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There’s a loudwhooshbefore we’re deposited in the middle of a massive ballroom. We exchange frowns.
“Where are we?” Gretta asks.
I let go of her and move further into the room. It’s empty but decorated for an upcoming event. “Something isn’t right.”
I reach back for her hand, grateful when she immediately takes it. “Think of the tunnels.”
She nods, and we both close our eyes.
Another whoosh, and my hand empties of Gretta’s. My eyes pop open, and dread fills me as I’m right outside the thin black door to the exclusive market from last night. Gretta is gone, and I flex my fingers, thinking maybe her hand will magically reappear in mine.
That’s the thing about magic. It obeys your deepest desires. If you don’t know yourself well enough, you’ll never control it. My guess is Gretta hasn’t grasped it yet, and her desires must be vivid enough that she was taken away to wherever the magic felt she needed to be.
I peer down the tunnel, but she’s gone.It’s fine. It’s better this way. Now, she won’t get hurt.But I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right as I push the door open and step into the exclusive marketplace.
My heart rate picks up as I find myself at the back of a large crowd. I make myself smaller, slouching and keeping my head down as I try to see what’s going on.
“—take your time perusing the product. No more than four to a tent,” a man up on the stage says. He stands at a podium with a gavel. “Remember the numbers of those you like, and report back to the stage by the end of the night to place a bid.”
I frown, and The Prince’s words come back to me.Tonight, they’re selling a product.I follow two taller figures toward the first tent, but my feet plant themselves firmly outside of it when I catch a glimpse of a familiar face within.
It’s them. Horror pools inside me.It’s The Beast’s girls.I spin around, survey every face for a navy mask.
A girl screams two tents down and laughter follows. The scream, the dark chuckles – they echo, bounce around my skull, cram down my throat.
My gut squeezes, and I race out to the tunnel. I double over and hack up nothing — my stomach too empty to vomit. My eyes stick to the door, and I can’t look away, can’tunhearthat scream. I pull knives into my hands, grit my teeth, and shove back inside.
I know what kind of wrath will await me once I do this. I know I’ll likely die by The Beast’s hands, or I’ll be enslaved just like the poor girls in these tents.
But as it turns out, I do have a motherfucking conscience, and lately, she’s been reeling her lethal head.
The crowd vanishes into the tents, and even the man at the podium partakes. I open the tent flap to the first and grip my knives harder.
My blinders are on. They have to be, or I’ll fall to my knees right here and now, and I’ll beg the Gods to take me away.
So I don’t look. I don’t try to assess whether there’s any kind of innocence in this tent.
Instead, I stab a man in the neck, while another is too busy feasting on his prey to notice.
I cover the man’s mouth to stifle his choked surprise, then as he slumps to the ground, I jump on top of the next and drive my blades into either side of his skull.
Usually, I enjoy my kills.
This — I’m going through the motions. This — I’ve done this before. Except, there was no scared girl gaping up at me, her body scratched and bruised.
No, there’d only been me and them.
As the last man in the tent drops, I press a blood-covered finger to my lips and give the girl a stern look.
She nods fiercely — number two, her tag says — and darts out of the tent for the exit.
I’m right behind her.
Then I’m in the next tent.
Again.
Again.
