The horror isn’t immediate. It’s a slow, creeping invasion. It starts in my arm—a sudden, blooming heat that feels like molten lead racing toward my heart. It hits my chest, and for a second, I can’t breathe. My lungs feel like they’ve been filled with warm, heavy velvet.
Then, the world begins to dissolve.
The sharp edges of the room—the marble, the gold, the blood-red walls—start to melt into one another like a watercolour painting left in the rain. The rage in my chest, that hot, beautiful fire that waskeeping me alive, is suddenly doused in a cold, oily syrup.
“That’s it,” Viktor murmurs, his face blurring into a soft-focus nightmare as he leans closer. “Let go, Wendy. The horse is out of the gate now.”
My knees buckle. The men don’t let me fall; they hold me up like a marionette with frayed strings. I try to lift my head, to spit in his face, but my neck feels like it’s made of water. My tongue is heavy, a useless piece of meat in my mouth.
It’s heroin. High-grade, lethal, and pure.
The terror is still there, buried deep under the chemical fog, but I can’t reach it. I’m watching my own kidnapping from the bottom of a dark, warm ocean. I feel the men dragging the silver duct tape across my mouth, the adhesive biting into my skin, but I can’t even wince. They wrap it around and around my head, sealing my screams into a tomb of plastic and glue.
“Beautiful,” Viktor’s voice echoes, sounding like it’s coming from miles away. “She looks like a doll. A perfect, silent doll.”
I feel them hoisting me up. My feet, in those four-inch heels, drag uselessly across the marble. The clicking sound is gone, replaced by the dull thrum of my own slowing heartbeat.
I’m being carried toward the door, toward the stage, toward a life where I’m nothing but a commodity. And as the darkness starts to pull at the edges of my vision, I think of the red ring on my finger.
Peter, I try to think, but the drug is too strong. The name dissolves into the amber haze.
Who is Peter?
Wendy
The world is made of slow-motion honey.
I am floating in a thick, amber soup where time has no edges. The ceiling of the hallway above me isn’t plaster and wood anymore; it’s a shifting river of liquid gold, dripping down into my eyes. My head is lolling against my chest, my neck a snapped lily stem. I can feel the silver duct tape stretched tight across my mouth—it’s the only thing holding my face together, a cold, plastic seal against a scream that has turned into a muffled, rhythmic hum in the back of my throat.
Thump. Thud. Thump.
The wheels of the platform beneath me vibrate through the soles of my heels, a mechanical heartbeat. I am being wheeled. I am a cart. I am a tray of meat.
Suddenly, the air changes. The quiet of the hallway is swallowed by a low, predatory roar—the sound of a hundred men talking in hushed, expensive tones. The scent of lilies is gone, replaced by the suffocating stenchof cigar smoke, aged scotch, and the sharp, ozone tang of high-end electronics.
Light hits me. Not the soft glow of the vanity, but a violent, industrial spotlight that burns through my eyelids.
I am pushed into the centre of a circular stage. Through the chemical haze of the heroin, I see them: a sea of silhouettes sitting in velvet-lined shadows. They aren’t wearing tuxedos; they are wearing ballistic masks—chrome, matte black, bone-white—hiding the faces of the men who run the world’s most broken corners. In front of each man is a sleek, glass-topped terminal, the keypads glowing with a soft, neon blue.
Behind me, a massive, floor-to-ceiling LED screen flickers to life. I don’t have to turn around to know what’s on it. I can see the reflection in the polished chrome masks of the front row.
LOT #402: THE FALLEN QUEEN
ORIGIN: The Hale Estate, Chicago
STATUS: Non-Virgin / Claimed & Re-Branded
MODIFICATIONS: Grade-A Internal Tracker (Active), Shoulder Brand (Fresh), Chemically Compliant (Heroin/H3).
SPECIAL NOTES: Widow of King Peter Hale. High psychological resilience. Trained in etiquette and subversion.
STARTING BID: $10,000,000
I feel hands on me—gloved, impersonal. They aren’t lifting me; they are hanging me. A massive, gold-gilded bird cage, the bars thick and cold, descends from the darkness of the rafters. They shove me inside.
My knees buckle, hitting the velvet floor of the cage, and the men in masks work with a terrifying, practiced speed. They grab the waistband of my black lace thong and rip. The sound of the lace snapping is a gunshot in the silence of the room.
They pull my legs apart, hooking my ankles into gold-plated stirrups welded to the bars. I am splayed open. Exposed. The red spotlight focuses, a hot, invasive eye staring directly at my core, highlighting the wetness, the bruising, and the dark, weeping brand on my shoulder.
