CHAPTER THREE
My knees dragged through the frozen mud.
The man claiming to be my father didn't care that I kept tripping. He just yanked the rough hemp rope tighter, hauling me toward a massive, jagged fissure in the earth at the edge of the border town.
The sky behind us continued to pulse with that sickly, unnatural orange glow.
Fire. Dragon fire.
Every time the wind shifted, it carried the faint, unmistakable scent of burning pine and scorched earth. General Grant Castiglione was incinerating the border, mile by mile, and he was getting closer.
The panic in the air was absolute.
We weren't the only ones running. The dirt roads were choked with desperate, terrified people. Carts were overturned. Families screamed for missing children. It was mass hysteria. But the drunkard didn't look back. He dragged me down a steep, treacherous set of stone steps carved directly into the bedrock.
We descended into the underground.
The illicit market was a festering wound beneath the city. It smelled of copper blood, unwashed bodies, and raw fear. Torches sputtered weakly against the damp stone walls. Iron cages lined the cavern, packed with contraband, stolen weapons, and people.
People like me.
My chest heaved as I struggled to breathe the stale, suffocating air. My wrists were completely numb from the ropes.
"Move," the drunkard barked, shoving me forward.
I stumbled into the center of the cavern. A makeshift auction block stood in the middle of the chaos. The slavers running it looked completely unhinged, rushing through transactions with frantic, wide eyes. Everyone wanted coin, and everyone wanted to flee before the Dragon Rider arrived.
It was chaotic.
"I need silver!" the drunkard shouted, dragging me onto the wooden platform. "Who wants her? She's young! She can work!"
I turned my head frantically. I looked at the crowd of faces below me. Bandits. Smugglers. Mercenaries.
I opened my mouth to beg. I tried to scream that I was a college student. I tried to tell them I didn't belong here. I just needed a phone. I just needed to wake up.
Nothing came out. My throat tightened in a useless, silent spasm. Tears spilled over my eyelashes, cutting warm tracks down my freezing, dirt-streaked cheeks.
"She's defective," a harsh voice called out from the crowd. "She hasn't made a sound since you dragged her in. Is she mute?"
"She's quiet!" my captor countered desperately. "Quiet means she won't talk back! Five pieces of silver. Just give me five!"
"I'll give you two."
The voice didn't come from the filthy crowd of mercenaries. It came from the shadows at the edge of the cavern.
The crowd parted instantly.
A man stepped into the flickering torchlight.
He didn't belong in this rotting underground pit. He wore a heavy coat of pristine white wolf fur over a tailored doublet of midnight blue silk. His fingers glittered with expensive, star-sapphire rings.
Astrelle City.
He was from the radiant towers. I recognized the opulent, arrogant style instantly from the book's descriptions.
"Two pieces of silver," the man repeated. His voice was smooth, bored, and entirely devoid of empathy. He looked at me the way a person looks at a bruised apple at the grocery store. "She's filthy, frail, and likely carries border diseases. But I have need of silent servants at the estate. The scholars of Astrelle value peace and quiet."
"Two?" The drunkard balked, his hands trembling. "My lord, the tax collectors—"
"Two pieces, or I leave you to burn when the General arrives," the nobleman interrupted coldly. "I am Lord Vance. And I do not haggle with border trash."
The cavern seemed to drop in temperature.
Lord Vance. A wealthy merchant of Astrelle. A minor antagonist in the grand scheme of the novel, but a god in this underground pit.
The drunkard's resolve crumbled instantly. He practically shoved me off the platform.
"Take her," he choked out, catching the small leather pouch Vance tossed into the dirt. "She's yours."
Lord Vance didn't even look at me. He simply gestured to two massive guards flanking him.
Heavy, armored hands clamped down on my shoulders. I thrashed. I kicked wildly, my bare feet connecting with metal greaves. It didn't even phase them. They hauled me up by my bound arms, carrying me out of the cavern like a sack of stolen grain.
I was thrown into the back of a reinforced, windowless carriage.
The ride was one of terror and physical agony. The wooden floorboards bruised my ribs with every bump in the road. I lay there in the dark, my silent sobs suffocating me. I had been sold. Legally purchased for pocket change.
When the carriage finally stopped, the doors were wrenched open.
I was dragged out into a courtyard of blinding white stone. The Vance estate. It was a sprawling, opulent mansion surrounded by high iron gates. Above us, the Astrelle stars were barely visible through the creeping edge of the storm clouds moving in from the border.
"Bring her to the branding room," Vance ordered, stepping down from his carriage. He didn't even glance back. "Before she gets dirt on the main carpets."
Branding room. I've seen this for quite a few times in the novel.
My blood ran entirely cold. I kicked. I twisted. I threw my entire body weight backward, trying to break the guards' grip. I wasn't going in there. I wouldn't.
One of the guards sighed, annoyed, and struck the back of my knees with the butt of his spear.
My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the polished marble floors of the estate's servant quarters, dragged the rest of the way until we reached a stark, windowless room deep in the cellar.
There was no fire in the room. No hot irons.
Instead, a woman stood in the center of the stone floor. She wore robes of deep, shadowy purple. Her eyes were completely black, lacking any white sclera.
A Siphoner from Gravenne City.
"Hold her down," Vance commanded from the doorway. He crossed his arms, looking terribly bored.
The guards shoved me to my knees. One clamped his heavy hands over my shoulders, pinning me to the floor. The other grabbed my right arm, tearing the coarse fabric of my tunic to expose my collarbone.
I thrashed violently. I opened my mouth, screaming a silent, desperate plea. Please. No.
The Gravenne Siphoner stepped forward. She didn't hold a weapon. She just raised her bare hand. A dark, shadowy mist curled around her fingertips, cold and terrifying.
"This is imported magic," Lord Vance explained smoothly, walking in a slow circle around me as I struggled. "Very expensive. But highly effective. The Astrelle scholars pretend to hate Gravenne's shadow arts, but we all use it when it suits us."
The Siphoner pressed her palm flat against my bare collarbone.
It didn't burn like fire. It burned like ice.
Absolute, blinding agony ripped through my nervous system. It felt like liquid nitrogen was being injected directly into my veins. My spine arched violently. My silent scream tore at my throat, tasting of copper and bile. The dark magic burrowed into my skin, etching itself into my flesh.
"The slave mark binds you to the Vance estate," Vance's voice echoed distantly over the rushing sound of blood in my ears. "If you try to cross the iron gates, the mark will paralyze your lungs. You will suffocate. If you raise a hand against me, the mark will siphon your life force until you drop dead. You belong to me."
The Siphoner removed her hand.
I collapsed onto the freezing stone floor, gasping for air. Black spots danced across my vision. My collarbone pulsed with a sickening ache. I forced my eyes open, looking down at my skin.
A jagged, pitch-black rune was burned permanently into my flesh just below my neck.
I was trapped. Truly, magically trapped.
Vance stepped over my shivering body, looking down at me with utter disgust.
"Clean her up," he ordered the guards. "Dress her in the estate uniform. The Radiant Festival is in three days. The emissaries from The Capital are arriving to enforce the new treaties, and my estate must look flawless."
The festival.
My mind pushed through the haze of agonizing pain. The festival. That was where it happened. In the novel's timeline, the Radiant Festival was where General Grant Castiglione made his grand, terrifying entrance into Astrelle City to demand their submission.
"Make sure she looks presentable," Vance added, pausing at the door. "If the Dragon Rider finds our hospitality lacking, he will burn my estate to the ground, just as he did the border tonight."
A massive, bone-rattling boom echoed from far above us.
The cellar walls shook. Dust fell from the stone ceiling. It wasn't thunder. It was the heavy, concussive impact of something massive landing in the city.
A dragon.
Vance's face went completely pale. The arrogant smirk vanished, replaced by unfiltered terror.
He was here. The villain had arrived.
And I was chained right in his path.