Bought By the Scorpius (Monsters’ Bride Market #14)

Chapter One – Esme

Chapter One

Esme

It takes two hours to make a girl worth buying.

Darina slides the last pin into place while the light through the balcony doors turns orange.

“Stop frowning,” she says. “You’ll crack the powder.”

“Good. Maybe he won’t want me.”

She meets my eyes in the vanity mirror and doesn’t smile, which means I sound worse than I think I do.

I study myself instead, since that’s what two hundred people downstairs will be doing soon enough.

Red hair pinned high and threaded with thin, gold leaves, blue eyes, and rosy skin that shows everything.

Which is why I learned young to lie with my posture and keep my chin steady while my throat goes pink.

I’m thin and elegant, because I was raised to mind my weight and keep my curves discreet under good tailoring.

Every visible part of me is arranged to suggest breeding, wealth, and obedience.

The dress hangs on the stand by the wardrobe. It’s emerald green silk, chosen by my mother because green flatters my red hair.

“Arms up,” Darina says.

I stand and lift them, and she lowers the dress over my head with more care than the silk deserves. She works the small buttons up my spine with quick, warm fingers, humming under her breath. She only hums when she’s nervous for me and won’t say so.

“Have you ever seen him up close?” she asks. “Lord Wycliffe?”

“Across dinner tables, at Father’s political evenings.

” I hold still so she can reach the top buttons.

“He always sits near the most important men in the room and laughs half a second after they do. He’s older than Father by twenty years and richer by more, and when he looks at me, he takes his time. ”

“Maybe he’s kind,” she says.

“He’s influential. In this house, that’s considered the same thing.”

She finishes the last button, turns me around by the shoulders, and looks at me honestly, which nobody else in this house bothers to do.

“You look beautiful,” she says.

“I wish I didn’t.” I sigh. “I wish I were ugly, Darina. Properly ugly, the kind powder can’t fix. Ugly girls don’t get promised to old men with good connections.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them.

“It’s one evening. You’ll dance, you’ll drink something you’re not supposed to, and you’ll survive it. And maybe you talk to your parents. Tell them plainly that Wycliffe is a bad match. They want this family to look strong, and a miserable daughter doesn’t look strong.”

I huff out a bitter laugh.

“I’ve never convinced my parents of anything in twenty-two years. I couldn’t convince them to let me choose my own shoes. Mother picks those, too. Green tonight, to match the dress I also didn’t pick.”

“Then good luck anyway,” she says quietly.

She hugs me, careful of the pins, and I hold on until she laughs and pushes me toward the door. Then I go downstairs to be looked at.

The grand staircase curves down into the front hall in wide marble steps, and I’m three steps down when the hall below goes quiet.

There are two hundred guests tonight, give or take, and every face that matters in Concord turns up toward me.

I know how to do this part. I keep my chin level, my hand light on the rail, and my face set in the smile Mother taught me.

They watch the only daughter of Aldric Elmsley come down to them, and I let them watch, because that’s what I’m for.

The ballroom is beautiful. I can hate this evening and still admit that. Chandeliers burn above a floor of pale polished stone, the tall windows stand open to the gardens, and musicians play at the far end behind banks of white hothouse flowers.

Concord builds everything this way – pale stone, clean lines, order you can see from across a room.

Father likes to say we live in the richest and most civilized walled city in the south, a city that keeps treaties with monster cities most humans won’t even name at dinner, a city that puts everything in writing.

Half the council is here tonight, along with the big trade families and two magistrates, all of them drinking Father’s wine and speaking in the low, pleasant voices of people who own things.

Mother finds me first. She adjusts a curl at my temple and studies the result.

“Smile, darling. You look half asleep.”

I produce the smile she wants.

Father appears beside her, glass in hand, and looks me over with a nod.

“Beautiful. Everyone is fascinated with you, as always. Wycliffe will be pleased.”

“Thank you, Father.”

I give them my signature cold, careful smile, and they accept it as a real one. Because neither of them has looked at me closely since I learned to curtsy.

Garron Wycliffe crosses the room to us without hurrying. He has silver hair and wears heavy rings on all his fingers. His suit is impeccable. Up close, his face is well kept and patient. He bows to my parents first.

“May I?” he says to my father, not to me, and Father hands me over with a nod.

We dance, and his hand settles at my waist. Then his thumb moves against the silk, one slow stroke that nobody watching would name improper. My whole body goes tight under his suggestive touch.

“Your mother tells me the wedding should wait for spring,” he says near my ear. “I told her I see no reason to wait. Long engagements are for young men with patience, and I’ve already spent mine.”

“You honor me, my lord,” I say.

“You blush prettily.” He lowers his voice. “I’m glad. I look forward to us, together, alone in a room at last.”

I lower my eyes and tilt my face away the way embarrassed girls are supposed to.

He reads it as modesty, because men like him always do.

Behind my lowered lashes, I’m imagining pressing my thumbs into his eyes until his voice stops sounding so pleased.

My hands stay light and correct on his shoulder and in his palm.

Past his shoulder, I find my parents at the edge of the dance floor, watching us. I know that expression on Father. It’s the one he wears when a vote goes his way. Mother wears her matching version, softer around the mouth and just as satisfied.

The music ends, and Wycliffe bows over my hand.

Before I can escape on a balcony with a glass of champagne, Mother appears at my elbow.

“Your father would like us in his study, darling.”

The study smells of leather, ink, and pipe smoke. Father pours brandy for Wycliffe and himself, and wine for Mother. Nothing for me, which tells me exactly how much I’ll be needed in this conversation.

“Twenty years our houses have voted together,” Father says, handing Wycliffe his glass. “It’s time the arrangement became permanent. An alliance in name and in law.”

“Stability,” Wycliffe agrees. “Your family’s future bound to mine. Concord respects nothing so much as a united front.”

“The engagement party should be Sunday next,” Mother says, bright with plans. “The garden is at its best this season. Esme will wear blue.”

“She wears blue well,” Wycliffe says, and he looks at me while he says it, though nobody expects me to answer.

“She understands what this means for the family,” Father says. “We raised her carefully. Duty has never been a hardship for her.”

They move on to guest lists, announcement timing, and which councilmen must be seated near which. I stand with my hands folded so nobody can see them, and I count the books on the shelf behind Father’s head to keep my face composed, to give nothing away.

At the end, Wycliffe rises and kisses my knuckles with dry lips.

“Until Sunday, then.”

“Until Sunday,” I say.

I leave the study with my spine straight and climb the stairs at a lady’s pace. Never in a hurry, never frazzled. I open my bedroom door, and Darina is waiting on the edge of my bed. My chin starts trembling before the latch even clicks.

She stands as soon as she sees my face.

“What happened?”

“It’s done.” My voice shakes now that it’s allowed to. “Sunday next, in the garden. I’ll wear blue at my engagement party. They discussed the alliance, the stability, the family’s future, and my duty, and while they decided my whole life, nobody asked me one question.”

“Oh, Esme.” She guides me to the vanity bench and starts pulling the pins from my hair. “Then there’s still time before the party. Maybe your father…”

“The bride market is the Saturday before.”

I wipe my tears with the back of my hand and stare at myself in the mirror. There, I said it. I didn’t expect it to come out so resolute, but I have no choice.

Darina goes still, her fingers tangled in my hair.

“What?”

“The market. It falls on the Saturday before the engagement party.”

“No.” She comes around the bench to face me. “No. Tell me you’re not serious. Monsters buy women there, Esme. Actual monsters. You’ve heard the same stories I have. They take them from the human cities, sometimes to places that aren’t on the map. Those women get sold.”

“My parents are already selling me. Only with music and champagne.”

“That’s different.”

“It’s tidier. That’s the only difference.

You know what Father thinks about monsters.

He calls them beasts over dinner, and signs trade agreements with them before lunch.

Because they’re powerful, and power gets respect in this city.

Fine. Then I’ll go where real, honest power is.

And the market has the one rule that actually gives me a choice.

The bride decides. The buyers bid, but the woman picks.

If you ask me, it’s more civilized than what my parents and Wycliffe discussed in the study just half an hour ago.

Even if I’m choosing between monsters, I’m the one choosing.

Say the same thing about Sunday, and I’ll stay. ”

She presses her lips together, her eyes fill with tears, but she shakes her head.

“When did you decide this?” she finally asks.

“Tonight. In the study, counting Father’s books on the shelves.

I stood there smiling, and I understood very calmly that I won’t survive it.

Not the wedding, and not the marriage. Not that man’s hand moving on my waist while he tells me what he looks forward to.

” I shudder. “He’ll put his hands in other places once he has me. ”

“You can’t go,” she says.

“I’m going. The only question is whether you’re coming with me or not. I need you, Darina. Please don’t let me do this alone.”

She takes my hands in hers, and her fingers are cold.

“Of course not,” she says. “If this is your decision, then I will follow you. Anywhere.”

I pull her into my arms, and I hold on to her the way I couldn’t hold on to anything else tonight. In my parents’ eyes, Darina is only a servant girl, but to me, she’s my best friend, the only person in this house who knows me and cares about me.

Over her shoulder, I see the room in which I grew up – the silk curtains Mother chose, the jewelry cabinet full of things picked for me, the balcony above gardens trimmed into obedience – all of it beautiful and perfect. I won’t miss it at all.

I’m already listing everything that can go wrong between tonight and Saturday, so I press my face into my friend’s shoulder, and hold my one impulsive decision steady.

Because if I start counting the ways this could end badly, I’ll still be counting on Sunday, when that man puts an engagement ring on my finger.