Page 8 of Bought for Blood

They’ve dressed her like us, dark green silk, her hair loose and bright down her back, and it’s the first time in a year I’ve seen her standing. She’s tall. The cuffs on her wrists are double-banded, and her two handlers stand a full step further off than anyone stands from the rest of us. Even scrubbed and wrapped in silk, they give her room.

Her head turns. Gold-ringed eyes come down the line and find me. Neither of us moves—not with this many guards watching—but her eyes hold mine a beat longer than they need to, and that’s enough.

It helps more than it should. Somebody in this line knows my face. If I go through a door tonight, somebody will notice that I’m gone.

Then the door at the far end of the corridor opens. Handlers come off the wall. The pin woman vanishes behind her screen. The crying somewhere down the line stops mid-breath. A man walks in carrying a tablet, talking as he comes, and the room isn’t reacting to him. The room is reacting to the man behind him. He isn’t talking. He doesn’t need to.

He’s tall. Dark-haired, pale. Nothing about him needs to try. He’s beautiful. There’s no other word for it.

I could poke my own eyes out. Eleven women waiting to be bought, and this is what my body decides to notice.

My wolf comes all the way up. Then she stops.

She can’t read him.

She reads everyone. It’s what’s left of her. Sickness, lies, which guard’s afraid of which. She can always get the measure of a person. She reaches for this man and can’t fathom him. No heat off his skin. Barely a scent; cold, clean, nothing alive enough forher to sort. She doesn’t growl. She leans forward. My hands go cold. She’s never done that before.

He pauses and looks down the line of us.

“Is this all of them?” he says, not looking at the man with the tablet.

“All of the females, my lord,” the man says. “We have males too, but I presumed that your tastes—”

“Don’t presume to know my tastes.” There’s a slight accent to his voice. Something melodic.

He begins to walk, slowing here and there, his eyes moving over faces. He stops at one, takes her chin, and turns her head from side to side. She licks her lips and whimpers in a way that doesn’t sound like fear.

Silk rustles, feet shift, someone clears her throat. I grit my teeth and keep my hands at my sides.

The girl with the earrings breaks when he’s three girls away.

“Please.” Her voice cracks on it. “Sir. Please. I’m strong, I can work. I’ll do anything.Anything.Please.”

The whole line tenses for the correction that always follows noise. It doesn’t come. He passes her without slowing. His head never turns. He didn’t see her at all.

The next woman drops her eyes and angles her body toward him as he comes, offering.

Is she that desperate to get out?

Of course she is. We all are.

He passes her the same way.

I do what I’ve done for a year. Eyes forward, level with the middle distance. Face quiet. Hands against the silk. It’s the only trick I have. Then something lifts off my skin that I didn’t expect, thin and cold, the glamour coming up on its own. I keep thinking I’ve lost it, but then it’ll show itself again. It doesn’t go down.

He stops in front of me.

The corridor goes so quiet I can hear the lamps humming behind the screen. This close, I can see what’s wrong with his eyes. It’s the color. Violet gone dark. A color eyes don’t come in. They move over me without warmth, without interest. Not a look. An inventory check. The guards look at the pretty ones a different way. This isn’t that.

He waits. I know what he’s waiting for, because it’s what the others gave him. The flinch. The plea. The dropped eyes. My heart is going hard enough to shift the silk over it.

So I break the silence myself.

“Am I supposed to beg?” I keep my voice level and quiet, just for him. “I’ve forgotten how. But the girl three down does it beautifully, if that’s what you’re shopping for.”

Behind him, the tablet man stops breathing.

The man in the suit looks at me for one more long moment. When he answers, his voice matches the rest of him. Calm. Exact. Courteous enough to raise the hair on my arms.