My legs nearly buckle. The only thing keeping me upright is the handler's iron grip on my arm and the absolute certainty that if I fall, they'll drag me up and make an example of weakness.
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
The voice slices through the noise like a blade through silk. The Auction Mistress stands on a raised platform to my left, beautiful the way a knife is beautiful: all sharp edges wrapped in jeweled silk. Her crimson lips curve in a smile that promises cruelty.
"Tonight, the crown offers a special tribute to maintain our precious peace." She gestures to me like I'm a prized mare. "A witch bride—a scapegoat for her village's failed harvest, generously donated to soothe the tempers of our...guardiansbeyond the Blackwood."
Laughter ripples through the crowd, cruel and delighted.
Something hits my shoulder. Soft. Wet. Rotten fruit, bursting against bare skin.
I keep my face blank. I've had worse thrown at me. Stones. Fists. Words that cut deeper than either.
Breathe. Count. Find the exits.
There are none.
There never are.
The bidding startslike a feeding frenzy.
"Fifty silver!" A slurring voice from the lower tiers—some minor lord with wine-flushed cheeks and too much coin.
"Seventy-five!" Another voice, this one oiled and smooth as a merchant's lie.
I scan the crowd without moving my head. Predators, all of them. Polished boots and perfumed silk and eyes that strip me down to meat and potential.
Then I seehim.
Lower tier, third row. A man in dark clothes, perfectly still while chaos swirls around him. His posture is relaxed, his smile calm and controlled, but his eyes...
Oh gods, his eyes.
They're fixed on me with the certainty of someone who's already decided I belong to him. Not in the heated, drunken way of the other bidders. Colder. More patient.
More dangerous.
A Crown Inquisitor. I'd stake my life on it.
If I still had a life to stake.
"Two hundred silver!" someone shouts, standing now, desperate to be noticed.
The Auction Mistress laughs, delighted. "My, my! Such enthusiasm for our little—"
She stops.
The crowd stops.
Even the air seems to stop, held hostage in collective lungs.
Something's changed. The noise doesn't fade so much asretreat, like the whole amphitheater has become prey and just scented the predator.
I feel it before I see it. A pressure in the air, heavy and primal. The temperature drops.
Then the scent: iron and pine, woodsmoke and something wilder, something that makes the small animal part of my brain shriekrun run RUN.
I can't run.
