Chapter 2 #2
Yet no one here would stop Ray from doing whatever he wanted. Xavix stood by idly. His ragged security team was busy with containing the rowdy crowd of onlookers. They didn’t concern themselves with the behavior of the high bidders.
Xavix had called Ray “the Master of the Wall.” I had no idea what that meant, but the title clearly came with enough power for Ray to do anything he wanted around here.
Ray’s smoky tendrils spiraled around me, trapping me into a cage of shadows.
He brought the flower to my lips. I recoiled against Piara’s hands pushing against my back.
Panic lanced through my chest. I couldn’t let Ray do this to me.
But I had nothing to stop him with. No strength, no power, no army…
Only my words.
At least, they hadn’t taken my voice yet. I stared straight into his eyes. They were light green like the summer grass on a sunny day. Such a warm, harmless color for such a cold, unfeeling man.
“Take your fucking flower,” I said firmly, spitting out every word into his face, “and shove it up your ass where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Xavix gasped, clutching his scroll to his chest.
Mazra snorted a strangled sound that meant something between shock and amusement.
Ray’s eyes narrowed into slits, his glare cutting into me like a blade. Shadow fae derived no pleasure from humor and didn’t genuinely laugh at jokes, but Ray clearly knew an insult when he heard it.
“If you’re not sweet enough to give me what I want, I’ll force it from you,” he hissed. “I always get what I want, human.”
He delivered the threat as a fact, in a voice filled with confidence.
I trembled in fear and…anger. Ray didn’t care that I was a person, that I had my own mind, thoughts, fears, and desires.
It meant nothing to him. I meant nothing.
To him, I was just a thing, a fucking “Vessel” to do with as he pleased, to force and break if he so wished.
I balled my hands into fists. I’d never hit anyone in my life.
I didn’t even know how to land a punch. Back home, I worked in a preschool, for fuck’s sake.
I taught kids to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner.
I used to firmly believe in that too. That was just over a month ago, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since the shadow fae had stolen me from my best friend’s basement.
My past life was but a dream now. This tent on the beach, the crate I stood on for all to see, and the fae man’s threat to force me to his will were my reality.
I straightened my spine, rolled back my shoulders, and willed my voice not to shake.
“Try to shove that flower in my mouth, and I’ll bite your finger off,” I gritted through my teeth, fully intending to deliver on my threat.
His lips parted in a sneer, revealing the sharp points of his fangs. He raised a fist, aiming it at my face, and it took everything I had not to flinch.
“Do you really think you can—” he started but got no chance to finish.
“As much gold as she weighs,” a voice interrupted our argument, stopping it from erupting into a fight I would’ve surely lost.
That strong, quiet voice came from the dark corner by the entrance, and it had enough power to rise over the noise of the crowd, getting everyone’s attention, including Ray’s.
Ray grimaced, his fist suspended in the air. Mazra turned her head toward the entrance in a jerky movement, as if having long forgotten about that particular bidder.
Xavix eagerly turned to the shrouded shadow. “Is that your bid, sir?”
“Yes. I’ll pay the Joy Vessel’s weight in gold.”
“What?” Ray glared, dropping his fist to my relief.
Mazra’s mouth fell open.
“How much gold will that be?” she muttered, giving me a measuring look.
I wasn’t a petite or slender girl. My fuzzy sweater was far from slimming either. I turned toward the shadow by the entrance. He must know what he got himself into.
Of course, the more important question was, what did all of it mean for me? Sadly, I had no answer to that. I didn’t know who this man was. I couldn’t even see him, which unnerved me. Why did he keep out of sight? What did he have to hide? And what did he want with me?
The last question was probably easy to answer. All shadow fae wanted the same thing from humans—our joy. The figure in the corner had no yellow flowers anywhere on his shroud, but he could be keeping bucketfuls of them under it.
“The Joy Vessel’s weight in gold is our latest bid, ladies and gentlemen!” Xavix announced quickly. “More, anyone?” He twisted around, scanning the crown in invitation to challenge the big. “Anyone?”
Ray growled disgruntledly, then curled his lips in disgust.
“That much gold for this bitter one? She isn’t worth it.” He spat through his teeth onto the sand, then glared at Piara. “You’d better bring a sweeter one up here next.”
“Oh, I will,” she rushed to assure him, breathless with the anticipation of the huge payout. “Of course I will.”
“Sold! To…” Xavix paused, extending the moment, maybe hoping to get a higher last-minute bid or simply trying to recall the name of the winner. “Timur!” he finally announced. “Sold to Timur for the Joy Vessel’s weight in gold!”
Xavix spun his scroll over his head with a flourish in celebration. However, no one clapped or cheered, or whatever reaction Xavix had been hoping for with his theatrics.
Ray shrugged, sauntering away. Mazra darted a calculating glance between me and the bizarre figure who’d just won the bidding process.
Who’d just won me…
My brief relief from escaping Ray evaporated quickly. Dread painfully crushed my chest. I was sold. Even in Prince Rha’s sarai as one of his Joy Vessels or locked in a cage on the side of the camel, I didn’t feel the loss of freedom this acutely.
“Bring in the scale!” Xavix snapped his fingers at his people.
Two of them dragged in a big scale that must be used to weigh grain sacks or animal carcasses. Today, they were going to weigh me on it.
“Come, Sweet One,” Xavix coaxed, patting one of the scales’ brass plates. “Step right here.”
“Move it.” Piara dragged me off the crate and toward the scale.
Xavix pressed the plate down for me. Dazed, as if trapped in a nightmare, I stepped onto it and grabbed onto the chains that attached the plate to the large metal bar above my head. On the other end of the bar, the second plate swayed on the chains, empty.
How could any of this be real?
“Time for your payment, sir.” Xavix waved his scroll like a baton in the direction of the winning bidder.
A faint hum rolled subtly under the clamor of the crowd. The shrouded, misshapen figure rose from the ground slightly, the hem of his cloak hovering over the sand. The black fabric edged with a shimmering green glow as he moved smoothly toward the scale.
I’d never seen anything like that before. By the way the other fae stared, muttered, and shrank away from the slowly moving figure, this likely wasn’t a usual sight in Ashgate either.
Fear sliced through my stunned numbness as the eerie, dark shape approached. A strangled cry caught in my throat. I twisted around, trying to get off the plate.
“Steady, Sweet One.” Xavix held his scroll at my back to keep me in place.
Piara clamped a heavy hand over my shoulder.
The shrouded figure passed by me on his way to the empty plate.
I got a better look at him, but it revealed little more than when he hid in the shadows.
Hovering about a hand’s width above the ground, the bidder—Timur—was about the same height as me, which was short for a fae, especially for a male.
He was wide, with broad shoulders and even broader, misshapen base.
A black cloak shrouded him completely, with a wide hood drawn low over his face, only leaving his chin and mouth visible.
He stopped at the plate, and his left hand emerged from his shroud.
It was a large, masculine hand, covered with smooth, black skin that glowed faintly.
A wide bangle circled his wrist. Made from a metal the color of aged bronze, it was decorated with precious stones and…
mechanical gears? The gears moved, emitting a soft green glow.
I’d never seen anything like this in Alveari before.
An onyx ring in a gold setting graced his thumb.
The ring was big and seemed heavy, covering the entire lower phalanx of his thumb.
Timur held out a tightly stuffed satchel. Xavix shoved his scroll under his arm, then grabbed the satchel and opened it. His pale eyes widened at the glimmer of gold inside.
“Very well,” he murmured with eager anticipation. “Let’s see then.”
Xavix poured the gold onto the empty plate. Thick hexagonal coins hit the brass with a loud clatter that then reverberated as a more melodious sound throughout the tent.
The chains in my grip strained. The scale plate that I stood on lifted off the ground. I swayed, holding on to the chains tighter to keep my balance. As the gold kept falling onto the other plate, my plate kept rising, slowly swaying in the air.
I watched the coins bounce off each other and pile up. The higher my plate rose, the heavier the feeling in my stomach grew. It looked like there might be just enough gold in Timur’s satchel to balance the scale. Then by the twisted laws of this land, I would become his.
The last coin dropped onto the pile. The plates were almost at the same level, but not quite. The long arrow attached to the middle of the horizontal bar wouldn’t align with the vertical bar yet.
I released a tentative breath, realizing that if I had to have a master, I’d far rather prefer anyone else to the creepy shrouded figure that looked like a ghost and moved like an apparition.
“Weeell…” Xavix stretched the word out, shaking the empty satchel over the plate in the undying hope of more coins miraculously dropping from it. Now that he’d laid his eyes on all this gold, the prospect of declaring the deal as failed clearly pained him.