Chapter 1 Confession 1 #2
I still remember that first day I saw the courtyard and witnessed Rafe Creed.
I remember how he fought with a brutality that could only be bestowed upon a boy who’d witnessed death at least a hundred times.
He never hesitated, barely broke a sweat, and now, as I’m older and can finally confess this story, I know Rafe believed in those moments that he wasn’t killing those boys; he was setting them free.
He won so that others never, ever had to face the prize.
At fourteen, I looked at him, only sixteen, and saw Viktor’s pride.
Rafe Creed was the exact manifestation of everything Viktor believed in.
He natural selection, brutal efficiency, and entertainment, while I was…
the opposite. Then Rafe was sold to the woman in the white linen dotted with yellow flowers, and as he passed Leah and I, I saw nothing in his eyes. Absolutely nothing.
Just like mine.
But—no. His were darker, more infinite. He was two years older, but I saw a thousand tragedies between us, a bridge I was soon to cross. He was a walking corpse, and he was my future. If I wasn’t careful, if I didn’t find a way to become more than Viktor’s Doll, my eyes would look just like his.
I didn’t see him again for a year. The woman in white and yellow paid handsomely. “Millions,” Viktor told me in bed at promptly nine p.m.
Millions for a corpse. Then again, that corpse killed without remorse, and he wasn’t the only one.
There were dozens of boys who survived the courtyard and were sold on rotation to prominent wealthy families worldwide, but it was Rafe who held the most attention.
Girls took to their windows, peering out and whispering about the boy who seemed to have a new tattoo each time he returned from a Buyer.
They watched Rafe, and they saw him in a light I didn't quite understand.
They looked at his muscles and ink and, in some ways, were no better than the Buyers.
They didn't look at him and see another kid; they saw something they wanted.
It was like that for years, all the attention on him, until Kane and Thorne.
Two boys brought to Viktor's with their ribs showing through their skin who slowly became part of the whispers, too.
Kane shadowed Rafe, training in the courtyard, but he didn't have the grace Rafe had.
He was far more cruel in the way he killed, beating in the faces of other children.
He never went for the quick death, and while most admired it—because such force was power in a place like Viktor's—it made me mostly sad for Kane.
He was deeply hurt, and he was one of the few that allowed it to manifest in his brutality.
Together, him and Rafe made quite the duo.
Rafe was efficient. Kane was spectacle. Buyers adored it, and Viktor, well, loved anything that made him money.
Thorne, I hadn't known much about. He didn't take to the courtyard like Kane had.
He was sent off the estate more often than most, rumored to be an expert thief.
It didn't seem like there was anything Thorne couldn't steal, but for some reason, he always came back to the estate like clockwork.
I couldn't understand it. If Viktor handed me the keys to a bike, I'd never return.
I remember watching a fourteen-year-old Thorne pull up just beyond my window on his motorcycle.
He was scrawny still, but his face had put on slightly more weight than when Viktor first sentenced him to the estate.
He'd lit a cigarette and sat on his bike for several minutes, taking long drags with his eyes closed.
Despite being the same age as me, he looked so much older like that, and I couldn't help but pull back my curtain for a closer look.
When he finally opened his eyes again and glanced over, cigarette dangling from his mouth, our eyes met.
My chest caved in as he raised a gloved hand and sent a small wave my way.
I threw my curtains back into place and crawled into bed, curling into myself and hugging my knees.
The truth is…he terrified me. All three of them did.
Rafe. Kane. Thorne. Sometimes, you just know people will come into your life and take pieces of you, whether you want them to or not, and with all three of them, I'd felt this sense of dread that I'd never, ever felt before.
I think it was around then I started wondering if there was a point to any kind of hope if evil existed in every corner of the world.
I'd said as much to Leah when we were put on kitchen duty, making a pudding desert to be served to an incoming group of Buyers.
She was licking the spatula, sitting on the counter with her socked-feet kicking.
"Hope's a lost cause for kids like us, Arden.
Honestly, the sooner you make your peace with that, the better.
Shit around here won't feel so bad, because you'll finally numb a bit more to it," Leah explained with a shrug.
"Although…" A mischievous grin touched her lips, and she leaned down, brushing my curls back from my ear and whispering, "If I can find a way out, just know you're coming with me. "
A way out. I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around that, especially not then, but Leah knew every inch of Viktor’s estate.
She studied where the servants were most distracted and which windows let you see who entered the estate while leaving you time to hide.
She used to talk about escape often, but eventually, she fell in line like most do.
She didn’t lose her spark, never, but she did learn to survive the way all of us eventually did.
She took her own advice to let go of hope and numb.
When Viktor grew too busy for daily watchfulness, he turned his handlers into punishers.
He gave them rules they had to enforce, punishments administered with the same hands that braided my hair.
Leah hated it, so she learned which small cruelties made me bend and which made me break, and she wielded them carefully, punishing me when Viktor asked and knowing what I could withstand.
It was around then I became better at faking tears and screams. Leah always apologized after, but then she’d see me straighten, wipe my face, and turn back to porcelain stone, hardened but just fragile enough to be believable, and she’d smile wide.
“You bitch,” she’d say, her nose crinkling in amusement. “You almost had me.”
And that was that. Us. The estate.
The courtyards taught obedience, the parlor taught performance, the locked doors taught that curiosity had a price, and Viktor’s study taught that everything could be sold if you had the right ledger.
It was a place that made you forget life beyond its walls, and it made you small by folding the world down into rooms that fit your assigned use.
Thank fuck for Leah.
She had a way of peeling me open without me realizing it, of slipping past the lacquer Viktor had painted over me. She dared me to steal moments with a run through the courtyard when no one was watching or a secret word whispered into my ear.
“Life’s still in you,” she’d murmur, grinning like she’d caught me. “I can see it. Don’t hide from me.”
And somehow, I didn’t. With her, I found myself speaking again, not the neat little responses Viktor demanded but real words, messy and spilling.
She listened to every one, nodding, laughing, sometimes scowling if I said something too naive, too trusting.
She wasn’t my first audience, but in her eyes I began to believe that I was more than Viktor’s Doll.
Leah taught me how to curse, how to roll my eyes without being caught, how to bite my tongue until it bled rather than let Viktor see me cry.
She taught me that survival wasn’t just stillness; sometimes it was mischief, sometimes it was knowing which corners of the estate held shadows deep enough to disappear in.
She made me reckless in tiny ways that didn’t seem to matter at the time, but each one was a crack in Viktor’s porcelain shell.
She was teaching me how to know myself.
She’d drag me by the wrist down forbidden hallways, laughing as we ran barefoot across rugs worth more than we’d ever be paid for, daring me to touch the velvet curtains or steal a sip of Viktor’s brandy when no one was watching.
The burn of it nearly made me choke, but she only threw her head back and howled, her arm looped around my shoulders until I laughed with her, coughing into her sleeve.
We learned which servants turned a blind eye and which ones scurried to tattle.
We learned that the chandeliers swayed if you tugged the ropes just right, casting the parlor in a dizzy rain of light—“A little bit of magic in hell. Would you look at that? That’s something, Arden.
That’s really something. You gotta hold onto shit like that, especially in a dark place like this”—until the maids shrieked and we bolted, breathless, down the marble steps.
Once, we slipped into the courtyard at dawn, long before Viktor’s men arrived, and we swung wooden practice blades until our arms shook, both of us pretending we were the ones who got to fight instead of be polished and displayed.
Leah clutched her stomach, laughing so hard she almost toppled, when I tried to mimic one of the boys’ stances and nearly tripped over my own foot.
There were smaller rebellions, too, like the stolen pastries we ate crouched in the laundry, sugar dusting our lips as if innocence could be sweetened back into us, or the time Leah dared me to curse Viktor’s name under my breath, her grin spreading when I did it louder than I meant to.
We hid our laughter in our hands like it was a prayer, and for a few wild moments, I felt broken in a fixable way.