Chapter 4: The Price of a Cheap Meal (2)
A clerk recorded her in a ledger with mechanical efficiency: "Female, twenty, noble-born, unawakened, cosmetic value only. Recommend mine work or brothel placement depending on buyer preference."
Unawakened. Even here, even as property, that word followed her like a curse.
Seraphina caught her reflection in a cracked mirror propped against the warehouse wall. She didn't recognize herself: hair matted with dirt and blood, face bruised from the wagon journey, eyes hollow and empty.
The girl in the mirror looked already dead.
"Miss?" The small voice came from her left—the child from the wagon, a boy with enormous dark eyes and a split lip. "Miss, are the nice people coming to save us?"
Seraphina opened her mouth to offer comfort, to lie the way adults did to children, to promise that someone would come—
But no words emerged.
No one was coming. Not her father, who'd watched Lady Marguerite dump water over her head and turned away. Not her sister Lillian, who'd laughed at her misery. Not Cedric, who'd sold her for the price of settling a gambling debt.
No one had ever been coming.
"I don't know," Seraphina whispered finally, because even in this hell, she couldn't bring herself to lie to a child.
The boy's face crumpled, but he nodded as if he'd expected that answer.
They were locked in a cellar beneath the warehouse to await auction day—a space so dark and damp that Seraphina couldn't tell where the walls ended and the shadows began. There was no light, no water, barely enough room to sit without touching the person beside you.
Seraphina pressed her back against cold stone and let her mind finally process everything that had happened.
Cedric had drugged her. Had carried her unconscious body to these people. Had negotiated a price—ten gold coins, the cost of a cheap meal—and walked away.
She remembered every excuse she'd made for him over the past year. Every time he'd canceled their meetings or shown up late or looked at her with barely concealed disgust. She'd told herself he was busy, that he was stressed, that she just needed to be more understanding, more patient, more worthy.
And all along, he'd been calculating her value in gold.
The boy from earlier curled against her side, seeking warmth in the freezing cellar. His small body shook with silent sobs.
Seraphina felt wetness on her cheeks and realized she was crying for the first time since her mother's funeral eight years ago. Not dramatic tears—just a slow, steady leak, like something inside her had finally cracked open.
Above them, Garveth and his men laughed and drank. Someone mentioned that tomorrow's auction would be "well-attended—lots of interested buyers for fresh noble stock."
Seraphina closed her eyes and made herself a promise in the suffocating dark:
If she survived tomorrow, she would burn the memory of Cedric Thorne's face into ash, along with every person who had ever looked at her and seen nothing worth saving.
The boy's breathing eventually evened into sleep. Seraphina held him carefully, this child who'd asked if nice people were coming, and whispered to the darkness:
"No one's coming to save us. So we'll have to save ourselves."
She didn't know how. She didn't even know if survival was possible.
But the alternative—accepting that Cedric had been right, that she really was worth nothing more than ten gold coins—was unbearable.
So she would find a way. Or she would die trying.
Either option was better than this.
**