Chapter 2 Leora
LEORA
The mud of the Lowtown market is thick enough to swallow sound. It clings to my shins, a heavy, freezing paste mixed with the refuse of the city and the relentless drizzle that falls from Lliandor’s slate-grey sky.
I do not look at the faces of the men walking past the auction block. I look at their hands.
Hands are the only truth in this world. A mouth can lie, spilling sweet promises or feigned indifference, but a hand will always tell you what comes next.
I watch a merchant with swollen, red knuckles grip his coin purse too tightly—he is angry, likely to strike out of frustration.
I watch a guard with calloused palms rest his thumb on the pommel of his blade—he is bored, dangerous in his idleness.
My own hands are hidden in the tattered folds of my sleeves. I grip the loose thread on the left cuff, winding it around my index finger until the circulation cuts off, until the tip turns purple and throbs. The pain is a small, sharp anchor. It keeps me here.
If I let go of the thread, I might drown.
The air in the market is not just cold; it is crowded.
Not with bodies, though we are packed tight enough to smell the unwashed wool and sour sweat of the line, but with feeling.
The terror of the girl standing to my left bleeds into the air like smoke.
It tastes of copper and bile. It presses against my temples, a heaviness that tries to pry open my skull and pour her panic into me.
Close the door, I tell myself. Build the wall.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a heartbeat, visualizing a fortress of gray stone, thick and impenetrable.
The power—though I do not have a name for it, only a curse—surges in response, a frantic tide rising to meet the pressure.
It takes every ounce of my meager strength to keep the barrier intact, to keep their screaming emotions from becoming my own.
I exhale a shaky breath, the air misting before my face. I am so tired. The exhaustion goes deeper than the hunger gnawing at my belly or the ache in my bones from sleeping on the damp earth of the holding pen. It is a spiritual fatigue, a fraying of the soul.
"Straighten up, refuse," the slaver growls.
I snap my eyes open. I don’t look at his face. I look at his hand. He holds a crop, the leather braided and stained dark. His grip tightens. The leather sings through the air.
I don’t flinch. I learned long ago that flinching only excites them. It confirms the power dynamic. Instead, I shift my weight imperceptibly, bracing my core. The crop lands across my shoulder, a line of fire that sears through the thin fabric of my tunic.
I bite my lower lip, my teeth finding the scar tissue there, a familiar groove worn smooth by years of silence. I do not cry out. I do not give him the satisfaction of a whimper. I simply stare at a puddle near his boot, watching the raindrops create concentric circles that ripple and die.
"Useless," the slaver spits, moving down the line to terrorize a weeping boy.
The pain in my shoulder is sharp, clarifying. It helps push back the suffocating cloud of the other slaves' fear. For a moment, there is only the sting and the rain.
Suddenly, the atmosphere shifts.
It isn't a sound. The clamor of the market—the shouting vendors, the braying of beast-mounts, the ring of iron—doesn't stop, but it changes quality. It becomes brittle. Strained.
The air pressure drops, triggering a warning prickle on my neck. The emotions pressing against my mental walls shift from the chaotic noise of general misery to a unified, suffocating frequency of dread.
Someone is coming. Someone who drinks the light from the air.
The crowd parts. It is not a respectful shuffling aside; it is a frantic scramble, bodies pressing into the mud to clear a wide path.
A black carriage has stopped at the edge of the square, the lacquered wood gleaming like a beetle’s carapace. But it is the figure striding toward us that commands the silence.
He is tall, towering over the humans and lesser elves alike.
His skin is the color of burnt charcoal, smooth and flawless, absorbing the dim lantern light rather than reflecting it.
He wears robes of crushed velvet the color of dried blood, embroidered with silver threads that seem to writhe like living things as he moves.
A Dark Elf. Not just any Dark Elf. A Khuzuth. A high lord.
I watch his hands. They are pale inside his gloves, long-fingered and elegant. He does not wear weapons. He does not need to. The air around him warps, heavy with the scent of something sweet and rotting—like lilies left on a grave for too long.
He stops ten paces from the line. A warrior in heavy armor stands behind him, her hand on her sword, but the Lord ignores her. He ignores everyone. His violet eyes, glowing with a predatory luminescence, sweep over us.
He is not looking for labor. He is not looking for a bedwarmer. The way his gaze dissects us is clinical, cold. He is looking for ingredients.
He steps closer. The girl beside me begins to shake so violently her teeth rattle. I feel her terror spike, a high-pitched scream in my mind that threatens to shatter my concentration.
Stop it, I beg her silently. Don't let him see.
The Lord stops in front of her. He tilts his head, a smooth, reptilian motion. He lifts a hand, one finger extended, and the girl collapses into the mud, sobbing, begging for mercy before he has even spoken.
He sighs. It is a soft sound, but in the silence, it carries like a gunshot. "Banal."
He moves on. He passes the strong men, the beautiful women. He dismisses them with a flicker of his eyes. He is hunting for something specific, and he hasn't found it.
He stops in front of me.
My heart does not hammer; it seizes, a trapped bird dashing itself against the cage of my ribs. The air in my lungs turns to solid ice.
He is close enough that I can smell him. Beneath the scent of rain and mud, he smells of expensive wine and that cloying, suffocating incense. It makes my stomach turn.
I should look down. Survival dictates that I look at his boots, that I hunch my shoulders and present myself as harmless, broken things. That is what Rina taught me. Be invisible, Leora. Be dust.
But I cannot.
The pressure in my head is building, the dam straining against the flood of his presence. He feels… hollow. That is the only word for it. Beneath the terrifying power, beneath the arrogance, there is a gaping, starving void in this man that sucks the energy out of the air. It pulls at me.
I lift my chin.
My dark hair, heavy with rain and tangled from days of neglect, falls away from my face. I look up. Past the velvet collar, past the sharp, cruel line of his jaw.
I look directly into his eyes.
They are violet, the color of a bruise, framed by lashes so pale they look like frost. There is no warmth in them, only an abyssal depth of calculation.
He blinks, surprised. Most humans would have averted their gaze or dissolved into puddles of fear by now. He expects it. He feeds on it.
I grit my teeth, my jaw locking. I will not give it to him. I have nothing left—no family, no home, no name that matters to anyone but me. I have my mind, and I have this small, jagged shard of defiance.
I see you, I think, projecting the thought with all the force of my hidden nature. You are just a monster. And I have seen monsters before.
Something flickers in his expression. His eyes narrow. He steps closer, invading my space, his height making me feel small and fragile. My body betrays me—my knees tremble, my breath hitches—but I force my eyes to stay locked on his.
He studies me. He looks at the hollowness of my cheeks, the lattice of scars visible at the neckline of my tunic, the way my hands are clenched into fists at my sides. He sees the fear, yes. But he sees that I am holding it back.
He smiles. It is not a nice smile. It is the expression of a man who has found a rare vintage in a cellar of vinegar.
"This one," he says. His voice is a low vibration that I feel in the soles of my feet.
The slaver scrambles forward, bowing so low his nose nearly touches the muck. "My Lord! A scrawny thing, that one. Won’t last a week in the mines. I have stronger—"
"I did not ask for your opinion on livestock," the Lord says, never breaking eye contact with me. "I said, I will take this one."
"Of course, my Lord. Of course." The slaver fumbles with the keys at his belt. "A fair price—"
"Send the bill to the House of Imas," the Lord says, dismissing the matter of coin as beneath him. "Unchain her."
The shackles are undone. My wrists feel floaty and strange without the weight of the iron. I rub the raw skin, my eyes still wary.
"Come," Lord Imas commands. He turns his back on me, assuming I will follow. Assuming he already owns me.
I hesitate. The guard, the woman in armor, steps forward, her hand reaching for my shoulder to shove me.
"No," Imas says, halting her with a single word. He turns back, extending his hand toward me. The palm is open, the leather glove removed. His skin is pale charcoal, the nails manicured and sharp. On his index finger, a heavy ring of black stone absorbs the light.
"Give me your hand, little defiant thing," he purrs.
It is a test. He needs to see if I will recoil.
I look at his hand. It is a weapon. It is the instrument of my future pain. But to refuse is death.
I reach out. My skin is pale, dirt-streaked, my fingers bony and trembling. I place my hand in his.
The moment our skin connects, the world tilts on its axis.
It is not a spark. It is not heat. It feels like plunging my hand into a bucket of freezing sludge. A sensation of absolute, visceral wrongness shoots up my arm, racing through my veins like poison. It makes my teeth ache. It makes the bile rise in my throat.
The ring on his finger pulses—a cold, dead heartbeat against my palm.
My breath catches in a sharp hiss. My pupils blow wide, the sapphire blue swallowed by black as my instinct screams at me to run, to hide, to get away from this void in the shape of a man.
Imas freezes. His fingers tighten around mine, crushing the bones together. He feels it too. He looks down at our joined hands, his brow furrowing, the arrogant mask slipping for a fraction of a second. He studies me, and for the first time, there is something other than hunger in his violet eyes.
Confusion.
"What are you?" he whispers, the words meant only for himself.
He pulls me forward, jerking me off balance so I stumble against his chest. The velvet is soft, but the body beneath it is hard as granite. He doesn't wait for an answer. He sweeps me toward the black carriage, pulling me into the dark.