Something cracked in my chest. Small, barely there, like ice at the edge of a pond. I didn’t want it. I tried to freeze it solid again.
He walked to the auctioneer’s table, and the auctioneer went pale.
I couldn’t see what he placed on the table. Something that caught the light, prismatic, like a trapped piece of sky. The auctioneer made a sound I’d never heard a grown man make.
“The bid is... the bid is a Sky Jewel. Value assessed at eleven thousand, five hundred gold.”
Sorley’s face went purple. He half-rose from his seat, then stopped. Looked at me, then at the creature who’d outbid him, then back at me. I watched him calculate. Watched him decide I wasn’t worth dying for.
He sat down.
“The bid stands,” the auctioneer said again, like he was trying to convince himself. “The choice falls to the bride.”
I was supposed to walk to the winning bidder. That was the rule. The bride crosses the platform and places her hand in his, and the contract is sealed.
I knew the law for this auction house. The 30-day grace period. I could void the contract within a month…if I had the funds to repay the bid. I didn’t have two coppers to rub together, let alone hundreds of gold. The law was a shield for the wealthy, not for me.
The monster waited at the base of the stairs. Still as stone. Those amber eyes watched me, and I couldn’t read anything in them. Not hunger. Not cruelty. Not the smug satisfaction on Sorley’s face when he’d thought he’d won.
Nothing. Just focus. Just absolute, unbroken attention.
I looked back at Sorley. At the life waiting for me there. The calculations I’d already made: how long until he tired of me, how bad the years would be before he did, whether I could find a way to be useful enough that he’d keep me fed.
I looked at the monster.
He’d looked at my hands.
It meant nothing. It probably meant nothing. He probably collected scribes the way some men collected horses, appraising them by their working parts. The ink stains were just a sign of training, of value, of usefulness.
But no one had ever looked at my hands before.
I walked down the stairs. My legs were shaking. I kept walking.
Up close, he was even larger. I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. The amber had strange depths to it, like looking into a fire that burned in colors I didn’t have names for. His skin was bronze, and when I looked closely, I could see the faint suggestion of something beneath it. Like patterns waiting to emerge.
I held out my hand.
He took it.
His palm was hot. Not warm the way living things are warm. Hot. Fever-hot. I could feel his pulse through his skin, slower than mine, stronger, a drumbeat I felt in my own bones.
Something in his jaw tightened. A muscle, jumping. Like he was holding something back.
“I accept,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected.
“Yes.” One word. Low, deep, carefully controlled. “We leave now.”
I should have asked where. I should have asked what he wanted from me, what he expected, what kind of life I was walking into. A smart woman would negotiate. A brave woman would demand answers.
I just nodded.
He turned, keeping my hand in his, and led me through the crowd. People scattered from our path. No one looked directly at him. A few looked at me with something like pity.
I looked back once. My uncle stood at the edge of the market, his face a mask of fury and relief. Fury that his plan had failed. Relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with Sorley’s disappointment.
He didn’t look sorry.
I turned forward and didn’t look back again. If I thought about Elspeth alone in that house now, no one standing between her and our uncle’s attention, I wouldn’t be able to keep walking. With the income from my sale, he’d have no reason to bother her.
