Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
The monsters arrived in silk.
They came in private shuttles and armored transports, in vessels that gleamed with the profits of human misery.
They came with retinues of bodyguards and attendants and acquisitions displayed like jewelry — living beings in collars, walking two steps behind their owners with the rehearsed blankness of people who had learned that expression was punishable.
They came bearing gifts: rare spirits, exotic weapons, data chips containing intelligence worth more than planets. They came smiling.
Skarreth greeted each one at the entrance to his estate with his hand extended and his fangs displayed in the approximation of warmth that had taken him three years to perfect.
Lord Maeven, whose breeding operations on Tanaris IV processed six hundred beings a year.
Commander Draya Solke, retired military, who now ran supply chains through the Kael-Voss corridor with the logistical precision of her former career.
The Ghannet Twins, whose faces were identical and whose cruelty was competitive — each trying to outdo the other in creative degradation, a sibling rivalry written in scars across their property's skin.
Tarek Mohn, quiet and grandfatherly and responsible for the death of every slave who'd ever tried to escape his compound, their bodies left at the gates as advertisement.
And Rheth Voss, arriving last because Voss understood theater, stepping from his shuttle in a suit that cost more than Skarreth's entire cover operation, his smile so warm and genuine that you'd trust him with your life right until the moment he sold it.
"Skarreth." Voss clasped his hand with both of his. The grip lingered a beat too long — a display of dominance dressed as affection. "Your estate is more beautiful every year. You really must share the name of your groundskeeper."
"I keep replacing them. They never quite meet my standards."
Voss laughed. The sound carried across the entrance hall, and three of his attendants flinched at the edges of the room. The flinch was invisible to everyone except Skarreth, who cataloged it as he cataloged everything: another data point, another wound he could not yet heal.
"Come," Skarreth said. "The others are already settled. Dinner is about to be served."
The dining hall blazed with light. Skarreth had designed the table arrangement himself — a long obsidian surface that reflected the chandelier overhead like a dark mirror, seating for sixteen, each place set with crystal and silver and the understated luxury that communicated wealth without vulgarity.
The room said: I am richer than you, but I am too refined to mention it.
The slavers appreciated this. They were, in their own estimation, refined people.
Cultured people. People of taste who happened to trade in flesh.
He took his seat at the head of the table and raised his glass.
"To another prosperous year."
Sixteen glasses rose. Sixteen mouths echoed the toast. The liquid was a seventy-year Meridian vintage that tasted of smoke and stone and had been aged in barrels made from trees that no longer existed. It cost more per bottle than most laborers earned in a decade. He drank and tasted nothing.
The conversation flowed with practiced ease — market fluctuations, territorial disputes, the inconvenience of increased Free Worlds patrols along the Tanaris border.
Skarreth navigated each exchange with the fluidity of long practice, offering intelligence sparingly, receiving it greedily, laughing at the right moments.
Maeven told a joke about a shipment of humans that had been mislabeled as livestock.
The punchline involved customs fees. The table roared.
Skarreth's lips split over his fangs in what passed for amusement, and the sound that emerged from his throat was indistinguishable from genuine laughter.
Seven years.
He'd been doing this for seven years. Nearly three thousand days of swallowing knives.
Of smiling while people discussed breeding programs and break-in techniques and the optimal caloric intake for maintaining a slave's working capacity without giving them enough energy to run.
Of raising glasses to prosperity that was calculated in bodies.
Of being so convincing that Voss — who trusted no one, whose instincts had never failed him — still invited him to the inner circle, still shared intelligence, still considered him an ally.
Eight hundred and twenty-three freed. The number sat behind his sternum like a coal. Some nights it burned warm enough to justify this. Tonight it was ash.
Commander Solke leaned across the table, her silver hair catching the light. "I heard you acquired something interesting recently, Skarreth. A human woman. An artist." Her eyes glinted with professional curiosity. "Unusual choice for you. Your taste usually runs more... functional."
"Diversifying my portfolio." He swirled his wine. "She has a particular talent that I find useful."
"What talent could a human artist possibly—"
"She paints the truth." He said it with cold amusement, as if discussing a parlor trick. "Show her a face and she'll strip it bare on canvas. Every secret, every lie, every hidden motive rendered in oil paint. I find it... entertaining."
The table processed this with varying degrees of interest. Maeven's eyes narrowed — a man with many secrets assessing the threat.
Voss smiled like a man who'd been handed a new piece in a game he was already winning.
The Ghannet Twins exchanged a glance that communicated volumes in their private, wordless language.
"Bring her out," Voss said. It wasn’t a request.
Octavia stood behind his chair in a dress of deep burgundy that Nadir had selected — fine enough to signal her value, modest enough to deflect attention from her body. Her locs were pulled back with a silk tie. Her hands were clasped in front of her. Her eyes were down.
Everything he'd ordered.
The sight cracked something in his chest that he'd thought was already broken.
She was diminished by design — his design — sculpted into the shape of compliance by his specific instructions.
Eyes down. Silent. Obedient. He'd spoken those words in his operative's voice, the one scrubbed of warmth, and she'd absorbed them with a flat expression. She’d heard similar instructions before.
From the auction block. From the slavers who'd transported her.
From a universe that kept telling her she was property.
And now from the man who'd held her in the dark and felt her heartbeat against his chest and thought, for one unforgivable moment, that he could have this. Could have her.
She breathed behind him — shallow, controlled, managing her fear through technique.
He could hear her pulse. Elevated but steady.
A rhythm she was regulating through will alone.
His beast clawed at his ribs, surging toward the surface with a protective fury that had nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with the fact that she was standing in a room full of predators and he had put her there.
The portrait sat on a display easel at the far end of the room — the monster portrait, the commissioned one.
Technically masterful. Brutally honest. His guests had examined it during the reception with murmurs of appreciation.
Maeven had commented on the brushwork. Voss had stood before it for a long time, head tilted, saying nothing.
The painting showed exactly what the room expected to see: Lord Skarreth, nightmare aristocrat, rendered in shadow and menace by the trembling hand of his latest acquisition.
She had painted it with vicious skill, and every stroke was a lie they both understood.
"She's exquisite."
Voss's voice cut through the table conversation like a wire through flesh.
He was looking at Octavia with the appraising gaze of evaluating merchandise for a living — not with lust, which would have been simpler to counter, but with interest. The same interest Voss directed at assets he intended to acquire.
"Remarkable bone structure. And that composure." Voss sipped his wine, eyes still on her. "Most humans in a room full of us would be shaking. She's perfectly still. You've trained her well, Skarreth."
I didn't train her. She's standing still because she's braver than everyone at this table combined, including me.
"She's adequate."
"More than adequate, I'd say." Voss set down his glass.
"I have a proposal. The evening's entertainment has been.
.. traditional. Predictable. But an artist who paints the truth?
" His smile widened, warm and lethal. "Put her to work.
Let her paint a few of us. Live portraits for the guests, one at a time.
It would be quite the spectacle — watching her strip us bare on canvas.
" He turned that smile on Octavia. "Unless you'd prefer we find other ways to share her talents for the evening. "
The table went quiet.
Not the comfortable quiet of agreement. The held-breath quiet of people who recognized the edge of a blade and were calculating which side they'd fall on.
The Ghannet Twins stopped eating simultaneously.
Solke's hand paused on her glass. Even Maeven, who feared nothing in the known systems, went still.
The silence lasted three seconds.
Skarreth set his wine down. The crystal met the table with a sound like a bone cracking.