The Masters
Aviolent hack tears from my throat, choking me hard enough to water my eyes.
Around the table, a ripple of muffled laughter breaks through the hush. We are being too loud, drawing lines we probably shouldn’t be crossing. Jenny’s palm delivers two rhythmic thuds against my back.
I gulp down a mouthful of water, my vision snapping upward to the dais. The four Masters remain sequestered in their own quiet world, completely unbothered by the girlish fuss and frantic giggling echoing off the stonework.
Not a correction. Not a single twitch of displeasure. Not an ounce of reprehension. They simply don’t care what cattle do before the slaughter.
Leaning in, I drop my voice to a ragged breath, turning toward Jenny because out of all of them, she at least wears a mask of awareness.
“Do they force us to sleep with them?”
“No. It’s quite the opposite.”
“What does that mean?” I press, the words barely scraping past my teeth.
Silence answers me.
I lift my chin, sweeping my gaze across the raised stone dais until my focus snags on the dark-haired Master. Lord Julian Cain.
He’s watching me with a terrifying intensity that makes every hair on my arms prickle.
No. He’s not watching me.
He’s watching Jenny.
And his expression is nakedly, ravenously hungry.
What the absolute hell is happening in this place?
My hand shoves my plate away, sliding the porcelain across the linen. I have never seen food so rich in my entire life, yet my appetite shrivels and dies in an instant.
“Where do we go after dinner?” I ask, fighting to anchor my voice against the panic fraying its edges.
“Back to our rooms,” Mag murmurs. “The servants will escort us. We’ll be locked in until dawn.”
“Locked in.” The phrase leaves a bitter film on my tongue. “Like prisoners.”
“Like guests,” Mag corrects, her smile flashing bright in the candlelight. “Prisoners don’t get silk gowns and feasts. We do.”
“Because we’re investments,” I repeat, the harsh reality tasting like ash.
“See? You’re learning.”
The words drop between us, sinking down like lead weights into a well.
I survey the grand hall—the blinding wealth, the obscene luxury, the impossible, curated beauty of it all. I look at the twelve girls flanking me, each one polished and conditioned until she shines like a new coin.
Then I stare back up at the Masters, each one so ridiculously handsome they hardly seem human.
This is a bargain I made.
My body traded away to erase my father’s ledgers. My soul bartered for his safety. I refuse to let this golden cage lull me into a stupor.
I scrape my chair back against the stone, shoving myself upright.
“Where are you going?” Jenny asks, her eyes widening.
“To my room,” I reply, my voice flat, deliberately devoid of the trembling fear clawing at my ribs. “If I’m expected to survive whatever training they have planned for tomorrow, I need sleep.”
Before I can take two steps, maids materialize at my flanks, their touch deceptively gentle as their fingers curve around my arms. They shepherd me out of the cavernous hall, steering me through a labyrinth of winding corridors, hauling me right back to my gorgeous, gilded prison cell.
They dress me in a long white linen nightgown, short-sleeved, with see-through lace around my breasts—an old-fashioned style that looks as though it belongs in a museum. But the fabric is soft against my skin.
Sitting at the dressing table, they braid my hair and tuck me into bed.
I lie stretched across the mattress, suffocated by silk and heavy velvet, staring blankly at the vaulted ceiling.
I will survive this. I’ll survive the training, the auction, whatever twisted spectacle they throw my way.
And when I get out…
The internal promise fractures, stalling dead in my mind.
When I get out. What then? What will I do?
There is no when I get out. There’s no future. I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the hot, traitorous tears finally break free.
Yet even as I weep, a strange presence bleeds into the darkness behind my eyelids.
A shadow. A hunger that has nothing to do with food.
And from somewhere down the long, empty corridors of the estate, a voice rolls over me.
“You belong to me now.”
My eyes fly open. The room is dead silent.
Yet those words cling to the corners of my mind, echoing with a sickening, absolute certainty that crawls straight down my spine.
I’m not alone in this room.
I curl inward, dragging the heavy silk covers up to my chin, biting down on my lip as I fight desperately against the rising tide of terror.
I fail. I’m sorry, Mama. I tried so hard to be strong, to—
A sound punctures the quiet.
Faint, barely perceptible above the crackle of the hearth, but undeniably present.
I snap my head up.
The chamber is still. The firelight flickers across the stone, casting long, distorted shapes against the walls. But the atmosphere has fundamentally warped.
A heavy, oppressive weight settles over the space—a presence that wasn’t here a moment ago. A sudden drop in temperature seeps right through the radiant heat of the fireplace, wrapping a freezing, phantom grip around my bare skin like a lover’s possessive fingers.
I shove myself out of bed, muscles coiled tight, my gaze scouring the shadows.
“Is someone there?”
Silence. The shadows shift.
I swear I see them bend, twist, and writhe against the stonework like living, breathing things. They stretch across the floorboards toward me, reaching, pooling into the dark—and I bolt for the door.
The heavy brass handle turns beneath my palm with a mocking lack of resistance, yielding far too easily, like a trap constructed by a master architect who delights in giving his prey the illusion of escape.
My bare feet slap frantically against the cold, polished stone of the corridor, the sound echoing too loud and desperate in the suffocating stillness of the night.