by Amber Argyle
“Cinder!” Darsam called after her. She heard him following. She pushed open one of the pivot doors and slipped inside the building. The dress was damp, and she knew the fabric clung to her and revealed every curve and angle. Her head swung back and forth as she searched the room.
She felt Darsam behind her. “Cinder, please, you need to understand what’s happening.”
Suddenly, the man whom her mother had met with at the Sand Snake was beside him, pulling him back. “You’re attracting too much attention.”
Darsam’s jaw tightened stubbornly. “Ashar, she doesn’t know.”
Ashar gripped his arm. “Move, Sam.” The older man practically dragged Darsam away from Cinder.
She scanned the crowd and saw Naiba standing with Zura on the platform. Holding an intricately carved box, the mistress smiled and said, “We are pleased to announce that thirty-four new patrons have been added to the House of Night.”
Thirty-four? Cinder would have been shocked to hear of more than ten. In a daze, she wove through the crowd toward the platform.
“Magian and I will bring your contracts in the next few days. We are so very pleased to add you to Naiba’s roster.” Magian handed out peaches to Naiba’s new patrons. There was the pig-faced man, grinning and holding the peach like a prize. Then the man who had pulled Naiba into his lap. The man who’d shown interest in the girl’s stories. And then the three men who’d made obscene comments.
Zura had accepted all of them.
“There has to be some kind of mistake,” Cinder mouthed, not believing what she was seeing.
Naiba was visibly trembling, her face ashen as Zura led her through the crowd, box in hand, toward someone in front of Cinder—the highest bidder. Cinder forced her way past the pig-faced man and saw the man they were heading toward. Durux. Naiba realized it at the same time and balked, her head shaking frantically.
Before Cinder knew what she was doing, she had rushed over and inserted herself between Zura and Durux, one hand raised to the older woman. “You can’t do this.”
Instead of slapping her or calling for her guards, Zura lifted a single eyebrow and spoke loudly. “My dearest new patrons, take a moment to meet Naiba.” After motioning for her guards to stay behind, Zura took hold of Cinder’s arm and led her toward her office. “Naiba earned enough to become a companion—Durux paid very highly for her debut—and you, my dear Cinder, will become a seamstress. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“The House of Night specializes in performers. Naiba is twelve years old!” Cinder seethed. “That’s what I was preparing her for. She’s too young to be a prostitute!”
Inside the office, Magian was already hard at work. She barely looked up at Zura and Cinder before continuing to write out contracts. Zura shut the door and moved to slowly pace before her table. “Things are changing—Idara is changing,” she told Cinder. “If my house is to survive, so must we.”
“Do you know what that monster will do to her?”
“All thanks to you. You managed to train her, dress her in these beautiful garments. Everyone is talking about them, by the way. You already have orders.” Zura tapped her own index finger. “You’ve done it. Proven yourself worthy to become my seamstress and trainer for all future girls who come into my house.” She paused and smiled cruelly. “From slave’s daughter to slave driver—who would have thought you would so easily turn on your own?”
Zura stepped past her and opened the door, giving Cinder a full view of Durux—his big ears pink with excitement and his close-set gaze fixated on Naiba in a way that made Cinder shudder.
“Now, I don’t want to hear another word about it. This is a day to celebrate.” Zura started out, but Cinder reached out and grabbed her forearm.
“Naiba won’t survive him.”
Zura lifted her eyebrows at Cinder’s hand on her arm. But she didn’t slap her and jerk away like Cinder expected. She simply shrugged. “There is a very strict loss-of-life clause in the contract. I will be more than compensated for any damage or death.”
Over the older woman’s shoulder, Cinder shot Naiba a desperate glance, but the girl was trapped in Durux’s gaze. He moved to pry the box from the girl’s clenched fists, not bothering to open it. Then he reached out and caught one of the tears streaming down Naiba’s cheek and brought it to his lips to taste it.
“She’s just a child,” Cinder tried again. “You can’t hand her over to a monster like Durux!”
Zura produced a sly smile. “There is another way.”
Cinder studied her with a growing wariness.
“I’ve always wanted you as one of my companions, Cinder,” Zura went on.
Cinder remembered being sick with a fever one night as a young girl. She’d wanted her mother, not Holla. So, in the dead of night, she had snuck away to her mother’s room. There, Cinder had seen for herself what went on between the companions and the patrons. The thought of strange men touching her, possessing her, made her sick. That’s how she felt now. Sick and fevered and desperate. “I will never be a companion,” she told the mistress.
Zura raised a single eyebrow. “Even if I allow you to purchase Naiba to sweeten the deal?” she asked in a low tone. “In fact, I’ve been holding an auction for you tonight, as well as for Naiba. Because you are a freewoman, we would split your commission 70/30. Within your first year, you could pay off your purchase of Naiba outright. Return her to her poor father. You already have enough potential clients to pay your debts and purchase your whole family in just a few short years.”
Cinder had watched the light die from the new companions’ eyes. Watched them cover their hard, broken edges with masks of makeup and fine robes. She’d watched her grandmother and mother be caned for failing to please their clients. “I can’t,” she choked out.
“All because you detest the idea of men touching you?” Zura scoffed. “Because that will happen one day anyway. Might as well be paid for it.”
“You did this on purpose,” Cinder exclaimed. “Chose a young girl, fully planning to auction her off as a prostitute. Hoping I’d want to help her.”
Zura snorted. “I’ve done much more than that. I spread the word far and wide that I had two possible companions up for auction tonight. The one with the highest bid would become a companion. It was a marketing tactic. I had to do something to save my business from Jatar. And it worked even better than I expected. Do you want to guess which girl had the higher bids?”
“That’s why you had me circulating food to the men. Why you had me wear this dress.” Dazed, Cinder looked around. She had wondered where her mother was, but now she realized Zura had made sure she was occupied somewhere else and unable to intervene.
Cinder had to choose between saving herself and saving Naiba. But hadn’t she already sworn she would do whatever it took to protect the girl? Her eyes slipped closed and when she opened them again, her gaze locked with Darsam’s. His expression was hard, fury sparking in his eyes, and she realized he’d known this would happen. Had tried to warn her. He nodded to her once. She blinked in surprise, remembering how he’d asked her to trust him. She counted to ten and then back down again before she turned to Zura.
“There are other ways to make you comply, Cinder,” the older woman said. “I don’t want to have to use them, but I will.”
Cinder’s mother, her grandmother. Darsam had been right—Cinder had never had a choice. “I would have a freewoman’s terms, which means I have a choice in my patrons?”
Zura nodded. “Within reason.”
Cinder felt everything slipping away. Her bright future. Her chance to finally make it in this world. Magian brought out a rolled scroll and held her a quill with a flourish. “I cannot read it,” Cinder said, her cheeks burning with humiliation.
Then Darsam was in the office with them, taking the vellum gently from her fingers. His eyes scanned it, his jaw growing harder with each word. Finally, he nodded to Cinder. “It’s a fair contract.”
She stared into hi
s dark eyes and willed him to give her some sort of hope. He managed a crooked, pained smile, his eyes begging her to trust him. “I’m just trying to help you.”
Not the first time he’d said that—and yet, some part of her actually believed him this time. She took a deep breath, let it out, and made her mark on the line.
Zura rolled up the parchment with a flourish and strode toward the platform. She held both her hands in the air, calling for quiet. When the room finally went still, she proclaimed, “And the winning companion for the night is Cinder!”
With those words, Cinder’s knees buckled. She knelt on the floor, bracing herself with her hand to keep from falling over. Her eyes shut against the dizziness assaulting her. I can’t breathe . . . I can’t breathe . . . I can’t breathe.
A cheer rose up around her and she heard men slapping each other on the back. Their words washed over her without meaning, pinning her down. She wasn’t sure how long she was there before Zura’s feet appeared before her. “Get up.”
Cinder pushed one leg under her and then the other. A hand under her arm guided her to her feet. She didn’t even have the wherewithal to see who was holding her. She stood swaying, unable to process what had just happened to her.
“I wanted the Luathan girl,” grumped the pig-faced man.
“Then you should have opened your purse a little wider,” Zura replied. When he continued to look unhappy, she patted his shoulder. “This bidding war has been such a success, we’ll be sure to do it again soon.”
Again. Bidding war. Cinder wavered on her feet, their enthusiasm breaking across her like a tsunami. There was a brief, hard pressure on her arm. She followed the pressure to find Darsam staring down at her. For a moment, he looked deep into her eyes, his gaze full of promises. Then he was gone.
She would have fallen again, but Farood had stepped in on her other side, holding her arm to keep her upright.
Zura raised her hands, calling for quiet. “In light of recent events, we will have a short break where you may make a new bid or update your existing one with Magian, who is in my office.”
They mean to do this tonight? I will face my first patron tonight? Cinder’s knees buckled again—the thug’s hard grip the only thing keeping her from collapsing.
Her searching gaze found Naiba, who rushed toward her through the crowd, tears streaming down her face. “Cinder!” Naiba wrapped her up in both arms, her grip crushing.
Zura rolled her eyes and called for Farush. “Take her back to the servants’ house. If she won’t stay, lock her in the cellar.”
He jerked the wailing Naiba away, and Cinder watched as he flung her over his shoulder and hauled her toward the servants’ house. The men in the room simply parted to let him pass, clearly not at all worried about the sobbing child.
No. They were far too worried about getting their bids in—their bids for Cinder.
“You used to love to dance as a child,” Zura told Cinder as if the memories were pleasant ones. “You will dance those same clannish dances tonight, and you will sing. Because the more money you make, the sooner your time will be done. Am I clear?”
I swear, I will kill you someday. I will put a knife through your black heart and watch the light fade from your eyes, Cinder thought. But she forced herself to say, “Yes, Mother.”
Zura turned on her heel and gestured to the open stage. Cinder’s face tingled, a thousand needles pricking her at once. She forced herself to walk, one step in front of the other, but it was as if she moved upstream against a great current. Men’s deep voices mingled with the merry, tinkling tones of the women., the sound flowing around her, and then continuing on without pause.
All voices fell silent as Cinder passed. She lifted her chin, meeting no one’s gaze. Yet she couldn’t help but notice Durux waiting beside the platform, a knowing smile on his lips—like she was his already. A trembling started deep inside Cinder, and she faltered a little. A nudge from Farush got her moving again.
Slowly, the men who came to bid peeled away from the others and followed Cinder toward the platform. She climbed the stairs and walked to the center of the dais, the flickering lamplight making the dress flash with her every move. The crimson of the gown deepened to a heart’s blood-red.
Everyone was strangely silent, staring at her, just as they had stared at Naiba. Cinder tried to count the men in the room, but there were too many and there wasn’t enough time. All of them Idarans. All of them her enemy. Men who would use her for her body while pretending they weren’t. And she would be used, while pretending she wasn’t. It was a sick madness—one she was drowning in—but there was no escape.
She turned toward the musicians; all the women took turns providing the music. Cinder’s dress felt too tight across her chest, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She closed her eyes. The music rang out bright and hot, like a midsummer day—the sun beating down on fields of ripe grasses. With the dress shifting against her legs, Cinder began to sway like wind spinning through a village. Women sat at their spindles, men worked the teams, and children’s laughter bubbled over the breeze. There were pigs and horses and sheep and dogs. It made a brilliant cacophony of color and texture.
The wind left the village and shot past the crystal-clear waters of a river banked with mossy stones, then bounced over steep hills. Light reflected off the bits of glass in Cinder’s dress like sunlight catching the top of a stream. She reached up and took hold of the wind. A heaviness had pushed her limbs down, trapping her in the dark cold, but now the weight lifted. She was the wind, and wind could never be caged.
Cinder surged forward, free to dance as she used to as a child. Now the wind labored over a great mountain, the proud, strong trees causing it to lose its strength. It faltered as it broke upon the glacier, a dirty gray having robbed the snow of its brightness. The wind wandered, lost. But the cold of the place also gave it strength. Soon, it was cutting through deep crevasses, plunging down past a brilliant waterfall, carrying along the mist with it. It rolled over a surface of a pool and rippled it like the bottom of a sandy lake. Then there was no life. Only bare rock and barren emptiness.
Now the wind howled, demanding to be free. It surged over the mountain peak and spilled into the world. Free at last. Free to surge into the never-ending sky. The music faded away.
Cinder had come to a stop in the center of the floor. She could still feel the wind inside her, still see the place her mother had described to her every night before she’d gone to sleep. Cinder tasted the bite of a winter wind on her tongue. She sang of this place, a place of summer’s heat and winter’s kiss. A place of mighty beauty. When the song ended, she came back into her body slowly and with great reluctance.
Chest heaving with exertion, she looked down at the men, meeting their gazes for the first time. They stared at her, enraptured. She would survive, because they could not own her heart. That was now and would forever be her own.
A single tear rolled down her cheek. Cinder knew it would smear her makeup, leaving a plunging drop of black down her powdered cheek, but she didn’t care. Let them know what they were taking from her. Even if only for a moment.
Zura came onto the stage, her razor-sharp stare telling Cinder that her little display had better pay off. She turned to face the men, her smile perfectly fixed in place. “Three generations of clannish women. The newest one is yours for the taking. Any remaining bids will be collected as my men circulate the room. Place your best offer in the chest.”
As the men wrote down their final bids, Farush and Farood wove through the crowd to gather the folded bits of fibrous paper. Magian appeared, toting a small table. She stood before it and smartly sorted the bids from highest to lowest as companions wove through the room, bringing drinks to all the men. Cinder ignored them, concentrated on the feeling that she was looking down from somewhere far above.
Magian finished and brought Zura a piece of paper. The older woman’s hand trembled a little. When she had finished reading, she lifted her h
ead and visually searched the crowd. Then she turned to Magian, who handed her a small gold box with a ruby in the center of the lid. Zura placed the chest in Cinder’s hands. It was just like the box Naiba had held earlier.
“Come with me,” Zura said crisply.
Cinder snatched her arm. “Not Durux.”
Zura lifted a brow. “He paid handsomely for you. Turning him down is turning down a lot of money.”
“Never!” Cinder said vehemently.
Zura grumbled something about how it was easier when her companions were slaves. “Fine.”
Cinder counted down as they descended the stairs. She counted as she and Zura wove through the men, who parted as she passed, their gazes disappointed when Cinder didn’t stop. Five. She recognized some of the men from the last few days. Four. But she knew where they were headed. Three. She struggled to remain above the thought of any man touching her. Two. But when she paused before a man and blinked up at him, suddenly she could breathe again.
“Give him the chest, Cinder,” Zura prodded.
Cinder stared at his hard expression. His unwavering gaze. Her mother had said to find a man with kind eyes and deep pockets. Darsam’s kind eyes might be a lie, but he was better than Durux. Better than any other man here.
“Give him the chest,” Zura said through clenched teeth.
Cinder stretched out her arms and offered the chest to Darsam. He took it from her, his hands never touching hers. He pulled back the lid to reveal a wine-red pomegranate. He removed it from the chest, broke it in half, and popped a handful of seeds into his mouth. The rest of the men filed away.
“She will serve you a private dinner in her rooms,” Zura declared, smiling at Cinder. “Her room has—”
“I already ate,” Darsam said.
Zura blinked at him. “Drinks, then. Or perhaps you would like to smoke. We have—”
He tossed the rest of the pomegranate at her. “All I need, Mistress Zura, is privacy.”
Zura blinked in surprise.
Darsam grasped Cinder’s arm and steered her toward the clannish section.