Braith
The platform lights burn my retinas after the dim waiting room. The crowd smells wrong—sulfur and metal and something rotting-sweet. Not human. There seem to be so few humans these days. Most of them aren't even pretending to be.
I count buyers while the auctioneer drones about my stats. Forty-three visible. Maybe more in shadows. The tentacled thing in front drips something viscous. The mercury-puddle shifts constantly between shapes. The one that chimes has too many joints in all the wrong places.
Then him. Back corner, half in shadow despite the moss-lights crawling across the ceiling. Seven feet at least. Black armor that eats light. He's gone completely still, but it's the stillness of something about to snap.
A Vethani lord. I’ve heard about them. Glimpsed them on the battlefield, from a distance. The rumors called them Pain Hunters. Things of nightmares.
Interesting.
I press my thumbnail into my palm. The sharp edge breaks skin easily—I keep them filed for this purpose. Blood wells. The pain sends heat shooting through my nervous system, not the clean simplicity I expected, but something deeper. Something that makes my breath catch and my pulse quicken.
I press harder. New spot. More blood.
The tentacled thing withdraws slightly. Damaged goods are worth less.
But the giant in the corner? He leans forward. Just an inch. His eyes burn brighter—amber sliding toward gold. He's staring at my hand. At the blood.
Hungry. He looks hungry.
“Five hundred credits,” someone bids.
“Five thousand.” His voice carries across the entire hall. Deep enough to feel in my bones.
The crowd shifts. The other non-humans pull back from him, even the ones nowhere near him. They're afraid. No—wary. Like when you realize the dog you're petting might be rabid.
Numbers keep climbing. Eight. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
He stops bidding at five thousand.
But the Vethani is the only one still looking at me instead of calculating profit margins. The others see merchandise. He sees something else.
I don't know what he sees. But when our eyes meet, something in my chest recognizes something in his. Like calling to like. Monster to monster.
“I choose him.”
The auctioneer stutters. “You're choosing five thousand over twenty?”
“Yes.”
The smart choice would be the twenty-thousand bidder. A fortune that could buy a life of quiet comfort. But quiet comfort was the one thing I couldn't stand, not anymore. I didn't come here for smart choices.
And something about him—the hunger in his eyes, the way he watched me bleed, the promise of pain in his massive frame—says he can give me what I need.
Settlement room three is cramped. He takes up most of it just sitting down. This close, he smells like winter and iron and danger. My pulse quickens despite my exhaustion.
“Why?” One word. No preamble.
I show him my palm. The crescents are already clotting, but the intention is clear.
“You look like someone who understands necessity.”
We don't talk about what kind of necessity. We don't need to. He dismisses his own guards with a curt nod, sending them back through their own transport.
The paperwork is quick. Transport circle three is quicker. The moment I step into the circle with him, pressure compresses us together. I'm crushed against his chest, his arm around me to keep me stable.
He's hard. His erection is a thick, rigid length against his thigh, the heavy leather doing little to conceal its scale.
I should be afraid. Or disgusted. Or something other than curious.
Instead, I turn my face into his chest and breathe. He smells like the moment before flint strikes steel. Like blood frozen under snow.
His arm tightens. His other hand comes to the back of my head, fingers spanning from ear to ear. He's shaking. Just slightly. The kind of tremor that comes from holding back.
Reality folds. My stomach tries to exist in six dimensions at once.
Then we're through.
The courtyard is black stone under three moons. The architecture hurts to look at—stairs that loop back on themselves, doorways that open onto nothing, angles that shouldn't exist.
As my vision clears, a tall man in practical, unadorned armor detaches himself from the shadows to give a crisp nod.
“My Lord. An unexpected return,” the man says, his voice a low gravel.
“A change of plans, Captain,” Kiakoa says, his voice tight. He doesn't look at the captain, or at me. He's already turning away, the soldier following.
He releases me immediately. Steps back so fast he almost trips.
“Scratch will show you to your quarters.”
Then he's gone, ducking through a doorway that seems too small for his frame.
“Forty-nine years, seventy-one days, five hours and sixteen minutes.”
I jump. A demon materializes from nowhere. Why should I be surprised at anything now?
Six eyes blink in sequence. He was an insectoid creature, his body long and segmented like a centipede's, but held upright.
Multiple spindly limbs were folded neatly against his torso.
His six eyes, arranged in a tight cluster, gave him an unnervingly wide field of vision, and when he spoke, his voice was a dry, rasping chitter.
“And now I have to escort a human. A damaged human. Or mostly human, if my nose works. Wonderful.”
I follow him through passages that don't maintain consistent geometry. Sometimes the ceiling is twenty feet high. Sometimes I have to duck. The cold gets worse with each step until my breath fogs.
“This is considered the guest wing,” Scratch says, opening a door. “Though 'guest' implies you might leave.”
The room is sized for something the lord's height. The bed is four feet off the ground. The bathtub could hold three of me. Everything is polished obsidian that seems to drink the light, with silver fixtures that look designed for claws, not fingers.
“Food arrives when it arrives,” Scratch says. “Don't touch anything that glows. Don't open doors that weren't there before. Don't follow voices that sound familiar. And the guards know better than to patrol the upper floors during feeding times. A courtesy you'll come to appreciate.”
“What about—”
“Forty-nine years, seventy-one days, five hours and thirteen minutes until my service ends.” He's already leaving. “Try not to die before morning. The paperwork is tedious.”
The door closes.
Silence. Complete. No sound from outside, no wind, nothing. Like the room exists separate from everything else.
I sit on the floor. The bed is too high, too much effort. The stone is cold through my dress but solid. Real. I dig my nails into my forearm. New spots. Fresh pain. The blood wells dark in the strange light that comes from nowhere specific.
It's not enough. It's never enough.
But maybe here, in this wrong place with this wrong creature, I'll find what is.