The sound of wheels grinding over the stone grew louder. The cart carrying the boy finally rattled through the gate.
Beside it, a woman was already waiting at the depot's side entrance, a wide, iron-banded thing built for wagons and deliveries. No crowd to weave through here, just a pair of guards trading idle words near the wall and a few staff hauling crates toward the storerooms.
Then she spotted Elara across the entrance, and started toward her, quick, easy steps closing the distance.
A breeze caught a few copper strands loose from her braid, and beneath them her eyes were warm amber, the kind that seemed to soften the whole entrance just by landing on someone.
More than her looks, it was in how she moved toward Elara—the eagerness of someone who had rehearsed this reunion a hundred times and still wasn't ready for it.
The moment she reached her, the smile on her face widened even further.
"Elara..."
Without waiting for permission, she wrapped both arms around her in a brief embrace.
"It's really you."
Elara let out a quiet chuckle, returning the embrace with one arm.
"Sora. I thought you had forgotten me."
"Forgotten you?" Sora pulled back just enough to look her in the eye. "You disappear for more than a year without sending so much as a single letter, and somehow I'm the one at fault?"
Her voice carried playful reproach, though the warmth underneath it gave her away.
Elara scratched the back of her neck awkwardly.
"...Things have been complicated."
Sora's smile gradually faded.
"I heard..."
Her gaze lingered on Elara's face before lowering.
"...about Lady Eleanor."
Silence settled between them.
The sounds of the market carried faintly from beyond the wall—merchants bargaining, the occasional shout of a passerby, the clatter of wooden crates—but between the two women, everything seemed strangely quiet.
Elara lowered her eyes.
"It's been nearly six months."
"I know."
Sora hesitated before speaking again.
"I wanted to visit after the funeral... but my father had already sent me to East Hollow to manage one of our warehouses. By the time I returned..."
She paused, glancing away.
"...your family's restaurant was already closed."
A faint smile touched Elara's lips.
"It wasn't your fault."
"No." Sora shook her head. "I should've been there when you needed me. But..."
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The distance that had separated them seemed to vanish, leaving two childhood friends reunited at last.
Elara reached out and squeezed her hand.
"Don't do that. Don't take the blame for something that was never yours to carry." A small, genuine smile broke through. "You've always been there for me, Sora. More than you know. So please—don't make that face."
Then Sora forced a smile, hoping to lighten the mood.
"So..." She folded her arms. "When your letter said you'd be here for the Gilded Cage auction, I read it twice. I still can't quite picture it."
Elara sighed dramatically. "Please don't remind me."
"You, of all people. Handling slaves for coin."
"Neither can I."
Both women laughed quietly. It lasted only a few seconds, but for Elara it felt unfamiliar—she couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed at all.
The smile that followed it didn't last nearly as long as the laugh had. Sora noticed. She'd known Elara long enough to tell a real smile from a forced one, and this one didn't reach her eyes. Her own expression faded to match it.
"...How are you really doing?"
Elara looked away toward the wall, her eyes tracing the guards, the stacked crates, the runners jogging between storerooms with manifests in hand—anywhere except toward her friend.
"I'm managing."
"You're lying."
"..."
"You've always been terrible at lying."
Another silence followed. This one was heavier.
Finally, Elara spoke.
"The business is barely surviving." Her voice was calm. Too calm. "The taxes keep increasing every season."
"I had to sell everything..."
Then she smiled bitterly. "Half my wares succumbed to fever... Turns out I'm not even fit to run a market stall."
"So I sold the rest. My mother's carriage. The horses. What was left of the slaves—all of it."
"..."
"There wasn't another choice."
Sora's expression gradually hardened.
"And the debt?"
Elara remained silent. That silence alone was enough to answer.
Sora exhaled slowly. "How much?"
"..."
"Elara."
"Almost three hundred silver."
Sora's eyes widened. "...Three hundred?"
Elara nodded. "The interest kept growing. Every season."
Sora's hands curled into fists. She didn't need to ask who. She'd known about that debt, and who was behind it, for months.
"That bastard..."
Before Elara could answer—
A measured sound echoed across the stone pavement.
Tap...
Tap...
Tap...
The steady rhythm of a cane striking stone.
Neither woman turned immediately. They already recognized it. Some part of them hoped they were wrong.
Elara's smile vanished. Her shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptibly.
Sora followed her gaze.
From the storeroom passage emerged an elderly man in finely tailored dark-green robes, embroidered with silver thread. Age had bent his back slightly, but there was nothing frail about the confidence in his stride. A polished ebony cane rested in one hand, used less for support than as a symbol of status. Behind him followed two servants carrying rolled documents and lacquered boxes.
The old man stopped only a few paces away. His sharp eyes settled on Elara. The corners of his lips curved upward.
"My... what an unexpected reunion. To encounter you here." He inclined his head slightly. "Lady Elara. It seems fortune still allows us to meet."
His smile deepened as his eyes drifted over her, unhurried, like he had all day to do it.
"My... you've changed." He tilted his head, taking his time looking her over. "That tired look in your eyes, the set of your shoulders—a year does wear on a person, doesn't it." His gaze lingered another moment before he let out a quiet chuckle. "Tell me... does it suit you? Disappearing like that?"
Elara remained silent.
"Still that same look," he mused, clicking his tongue. "Your mother used to wear it too, right before she'd say something she'd regret a moment later." He studied Elara a beat longer. "I always pictured that temper of yours getting hauled into the back room of your family's restaurant every time a customer complained too loudly." A small, satisfied smile. "Some things never do get trained out of us, do they."
Sora stepped forward, unable to hide the irritation on her face.
"State your business, Mister Edric."
His eyes narrowed, the casual address landing exactly as she'd meant it.
"It's Lord Edric," he corrected, sharp for the first time since he'd arrived. "Oh?" His gaze cut fully onto her, recognition flickering across his face a beat later. One eyebrow lifted. "No bow to go with it either, I notice. I forget how casual the Hawthornes have always been about rank." He tapped the tip of his cane against the stone. "The little Hawthorne girl. My, you've grown—though not, I notice, into your manners."
"My manners are fine," Sora said flatly. "I simply don't waste them on you."
His smile only widened. "You were always following Lady Eleanor around. I suppose loyalty is contagious." Without waiting for a response, he turned back to Elara.
"I had expected you to visit me sooner. You still owe me."
"I know."
"Do you?" His tone remained pleasant. "Because from where I'm standing... it doesn't seem you understand your position at all."
He slowly unfolded a neatly sealed document.
"The interest has accumulated rather impressively over the last two years." He smiled to himself. "I almost admire it."
Elara's jaw tightened. "I'll pay it."
Edric blinked, then let out a genuine laugh. "You? With what?" He gestured lazily toward the depot behind her. "I'd heard you'd become a slave merchant. But looking at the state of you—and that miserable little yard you're running—it seems things haven't exactly gone to plan." He tilted his head. "My people keep me rather well informed about your new business. It's almost impressive, watching someone work this hard just to end up with nothing." He let his gaze drift slowly over the yard behind her, unhurried, cataloguing it. "You're very close to having nothing left at all."
Elara had gone very still. Not calm—just still, the way you go still when you're holding something with both hands and know that if you let go even a little, you'll drop it.
His smile turned wistful.
"Do you know, this reminds me of your mother. Lady Eleanor sat exactly where you're standing once—just as desperate, with just as little left." He let the moment sit. "By the end there was only one thing worth taking. Her wedding ring. She loved that ring more than almost anything else she owned."
Elara said nothing. Her hands, hanging at her sides, had curled slowly into fists—the first crack in the composure she'd been holding since he arrived.
Sora's expression changed.
"You—"
"Yes," Edric said, before she could finish. "I have it still." He shrugged. "Desperate people are terrible negotiators."
Whatever calm Elara had left was gone. Her fists trembled at her sides.
Edric noticed, delighted. His eyes lit up.
"There it is. I've missed that look—the one your mother used to give me, in those final weeks." His voice softened, almost fond. "She had the nerve to order me out of her own sickroom, you know. 'We'll pay you when we have the money,' she told me."
He shook his head. "I hadn't the patience for that. A month behind is a month behind, whatever the circumstances. So I told her—the ring, or I'd stop being so generous about the debt."
"She clung to it at first, like a child hiding a toy under a blanket. But dying women don't get to keep their pride for long. She gave it to me herself, in the end. Called it her husband's memory."
He shrugged.
"As if sentiment ever paid a debt."
Elara swallowed. Whatever she'd been about to say, she bit it back down.
Edric only smiled wider.
"Don't look at me like that. I didn't kill her. I simply collected what I was owed, while I still could. The illness did the rest—I merely had better timing."
"You stood at a dying woman's bedside and negotiated," Sora said, her voice shaking.
"I stood at a dying woman's bedside and did business," Edric said, entirely unbothered. "Same as I did at your father's—"
Elara moved before he'd finished the sentence, before she'd even decided to—there was nothing she could do to a man like this. It didn't matter.
Her hand shot for the small utility knife at her belt—the one she used for rope and packing twine, nothing more. Sora lunged, both hands closing around her wrist, dragging her back with everything she had.
"Elara—Elara, stop, not here—"
It wasn't enough. Elara was taller, stronger, and grief had made her deaf to reason; she tore forward another step, dragging Sora with her, the knife half clear of its sheath.
Edric's two servants moved at the same instant, stepping between him and Elara with a speed that didn't match their size—and they were sizable men, broad through the shoulder in a way that had nothing to do with carrying document boxes. Neither reached for her. They simply became a wall, positioning their master safely behind it.
"That's quite enough."
The voice cut through the yard. It wasn't loud. It didn't have to be—whoever it belonged to clearly wasn't used to being ignored.
The guards and nearby workers turned. A few straightened when they recognized the voice.
Lady Meredith stood at the mouth of the passage, Fallon a step behind her, already looking at Edric like something the cleaning staff had missed.
"Edric."
Just the name. No title, no courtesy—the way one addresses a servant, not a noble.
"You old vulture." She said it lightly, almost bored. "Trouble seems to follow you into every yard you set foot in, doesn't it."
Edric's smile faltered for the first time since he'd arrived.
"Lady Meredith. I was merely—"
"I heard what you were merely doing." Her voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. Her stare sharpened instead, pinning him where he stood. "You're the one who needs reminding of his place. A lesser noble does not test his luck this far in front of me."
Edric's fingers tightened around his cane.
"My lady, with respect—you weren't here for the start of it. It was Elara who—"
"Even if that were true," Meredith cut in, "and I know perfectly well that it isn't, I find I don't care."
Her gaze remained fixed on him.
"Say one more word in your defense, Edric, and you may find that keeping your title becomes considerably more difficult."
Edric's mouth snapped shut.
For a moment, his composure cracked entirely—real fear, unpolished, before he mastered it enough to incline his head.
"Of course, my lady. I was just leaving."
He turned sharply, already moving, cane striking the stone in short, furious taps—and walked directly into Fallon, who had come to stand behind him without a sound.
Edric froze. Whatever color remained in his face drained out of it.
"F—forgive me," he stammered, stepping back quickly. "I didn't—I'll take my leave now."
He was gone before he finished the sentence, servants scrambling to keep pace, his cane's rhythm no longer measured at all.
Only once he was gone did Meredith's expression soften.
She crossed the yard and took the knife gently from Elara's shaking hand, passing it to Fallon without looking at it, then folded Elara into her arms.
Elara didn't fight it. The tears she'd been holding back for the better part of a year finally broke, silent and furious, into Meredith's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Elara said, muffled. "He was talking about my mother, and I just—I couldn't—"
"I know," Meredith said simply, one hand smoothing over her hair. "But you didn't. That's what matters."
She held her a moment longer, then eased back, studying Elara's face with something that wasn't quite pity.
"Your mother would have hated seeing you throw yourself away over a man like that."
Elara lowered her eyes.
"She'd probably be disappointed."
"No." Meredith's answer was immediate. "She'd be angry that you thought that."
For a moment, Meredith simply looked at her.
Then she nodded toward the wagon.
"Better," she said quietly. "Now—where is the boy?"
Elara blinked, wiping her face with the back of her hand, and nodded toward the wagon by the wall.
Meredith's gaze moved past her, to Sora.
"Bring a mask. Quickly."
Sora frowned.
"A—why would he need—"
"You'll understand when you open the cart," Meredith said, already nodding toward the wagon. "Go on. Open it."
Sora hesitated, glanced once at Elara, then crossed to the wagon and drew back the canvas.
The boy sat where he'd been left, blinking against the sudden light, his face turned up toward her—and for one unguarded second, Sora simply stared.
She'd heard he was handsome. Elara had mentioned it once, in passing, the way you'd mention any other detail about stock. She hadn't expected this. Collar and cuffs or not, one look at his face and you'd never have guessed what he was.
"Guard!" she called, sharper than she meant to, already turning. "Bring a mask—now, for the boy, quickly!"
The guard didn't ask questions. He simply moved, snatching a plain cloth mask from a nearby stall and hurrying over, muttering something about scarring as he pressed it into Sora's hands.
Around them, the few onlookers who'd glanced their way simply looked away, already assuming the worst. A masked slave was common enough in a yard like this that no one wasted a second thought on it.
Sora climbed into the wagon herself, tied the mask firmly over the boy's eyes and the upper half of his face, and drew him up by the chain between his cuffs, guiding him toward the depot's inner holding rooms.
As usual, the boy showed no resistance.
Even blindfolded, he followed Sora without protest. He didn't speak. He rarely did, his thoughts already somewhere far beyond the walls around him.
He didn't have time to dwell on what had happened in the yard.
The next few days mattered more.
The auction would decide where he went. Who bought him. What came after.
He knew it would be a gamble.
But he had spent too long waiting for something to change.
Now the chance was finally here.
He didn't know what would happen.
He only knew he couldn't afford to waste it.
The boy followed Sora into the darkness, already thinking about the days ahead.