Chapter 1: The Auction Block

Scarlett

My wrists were strapped in silver cuffs.

Not the kind a human would wrap around themselves for decoration or ostentation—though—but the kind sewn up in metal and enchantment, cold against my skin without effort to draw.

My harsh gasps were sharp pulls, my heart beating so fast I could almost hear it clang off the coffers of the dead.

It was The Vault.

A pen in which animals like me were led to be sold. Not only humans—but stamped humans. The special variety. The forbidden variety. The expensive variety. I still didn't know which of them I was. Perhaps all of them.

"Keep your head down," the handler growled next to me, pulling on the chain as if I were a sale animal.

I did not look at him. I did not say a word. I had learned, far too cruelly and painfully, that the only thing left to me to employ as ammunition was silence.

The warm glow of the yellow lanterns hanging in mid-air. Incense and blood twirled in the air—what to appease the mob, the other to rage them on. Eyes blazed behind the velvet drapes. Whispers wrapped the air like smoke wrapped in darkness. I could not see their faces, but I felt them—dozens, perhaps scores, gazing at us with hunger and authority in their eyes.

Not all of them were vampires. There were worse.

The auctioneer stood in the center of the stage, dressed in black silk and smiling like at a party, not at the scale of human lives. "Lot Forty-Seven," he announced loudly, his voice somehow charged with some magical charm, smooth and dramatic. "Unblemished. Nineteen. Human. No allegiance is known. But what about this one? special—

He lay on me, hands buried deep in my chin and face pressed into the light. My jaw was set. I did not spit. He smiled harder again.

"—is what's in her blood. Something old. Something rare."

Gaspings and mutterings rolled behind the drapes. My stomach curled up.

I didn't understand what he was saying. I didn't want to. My father had told my mother, in an almost whispering voice, that I was cursed, that my nightmares were not dreams. Two nights later, they were dead.

I was kidnapped the next day.

"Let us begin with an opening bid of a hundred thousand crowns," the auctioneer snarled.

The prices rose together. Whispers on the fringes of tapestries—warm and some like; cold and icy some; not human even. The single voice, its timbre a razor's, and its singing pushed the price to half a million in a minute.

And silence.

And then. Him.

"I bid one million crowns."

The voice was deep. Regal. With the commanding quality of boredom that only a human with too much to endure could manage. Not a growl. It didn't have to be.

Even the auctioneer hesitated.

"A generous bid," he muttered reluctantly. "From House Nightshade."

The room was motionless as stone, holding its breath.

I'd never set eyes on him. But I knew. A change. A chill at my ankles. A void that filled the Vault without anyone noticing.

"No other bids?" the auctioneer's voice teetered on the edge of despair.

Nothing.

"Going once… twice…" He slammed the gavel onto the podium. "Sold. To Prince Kael of the Nightshade Dynasty."

My legs turned to jelly.

Prince. Vampire prince. My purchaser.

The chain was yanked tight, and I was pushed off the stage, thrust down a blood-stinking and desperate-stinking corridor. I was pulled into a private room—taller than the others but cold somehow. Black marble walls and magic filled the air.

I had not even had time to think. Not until the door creaked open—and he stepped in.

Kael.

He did not look like a monster.

He was flesh sin. Dark hair darkened to midnight, his skin to white ghost, and eyes—oh god, his eyes—purple and silver thunder, glowing softly in the night. He wore a black coat with silver thread embroidery, and he walked like the smooth slide of a predator who could afford to take his time to pounce on you.

He stretched out before me. Spoke not a word. Glared at me.

I glared at him.

I waited for him to touch me. Command me. Enthrall me.

He said two words I did not anticipate instead.

"You're shaking."

My mouth fell open, but I could not get the words past my lips.

He glared at the handler. "Go away."

"But, my lord—"

Kael's eyes reduced him to ice and, with one breath, he was away. Like that. I hadn't known if he'd been walked or shoved. I hadn't cared to know.

We were alone.

And I still trembled.

Kael looked at me with a dispassionate kind of interest. Like I was something he wasn't even certain that he needed to fix. "What's your name?".

I was about to lie. But my voice slipped away from me before I had a chance to swallow it.

"Scarlett."

"Fitting," he told me. He nodded. "Do you have any idea why I purchased you?"

My throat closed. "Because you can."

His mouth curled, although not into the smile that would have caused me to smile. Something harder. "Because I had to."

That was sufficient to cause me to gape. "Why?"

He crept closer once more, and my body was yelling at me to run—but I didn't.

"There's something in your blood," he panted. "Something old. Something lethal. You're not human."

"I don't know what you're saying," I panted, but the words were all I could do.

He leaned over me—not to touch, but to hold out a scroll. A contract, sealed with blood-red ribbon.

"This is a Blood Contract," Kael told me. "You sign, and I provide for you. Food. Protection. Safety. You are a servant to my people. I am master of your blood—your power—until the contract is paid."

I read it.

"And what if I don't sign?"

He shrugged. "The others will bear you. The ones who won't ask. The ones who won't swear."

My fingers shook. Bite of the silver cuffs still wrapped around my arms. My head throbbing—but in my heart, I was certain.

Not a start.

A trap.

But. I took the quill.

I signed.

The moment the ink made contact with the parchment, something cracked under my skin.

The bond was sealed.

Kael gazed at me and there was something else to it.

Possession.

To be continued…