Page 7

Magic. Slave. Rictus. Night Market. No escape. Words slammed into the walls of my mind, crashing into it as I tried to find something I could grip onto to stay above the smothering waves of confusion.

Rictus, the creature I had once called Mr. Ben, appeared before my cage. “Healing up?”

There was a tint of manipulation in his tone, as if he were trying to coax a startled bird into the palm of his clawed hand before he wrung its neck. I reached down deep inside of myself, pulled together the scraps of my sanity, and welded them together into armor. I had been through hell before and came out the other side hardened, tested, and ready for battle. This was just another war I needed to fight. And fight, I would. I hadn’t survived my entire life with no home, no family, and nothing to my name to be beaten by a rat-faced fuck and his bitch of an assistant.

“Perfectly fine. It hurt a bit at first, but it’s better now.” I leaned forward, still getting used to the way my new body moved. My limbs were longer, thicker proportioned, with a glint of health that was false and only skin deep. He hadn’t bothered to flush me with muscles and toning that would fill out the body he had molded me into. “What now?”

He chuckled, a slimy thing that slid over my too-tender skin and settled like a wet film of kitchen mold. “So eager for the block, eh? What shall we call you, little sun?”

He was tilting his head, appraising me and his handiwork. I saw a distorted image in the oil slick of his eyes, and pearly-gold reflected back at me.

I leapt at the chance to seize something back, even if it was the smallest of victory. “Cricket.”

“Like the bug?” His already twisted face twitched more with distaste.

“Like the bug. It’s what my mother called me all my life.”

I hoped the lie was as sweet as honey.

A devious smile slid into the jagged slash that was his mouth. “Is it now? A mother’s love is oh so delicious. Thank you, Cricket. You’ll be Cricket, then.”

I heard the muffled hiss of disapproval in the distance. Was it Rook or Cypress this time? Or were there more of us lurking out in the black?

Rictus extended a hand and slid it across my cheek, stroking me like his favorite pet cat. He tilted his head left and right, watching me. “With a little more pushed into that tongue lock, you’d be fit for the Ard Rí’s palace, you know. Shame to sell you off to Árus Aine. Cheap bitches. I could see you curled at the Ard Rí’s foot himself. Would you like that, Cricket? To be the favored pet of the Ard Rí?”

He had fallen into petting me like that same cat I had imagined. The urge to bite down as hard as I could and rip off each one of his gross ashen grey fingers boiled beneath my skin. My teeth itched to taste his flesh, and my ears longed to hear him scream the unshed agony he had visited upon me. I held back, shivering with the effort to hold myself still.

He mistook my shaking for enjoyment and dug his fingers deeper into my hair. As it dusted over my shoulders, I noted its new length. It had once been shoulder length, manageable, and easy to care for. I was now aware of it pooling down my back and around my feet as I kneeled in my living cage.

“Aelin, send a message to the birds. I think that Bastard still owes us a favor. Call in the boon. I think the Ard Rí or his bitch sister would love this new pet of ours. Be sure to have our agents in the crowd when she climbs the block, bidding against them. I imagine The Emerald Scythe and Lady Syphon will also be bidding. I’ve done some of my finest work on our little sun here. Be sure that they drive up the price to get that butcher’s attention. The Ard Rí likes only the most coveted of creatures to serve at his foot.” He was running his fingers through the length of hair he had pulled from my scalp while he tortured me to warp me into whatever it was that this heinous creature found beautiful. He pulled a length into my view, and it shone lustrous and almost pearl white in the dim light. Where the light would bounce from the gloss, it shone a burnished gold.

I hated it.

He rolled the lock of hair in his fingers, as if lost in thought, as he watched the soft light dance on his handiwork. “Yes, my finest work. I wish I could keep you, little sun. I would parade you before my peers. Show them what Old Rictus can do when given the right materials. Materials that bend and break so easily, that mold so easily to my hand. Even your ears bent to my hand as easy as soft clay. Strange, that. Usually have to pull as hard as I can to reshape your ears. It’s the hardest part, you know, little sun. Making crude little human ears into points that can pass for Fae ears. Did you know that? It’s like your ears themselves resist the magic, as if they know it is foreign to them. But yours? They nearly sighed with delight to be stretched into shape.”

A sharp glance was tossed up to me, accusation hovering in the bottomless wells of darkness as he scrutinized me as if seeing me for the first time. I stayed utterly still, utterly silent. Rule #3: Act when action is needed. Watch and listen when it is not. I had made that rule when I was thirteen and deep in my own anger. I hadn’t encountered a higher-stakes situation than this. Rictus had already proved he held perfect dominion over my flesh when he was amused with me. I didn’t want to imagine what he could do with it, what horror he could visit upon me, when he was no longer entertained.

He leaned in close again, the sharp point of his nose digging into my newly formed one.

“Why is that, little sun?” He let the silence draw out between us, hanging on the rise and fall of my breath as I tried to hold perfectly still. “Speak, Cricket.”

I didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to tell him a damned thing. I wanted him to give me all his secrets and give him none of my own. Not that I had an explanation for him. But I had no control over my mouth, and words came spilling out of me before I could hold them back. It felt like Rictus had reached into my throat and yanked them from me, the pressure in my throat and the heaviness of my tongue burning as I spoke.

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know you existed before today. I don’t know why my ears liked your magic!”

Rictus watched me before leaning back and nodding, seemingly satisfied with the answer he had pulled from me.

A ball of gossamer, wine-colored fabric was thrown at me as Rictus moved away. “Get dressed, little sun. We leave for the Night Market.”

He faded into the murk, and his footsteps were swallowed by the dark as I began to unwind what was thrown at me. Despite the length of the gown, there was very little left to the imagination. The gossamer was a mere suggestion of a dress, diaphanous despite its modest cut.

I dressed as I was told to do, watching as foreign hands maneuvered the planes of a stranger’s body. Whose legs were these? Long and plush, with silk and the faintest hint of burnished gold beneath the surface of pale skin.

When I was ten, I had fallen off a bike and embedded gravel into my left knee, leaving three large, raised scars. I knew those scars as well as I knew the sound of my own voice . . . They were gone. The clover I had gotten tattooed on the top of my foot as a joke when I was nineteen was also gone. It was all gone. The map of scars, marks, and tattoos that had told the story of Sóna Mac Raith was washed away.

Remembering what Rictus had said about my ears, I shot my hand up to trace their outline. The lobes were the same, though I could no longer feel the three divots where earrings would rest. But as I traced my finger up the shell of my ear, my hand began to shake. Where once a soft rounding I had punctured with a bar was now a smooth plane that tilted up into a point.

I wanted to scream.