Sold

The auction house smelled like old blood and desperation.

I stood on the wooden platform, chains cold against my wrists, and counted the buyers in the shadows. Twelve. No, thirteen. One more had slipped in through the side door, face obscured by the hood all the smart ones wore.

Smart. As if anyone who bought people could be called that.

"Lot forty-seven," the auctioneer announced, his voice carrying through the damp stone chamber. "Female. Twenty-four years. Half-blood."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Half-blood. The word that had followed me my entire life. Too vampire for the fae. Too fae for the vampires. Not enough of anything for anyone.

"Fae magic confirmed," the auctioneer continued, consulting his ledger. "Daywalker. Untrained but powerful. Starting bid: five thousand gold."

Five thousand. I was worth more than that when I was twelve. Either the market had crashed or they knew something about me that lowered my value.

Probably the fact that I'd killed my last three owners.

"Six thousand," someone called from the back.

"Seven," another countered.

The bidding moved in steady increments. Eight thousand. Ten. Twelve. The numbers meant nothing to me. Gold changed hands. I changed hands. The only currency that mattered was survival, and I'd been spending that since I could walk.

The door opened again.

Every head in the room turned. Even the guards, who were paid specifically not to react to anything, shifted their weight toward the entrance.

I couldn't see him clearly at first. Just a tall silhouette against the gray light from outside. Then he stepped forward, and the torches on the walls seemed to dim in response.

He was vampire. That much was obvious from the way he moved, too smooth, too certain, like a blade drawn from its sheath. Dark hair swept back from a face that belonged on a coin or a wanted poster. A face that belonged on a coin or a death warrant.

And when his attention settled on me across the crowded room, it pressed against my skin like a hand laid flat.

Old. That gaze carried centuries in a way that had nothing to do with years. Old like mountains. Old like grief.

He didn't take a seat. Didn't blend into the crowd. He walked straight down the center aisle, and the other buyers practically fell over themselves to get out of his way.

"The bidding stands at fifteen thousand," the auctioneer said, his voice suddenly uncertain. "Do I hear..."

"One hundred thousand gold."

The room went silent.

I kept my face blank, but inside, my stomach hollowed out. No one paid that much for a half-blood. No one paid that much for anyone unless they planned to recoup their investment in ways that made death look appealing.

"One hundred thousand," the auctioneer repeated, clearly hoping someone would challenge. "Going once. Going twice."

No one moved. No one breathed.

"Sold."

The stranger climbed the platform stairs. Three steps. Each one echoed like a death knell. The guards unlocked my chains without being asked, stepping back so quickly they nearly tripped over each other.

He knew them. Or they knew him. Neither option comforted me.

"Look at me," he said.

His voice matched that fathomless stare. Commanding. A voice that expected obedience and usually got it.

I lifted my chin. Let him see every ounce of defiance I had left. If he wanted submission, he'd bought the wrong half-blood.

His expression stilled. Not surprise, men like him were probably past surprise, but recognition. Like he'd just confirmed a suspicion.

"You're the one," he said quietly. "Aelwyn. Daughter of Serina."

My mother's name hit me like a slap. No one knew my mother's name. No one who was still alive.

"Who are you?"

He reached out. Slowly, deliberately, he wrapped his hand around my wrist where the iron manacle had left a raw red bracelet.

"I am Cassian," he said. "King of the Midnight Court. And as of this moment, you are mine."

The bond hit before I could react.

It wasn't like anything I'd expected. Not the sharp crack of a whip or the slow burn of a brand. It was more like drowning, being pulled under by currents I couldn't see, couldn't fight, couldn't surface from.

His emotions flooded through me. Determination. Cold calculation. And beneath that, buried so deep I almost missed it, a feeling I recognized as relief.

I screamed.

The sound echoed off the stone walls, bounced back at me in fragments. My knees buckled. He caught me before I hit the platform, one arm circling my waist as though I were something fragile.

I wasn't fragile. I was furious.

"What did you do?" I gasped.

"I bonded you." His voice was calm. Steady. As if he hadn't just shattered every possibility I had of escaping him. "The others would have done worse."

"There is nothing worse..."

"There is." He shifted me in his arms, and I realized distantly that he was carrying me. Off the platform. Through the crowd that parted like water around a stone. "A lord named Varic planned to harvest your magic. Drain you dry while keeping your body alive to regenerate. The process would have taken centuries."

I didn't recognize the name. But the way he said it, like ash in his mouth, told me everything I needed to know.

I wanted to argue. Wanted to spit in his face and tell him that no one had the right to decide my fate, not even to save me from something worse.

But the bond pulsed between us, warm and inescapable, carrying the truth of his words. He wasn't lying. Whatever Varic had planned had been worse. Much worse.

That didn't mean I was grateful.

"You're mine now," Cassian said as he carried me into the cold night air. A carriage waited, black as his reputation, pulled by horses that didn't look entirely alive. "Try to accept it."

I laughed. It came out jagged, half-hysterical.

"Accept it?" I was still feeling his emotions. Still drowning in the weight of centuries-old loneliness that he wore like a second skin. "You've chained me to you forever. You've made it so I can never run, never hide, never be free."

He set me down on the carriage step. Looked at me with that unreadable expression.

"Yes," he said simply. "I have."

And then I realized the worst part.

The bond didn't just let me feel what he felt.

It let him feel me too.

My rage. My fear. My desperate, clawing need to be free of this and everyone and everything that had ever tried to own me.

He felt all of it. And he didn't flinch.

"Sleep," he said, pressing cool fingers to my temple. "We have a long journey ahead."

Magic wrapped around me, his magic, fae-touched and wrong, and my eyes closed against my will.

The last sensation before consciousness slipped away: his loneliness.

Centuries of it.

And gods help me, even as I hated him, some small part of me recognized it. Understood it.

Knew it like I knew the shape of my own hands.

The bond pulsed between us. His emotions. Mine. Braided together now in ways that could never be unwound.

I fell into darkness thinking: He can never hide from me now.

And I can never hide from him.