The scent of the slave hall clung to the lungs like smoke. Damp stone, sweat, old incense, and blood that no cleaning spell could scrub out. Beneath the velvet curtains and golden sconces, the place still reeked of what it truly was—a market of flesh.
Eira stood still beneath the heat of arcane lights, barely clothed, her wrists bound in red silk ribbon. Decorative, not secure. The symbolism was clear—she was no longer a person, just a gift waiting to be unwrapped.
She didn't move. Didn't shift. Didn't even blink as the guards shoved the next girl forward, her sobs muffled by a gag, her legs barely supporting her weight.
Eira said nothing. Her pulse was steady. Her skin, pale beneath the grime and chill, glowed faintly under the unnatural lighting. Silver hair hung down her back in loose tangles, strands clinging to her damp shoulders. Her eyes—stormy gray, cold and unreadable—watched the gilded curtain at the far end of the chamber.
She knew who would come through it. They all did.
"Lot Twenty-One," came the auctioneer's voice from behind the curtain. "Seventeen. Borderborn. No education, no training. Possibly noble blood, possibly cursed. Unbroken."
Unbroken.
It was said like a flaw. A warning.
There was a beat of silence. Then murmurs.
"She's pretty."
"Too still. They drugged her?"
"No, look at her eyes. She's watching."
From beside her, one of the handlers muttered, "She hasn't made a sound since the cage. Don't like it."
Eira didn't react.
She wasn't drugged. She wasn't frozen in fear. She was listening.
Her knees ached from standing. Her shift was barely enough to call a garment, sheer and short, clinging to her thighs. Her feet were bare. She felt the stone floor's chill in her bones. But none of it mattered. The heat in her chest—coiled like a snake behind her ribs—was worse.
The curtain pulled back.
Silence fell like a blade.
She entered.
Lady Seraphine Valdryssia.
She didn't walk. She drifted, as if gravity bent to her whim. A gown of onyx velvet hugged her tall frame, the bodice stitched with silver threads in the shape of thorned roses. Her gloves were black leather, elegant and tight. A silver choker gleamed at her throat like a mark of power. Her auburn hair was swept up into a flawless twist, not a single strand out of place.
And her eyes—
Red. Blood-red. Not the ruby of fine wine or painted lips, but the shade of a fresh wound. Deep, narrow, and cold. Eyes that saw everything and felt nothing.
She moved along the line of bound slaves without stopping. The other girls shivered. Some turned away, some whimpered, one pissed herself. Eira simply stood still.
When those eyes landed on her, Eira felt nothing. Not fear. Not hope.
Only recognition.
She knew this woman.
She didn't know how, or from where, but her body remembered before her mind could place it. A scent, a sound, a dream, maybe. Like stormlight on water. Like blood in snow.
The auctioneer tried to fill the silence. "Lot Twenty-One, my lady. A recent acquisition from the Raevan border. We believe she's untrained, but docile. There's speculation about her heritage—some say...."
"Sold," Seraphine said.
The word dropped like ice into the room. Sharp. Final.
"Y-you haven't heard the bidding price..."
"I said, sold."
No one objected.
The handlers moved quickly. One approached with a black collar—obsidian-steel laced with silver runes. It pulsed faintly with bound magic.
The silk ribbon around Eira's wrists was sliced away. Her skin stung where it had bitten in. Then the collar came, snapping around her neck with a metallic click, followed by a surge of cold that sank beneath her skin and settled into her bones.
Her breath caught.
It wasn't painful—but it felt like claiming. A piece of her, now linked to something else.
To her.
Seraphine stepped forward, gloved fingers holding the end of a chain leash attached to the collar. It was a short chain. Just long enough to pull.
Her voice, when it came, was soft.
"Come."
Eira didn't move.
Not out of rebellion—her body simply needed a moment. The room shifted, her balance swayed, her ears rang with the sudden quiet that followed that word.
The chain snapped tight. Not harsh, but unmistakable.
Her bare feet shuffled forward two steps.
Seraphine tilted her head slightly, as if evaluating an object in a shop window. Her lips curled—not into a smile, but something colder. A faint smirk. Amused.
"Pretty little thing," she murmured, just loud enough for Eira to hear. "I wonder how long you'll last."
Their eyes met.
For the first time, Eira looked directly into the red.
She didn't bow. Didn't flinch. She simply stood there, held in place by the collar, the leash, and something invisible that crackled between them like the pause before thunder.
Behind her, a different girl collapsed to her knees, weeping.
The hall was still, except for the flicker of torchlight and the tightening grip on the chain between them.
Eira said nothing.
But inside her chest, the heat flared again—brighter, sharper.
Not fear.
Not even anger.
Recognition.
She knew this woman.
And Seraphine, it seemed, had begun to realize she did not purchase another whimpering pet.
She had purchased a thorn.