Young. That was the thing that hit hardest — 'young,' the twenty-something version of the face Sofia knew, the version before the small lines at the eyes and the silver threading the black of her hair. The face before everything that had come after.
She was blinking.
Her mother was blinking in the torchlight, her eyes adjusting — those , pale, silver-blue mermaid eyes that Sofia had inherited in diluted form, wide now with the startled, overwhelmed focus of someone who has been brought into a space that their body and mind are both refusing to accept as real.
Her hand came up.
Found the glass.
Palm flat against it.
From the inside, looking out at the masked rows of men who were looking back.
The bidding started before the platform had fully settled.
"Five hundred!"
"Six hundred!"
"Eight!"
