Not casually. Not just interest. Intent.
The beast rises.
Not slowly. Not the gradual simmer I've learned to manage. This is sudden, violent, a surge of rage that turns my vision gold at the edges. My hands are on the armrests and the wood is creaking and I am halfway out of my seat before I realize I've moved.
She could choose him. The rules say she can. He's closer to her size. Closer to normal. She could look at that scaled face and those sharp teeth and she could decide that's what she wants.
Mine. The word fills my skull like a war drum. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Maren catches my eye across the room. Across the chaos and the noise and the bodies between us. She finds me in the back row, the same way she found me in the ditch, in the square at Gorvani. In the dark.
She shakes her head. Small. Firm.
Stay.
I breathe.
The gold at the edges flickers. Dims. The beast is still there, still snarling, but it's leashed. Controlled.
Because she asked.
The Vashar raises his hand. “Five hundred.”
The auctioneer looks pleased. “Five hundred from the Vashar lord. Do I hear five fifty?”
“One thousand.”
My voice. Deep, rough, the kind of sound that makes people flinch. Loud enough to carry across the hall. Heads turn. The Vashar looks back at me, and I watch him register what I am. What's living inside me.
His scaled face goes thoughtful rather than frightened. He's calculating. Weighing options.
“Eleven hundred,” the Vashar says. Calm. Confident. Looking at Maren, not at me.
The beast roars.
“Two thousand.”
The hall goes quiet. The auctioneer stares. Gasps from somewhere in the crowd. The Vashar's nostrils flare and he looks at me, then at Maren, then at the cloak knotted at her waist that's clearly not hers, at the barely contained violence in my eyes, at the way my hands are gripping the chair so hard the wood is splintering.
He sits down.
“Two thousand going once.” The auctioneer's voice is controlled but her eyes are wide. “Going twice. Bidding closed.” She turns to Maren. “The choice is yours. You may select any bidder regardless of final amount. Take your time.”
I can't breathe.
Maren looks around the room. At the faces of the men who bid on her. At the Vashar, who meets her gaze with a polite nod. At the merchants. At the others.
Then she looks at me.
“I choose Kovren.” No hesitation. No waver. “Permanently.”
Permanently.
I'm up the steps in two strides. My hands frame her face, my thumbs resting against her cheekbones. She has to tilt her head back to look at me, and I have to bend almost double to reach her but I don't care, I don't care about any of it, about the crowd or the auctioneer or the Vashar or the hall or the world outside this platform.
“Chosen,” I say. My voice is wrecked. “You chose me.”
“I wasalwaysgoing to choose you.” She covers my hands with hers. “Now let's go stand in front of that stone.”
