturing at his men to control the chaos that was quickly growing beyond anyone’s control.
An elegant arm decorated with strings of seashells and coral beads slinked around my middle, helping me get up.
“Come with me, sweet thing,” Mazra murmured into my ear. “I’ll take good care of you.”
Did it mean I still had a choice? I didn’t have to go with the creep who’d paid my weight in gold?
“She’s mine!” Timur’s voice boomed from the other side of the scales. Loud and demanding, it was far from calm or quiet now.
A white whip suddenly lashed across the scales, sending the plates into a wild dance, the chains rattling. The whip looped around my waist, then yanked me out of Mazra’s grip. I landed on top of Timur’s cloak. On…his lap? It would be his lap if he were sitting. Was that why he appeared shorter than other fae?
The whirring sound came again, then I moved, along with the man who’d bought me. The crowd thickened around us, rushing to get to the gold scattered over the sand. Fights broke out. The largely outnumbered security guards could do nothing to stop them. Screams, smacks of punches, crunches of bones, curses, and cries of pain bombarded my hearing.
Desperate to escape it all, I curled into myself, closing my eyes and slamming my hands over my ears. Through my closed eyelids, sunlight flooded my vision with pink. The noise of mayhem in the auction tent moved away. The measured, swishing sound of waves replaced it. But the tight grip around my waist didn’t ease. Sharp pain radiated from it.
I cracked my eyelids open, venturing a careful look. The “whip” turned out to be not a rope but something that looked like a long, bare spinal column of sun-bleached bones. Each vertebra had one wide crest on top and two short spikes on each side. The tips of the spikes pierced through my sweater, digging into my skin.
“You’re…hurting me,” I croaked, unsure he’d care.
No reply came.
I was on the lap of the cloaked figure who must be sitting in a chair or something like it hidden under his cloak. That explained his odd shape and what I had first thought was his short stature. The chair moved on its own, powered by the eerie green glow that burned brightly between the black edge of his cloak and the equally black sand.
Magic was common in the Alveari Kingdom. From the moment I came here, I’d seen smoke appearing from people’sarms and backs, people erupting into shadows, dead bodies dissolving into nothing. I’d had a magical harness implanted into my skin that made it possible for another living being to access my emotions. But the magic of shadow fae in the Alveari Kingdom was always gold—yellow shimmer, golden sparks. It was the bright light against the darkness of their world.
However, the creature that bought me operated a device powered by some foreign green magic I’d never seen or heard of before.
