But—no. His were darker, more infinite. He was two years older, but I saw a thousand tragedies between us, a bridge I was soon to cross. He was a walking corpse, and he was my future. If I wasn’t careful, if I didn’t find a way to become more than Viktor’s Doll, my eyes would look just like his.
I didn’t see him again for a year. The woman in white and yellow paid handsomely. “Millions,” Viktor told me in bed at promptly nine p.m.
Millionsfor a corpse. Then again, that corpse killed without remorse, and he wasn’t the only one. There were dozens of boys who survived the courtyard and were sold on rotation to prominent wealthy families worldwide, but it was Rafe who held the most attention. Girls took to their windows, peering out and whispering about the boy who seemed to have a new tattoo each time he returned from a Buyer. They watched Rafe, and they saw him in a light I didn't quite understand. They looked at his muscles and ink and, in some ways, were no better than the Buyers.They didn't look at him and see another kid; they saw something they wanted. It was like that for years, all the attention on him, until Kane and Thorne. Two boys brought to Viktor's with their ribs showing through their skin who slowly became part of the whispers, too. Kane shadowed Rafe, training in the courtyard, but he didn't have the grace Rafe had. He was far more cruel in the way he killed, beating in the faces of other children. He never went for the quick death, and while most admired it—because such force was power in a place like Viktor's—it made me mostly sad for Kane. He was deeply hurt, and he was one of the few that allowed it to manifest in his brutality. Together, him and Rafe made quite the duo. Rafe was efficient. Kane was spectacle. Buyers adored it, and Viktor, well, loved anything that made him money.
Thorne, I hadn't known much about. He didn't take to the courtyard like Kane had. He was sent off the estate more often than most, rumored to be an expert thief. It didn't seem like there was anything Thorne couldn't steal, but for some reason, he always came back to the estate like clockwork. I couldn't understandit. If Viktor handed me the keys to a bike, I'd never return.
I remember watching a fourteen-year-old Thorne pull up just beyond my window on his motorcycle. He was scrawny still, but his face had put on slightly more weight than when Viktor first sentenced him to the estate. He'd lit a cigarette and sat on his bike for several minutes, taking long drags with his eyes closed. Despite being the same age as me, he looked so much older like that, and I couldn't help but pull back my curtain for a closer look. When he finally opened his eyes again and glanced over, cigarette dangling from his mouth, our eyes met. My chest caved in as he raised a gloved hand and sent a small wave my way. I threw my curtains back into place and crawled into bed, curling into myself and hugging my knees. The truth is…he terrified me. All three of them did. Rafe. Kane. Thorne. Sometimes, you justknowpeople will come into your life and take pieces of you, whether you want them to or not, and with all three of them, I'd felt this sense of dread that I'd never, ever felt before.
I think it was around then I started wondering if there was a point to any kind of hope if evil existedin every corner of the world. I'd said as much to Leah when we were put on kitchen duty, making a pudding desert to be served to an incoming group of Buyers. She was licking the spatula, sitting on the counter with her socked-feet kicking.
"Hope's a lost cause for kids like us, Arden. Honestly, the sooner you make your peace with that, the better. Shit around here won't feel so bad, because you'll finally numb a bit more to it," Leah explained with a shrug. "Although…" A mischievous grin touched her lips, and she leaned down, brushing my curls back from my ear and whispering, "If I can find a way out, just know you're coming with me."
A way out. I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around that, especially not then, but Leah knew every inch of Viktor’s estate. She studied where the servants were most distracted and which windows let you see who entered the estate while leaving you time to hide. She used to talk about escape often, but eventually, she fell in line like most do. She didn’t lose her spark,never,but she did learn to survive the way all of us eventually did. She took her own advice to let go of hope and numb.
When Viktor grew too busy for daily watchfulness, he turned his handlers into punishers. He gave them rules they had to enforce, punishments administered with the same hands that braided my hair. Leah hated it, so she learned which small cruelties made me bend and which made me break, and she wielded them carefully, punishing me when Viktor asked and knowing what I could withstand.
It was around then I became better at faking tears and screams. Leah always apologized after, but then she’d see me straighten, wipe my face, and turn back to porcelain stone, hardened but just fragile enough to be believable, and she’d smile wide. “You bitch,” she’d say, her nose crinkling in amusement. “You almost had me.”
And that was that. Us. The estate.
The courtyards taught obedience, the parlor taught performance, the locked doors taught that curiosity had a price, and Viktor’s study taught that everything could be sold if you had the right ledger. It was a place that made you forget life beyond its walls, and it made you small by folding the world down into rooms that fit your assigned use.
Thank fuck for Leah.
She had a way of peeling me open without me realizing it, of slipping past the lacquer Viktor had painted over me. She dared me to steal moments with a run through the courtyard when no one was watching or a secret word whispered into my ear.
“Life’s still in you,” she’d murmur, grinning like she’d caught me. “I can see it. Don’t hide from me.”
And somehow, I didn’t. With her, I found myself speaking again, not the neat little responses Viktor demanded but real words, messy and spilling. She listened to every one, nodding, laughing, sometimes scowling if I said something too naive, too trusting. She wasn’t my first audience, but in her eyes I began to believe that I was more than Viktor’s Doll.
Leah taught me how to curse, how to roll my eyes without being caught, how to bite my tongue until it bled rather than let Viktor see me cry. She taught me that survival wasn’t just stillness; sometimes it was mischief, sometimes it was knowing which corners of the estate held shadows deep enough to disappear in. She made me reckless in tiny ways that didn’t seem to matter at the time, but each one was a crack in Viktor’s porcelain shell.
She was teaching me how to know myself.
She’d drag me by the wrist down forbidden hallways, laughing as we ran barefoot across rugs worth more than we’d ever be paid for, daring me to touch the velvet curtains or steal a sip of Viktor’s brandy when no one was watching. The burn of it nearly made me choke, but she only threw her head back and howled, her arm looped around my shoulders until I laughed with her, coughing into her sleeve.
We learned which servants turned a blind eye and which ones scurried to tattle. We learned that the chandeliers swayed if you tugged the ropes just right, casting the parlor in a dizzy rain of light—“A little bit of magic in hell. Would you look at that? That’s something, Arden. That’s really something. You gotta hold onto shit like that, especially in a dark place like this”—until the maids shrieked and we bolted, breathless, down the marble steps.
Once, we slipped into the courtyard at dawn, long before Viktor’s men arrived, and we swung wooden practice blades until our arms shook, both of us pretending we were the ones who got to fight instead of be polished and displayed. Leah clutched her stomach,laughing so hard she almost toppled, when I tried to mimic one of the boys’ stances and nearly tripped over my own foot.
There were smaller rebellions, too, like the stolen pastries we ate crouched in the laundry, sugar dusting our lips as if innocence could be sweetened back into us, or the time Leah dared me to curse Viktor’s name under my breath, her grin spreading when I did it louder than I meant to. We hid our laughter in our hands like it was a prayer, and for a few wild moments, I felt broken in a fixable way.
Of course, we were caught more than once. A cuff to the ear, an extra round of scrubbing, sometimes worse. But even punishment felt different with Leah at my side; her wide smile and whispered“worth it”made every bruise into a badge, every aching muscle into a reminder that I was alive, not just Viktor’s Doll.
It was livable. Leah made life livable.
My fifteenth year flew by thanks to her. I always dreaded nine p.m., but the rest of my day was mine to own. Sixteen didn’t feel that much different. I did notice that Leah lost a little bit of luster, her smile never quite reaching her eyes, but I didn’t think much of it.No one’s smile was bright in Viktor’s estate. She wasn’t waning; she was fitting. I knew that intimately, and our relationship became more balanced. Leah couldn’t do all the heavy lifting. I had a part to play in the ways of hope, and that meant showing Leah that I took her words to heart. When I wasn’t Viktor’s Doll, I was Arden, the best I could be. For Leah. I left my hair unbraided until eight-fifteen p.m., wearing it long and in thick messy, brown curls. I stopped wearing makeup until the same time, letting myself look as ragged and tired as I wanted. I slouched when I ate my ration of soup, and I stole books from Viktor’s library so Leah could teach me how to read.
That was when she began to tell me pieces of herself. The more open I became, so was she. It presented me with a different reflection. Not the soulless, dark eyes of Rafe Creed, but the pretty blue, sparking eyes of Leah Hollis. Leah was the sun; Rafe was the night. I couldn’t help but compare them, because everyone else at the estate faded into the background when they were around. Even when Rafe was sold for another year—“They tripled their bid this time, my Doll. Imagine the jewels I can dress you in”—his presence loomed overthe boys of the house. They all aimed to claim the space Rafe Creed claimed, because they didn’t know he was saving them from a hell far worse than death. So while everyone looked to Rafe, I looked to Leah.
She’d grown up with oil on her fingers and wrenches heavier than her wrists. Her parents, she told me, had worked on cars, real cars, not the kind Viktor kept under tarps like trophies, but the kind people actually drove until the engines coughed and died. She said the sound of a socket wrench clicking still made her think of home. I couldn’t picture her as a little girl in grease-stained overalls, hair tied back with a rag, but I wanted to. I wanted to imagine Leah somewhere else, laughing in daylight, climbing under a hood and making something come alive again.
One night, after the estate had quieted and Viktor’s footsteps had faded down the hall, she tugged me out of bed with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered. “If you’re going to live, Arden, really live, then you have to see this.”
We slipped down staircases and past locked doors until the air changed, cooler, tinged with gasoline and leather polish. Viktor’s garage was another worldentirely. There were rows of gleaming cars. Metal and glass, chrome that caught the dim bulbs overhead, wheels so spotless they might never have touched a road. My breath caught.
Leah crouched beside a black coupe, pulling a hairpin from her braid with a flourish.“Watch closely, Arden. One day, this could be a weapon to get us out of here,” she said, and then she showed me. How to strip the column on the driver’s side bare and twist the right wires together. How to listen for the low hum, the spark that meant you’d stolen life itself back from the machine. I watched her hands work with a reverence, and when the engine rumbled awake, low and growling, I pressed my palm to the leather wheel and felt a thrill rise through me so sharp it hurt.
