They drag me to the platform barefoot, blood still drying on my back.
The whip cracks against my back, and I bite down on my tongue to keep from crying out. Blood fills my mouth - copper and salt, the taste of defiance. Rain pounds the auction platform, turning the wooden boards slick beneath my bare feet. Each drop that hits my wounds is a tiny mercy, washing away the blood before it can dry and stick to the torn fabric of what used to be a dress.
"Next lot," the auctioneer bellows over the storm. His voice cuts through the rain like a blade. "Young female, strong stock. Bidding starts at fifty gold."
I keep my eyes fixed on the horizon, where lightning splits the sky in jagged lines. The crowd below is a sea of hungry faces, their voices rising and falling like waves as they shout numbers that might as well be my death sentence. Fifty. Seventy-five. One hundred.
I am not here. I am somewhere else - anywhere else. A place where the rain doesn't taste like tears and strangers don't bid on my life like I'm livestock at a market.
"One hundred fifty!"
"Two hundred!"
But I can't escape the iron shackles around my wrists, the weight of the chains that bind me to this moment. My legs shake from hours of standing. My vision blurs at the edges - blood loss, maybe. Or exhaustion.
"Two hundred fifty!" The voice belongs to a fat merchant with rings on every finger. He's eyeing me like I'm a prize mare, and I know exactly what kind of work he has in mind.
My stomach churns, but I lift my chin higher. Let them see that whatever they buy, it won't be broken. Not yet.
"Three hundred!" Another voice, younger. Eager.
The bidding war intensifies, voices overlapping in a cacophony of greed. I close my eyes and try to remember warmth - sunlight on my face, soft grass beneath my feet, the sound of laughter that wasn't cruel. But those memories feel like dreams now, too fragile to hold onto.
"Four hundred gold!"
The crowd roars its approval. Four hundred is more than most slaves bring in a year of auctions. I should feel flattered, maybe. Instead, I feel hollow.
"Do I hear four-fifty? Four-fifty for this rare beauty?"
Silence stretches like a held breath. The rain seems to pause, drops suspended in the air like the crowd's anticipation. Maybe this is it. Maybe the fat merchant with his sweaty palms and leering smile will own me after all.
Then Prince Kael Drakmoor's voice cuts through the storm like winter wind.
"Five hundred gold."
The words are spoken quietly, but they carry across the square with absolute authority. Conversations die mid-sentence. Even the auctioneer's hammer pauses mid-swing.
I open my eyes and see him.
Prince Kael stands apart from the crowd, tall and pale as carved marble. His dark hair is untouched by the rain, as if even the storm wouldn't dare dampen his perfection. But it's his eyes that make my breath catch - black and depthless, like the space between stars, and fixed on me with predatory intensity.
He's beautiful in the way that deadly things are beautiful. Sharp. Dangerous. Perfect.
"Five hundred gold," he repeats, his voice carrying easily across the silent square. "Final offer."
The auctioneer's hammer falls with a sound like thunder.
"Sold! To His Royal Highness, Prince Kael Drakmoor!"
And just like that, I'm his.
The crowd erupts in whispers and speculation, but I barely hear them. All I can focus on is the prince as he approaches the platform, moving with the fluid grace of a predator. Each step is deliberate, controlled, inevitable.
He stops at the base of the platform and looks up at me. For a moment, our eyes meet across the rain-soaked distance, and something passes between us - recognition, maybe, or challenge. His gaze travels over my torn dress, my bloodied back, the defiant tilt of my chin.
His lips curve in what might be a smile, but there's no warmth in it.
"Bring her," he commands the guards, his voice silk wrapped around steel. "She's mine now."
As they unlock my shackles and drag me down from the platform, I catch one last glimpse of his face. Those dark eyes hold promises I don't understand yet - of pain and pleasure, of breaking and remaking, of a future I can't begin to imagine.
The rain continues to fall, washing away the blood from the auction block, erasing the evidence of what I was.
But as Prince Kael's carriage door closes behind me, shutting out the storm and the crowd and everything I've ever known, I realize that who I was doesn't matter anymore.
Because now I belong to him.
And somehow, that terrifies me more than anything else ever has.