CHAPTER 10
BRIONY SPENT THE NEXT DAY drinking water through her closed jaw and figuring out inventive ways to get softer fruit between her teeth. She still didn’t have a voice, but that seemed inconsequential when she hadn’t eaten in two days.
After Briony had been returned, they had taken Phoebe to be sterilized.
She returned and curled up in a corner, sobbing through the night. Orion’s elixir was given to everyone as a precaution, in case the reason for Briony’s resistance to the collar was widespread.
No one checked on them that day, and some of the women had started to wonder if they would just let them wither and die in there. Briony couldn’t keep her mind off Eden who had been killed. But she started to look around the room, wondering...
Just before everyone began lying down for bed, Briony approached Velicity. She tried to use gestures to ask her a question, counting to five on her hand, asking, Where is the fifth woman?
Velicity nodded. “They told us she died. You didn’t see them kill her?”
Briony shook her head. And Orion Hearst had said nothing about the raven-haired woman with the black eye when he’d listed off the casualties of her stupid decisions. Velicity’s brows furrowed as she stared out over the room.
“The last I saw her, she was climbing out the window.” She paused.
“Maybe she fell.”
Velicity and Briony shared a look. Maybe she didn’t.
Reaching out with long fingers, Velicity plucked a grape from the bowl and popped it into her mouth with a grin, calling back to the words that Briony had spelled for them with those very grapes.
Briony agreed, silently. More reasons to believe they were not alone.
The next morning, they bathed the women again. When it was Briony’s turn, they took her alone and removed her chains for the first time. And then Gains left her with Reighven in the bathroom.
He didn’t give her a choice to keep her dress on this time.
“Take it off or I’ll take it off for you. And trust me, Rosewood, I’ll enjoy it.”
Briony turned to face the tub. If she relaxed her eyes, she could imagine she was at the Biltmore Palace. Perhaps these stone walls were sandstone, perhaps the running water was the trickling of the streams throughout the entire palace, perhaps she was in her private suite.
She reached up for the straps at her shoulders and let them slide down her arms.
Perhaps Sofia would be in soon to tell her how long she had until dinner.
Briony stepped into the tub, imagining ornate taps and not a water ring in sight. The water burned her skin, and she focused on that.
Perhaps she could sink under and pretend she was a siren, like she had as
a child— “Don’t take all day.”
And with a rubber snap of her mind, she was in the Trow dungeon, with the first man to see her naked body.
Briony sank into the water, and as Reighven approached the tub and stared down at her in the water, she wondered if maybe this wasn’t truly her skin. This wasn’t truly her body. Maybe she was in her tub at the Biltmore
after all.
“You need me to lather you up, love?”
She ignored him, reaching for the soap and cleaning herself as fast as
possible.
When it was time to get out, he gestured to the towel he’d left near the door. Briony pulled herself from the water and forced her legs to carry her across the room.
There was a tent in his trousers by the time she’d dried off. She kept her eyes on the floor as she dressed.
When she was returned to the cell, Briony wanted to be alone, but she couldn’t. As much as she wanted to take a break from these fifty women, she needed to stay stoic for them.
It became harder to find hope when she sat chained, knowing exactly where she would end up.
A while later, a group of five came back from the baths with twittering energy. As soon as the door closed behind them, one of them burst out— “We saw Sammy and Didion. They’re still alive.”
Briony felt something flutter in her chest before it fell back to sleep again.
Her prevailing emotion was fatigue. It was hard to rejoice at a mere sighting of a familiar face—not when the life before them was one of servitude and magical draining, with no way out of this that anyone could see.
They learned that the auction was scheduled for the following evening, but about half of the women still found the energy for hope, including Cordelia.
“All right, we have to do something,” Cordelia said. “We can try strength in numbers again. There’s only usually two of them that come in at a time for us, so maybe it’s fifty on two. Then we find the men and it’s maybe double that.” Cordelia glanced at her. “Briony?”
Briony felt fifty pairs of eyes turn on her. For some reason, Larissa Gains’s gaze was the one she held.
Her blond hair was limp and oily, and she constantly picked at her nails, as if checking a manicure she just received. She stared back at Briony, lifting a brow.
Briony looked down and shrugged. She didn’t know if Cordelia’s plan was wise or worth trying. She was so tired.
Cordelia gaped at her. “Nothing? Just—” She imitated Briony’s shrug
with disbelieving eyes. “You’re giving up?”
Briony pressed her lips together, still biting back words even without a voice. Cordelia hadn’t watched Eden die. Cordelia hadn’t had Reighven’s eyes on her naked body or felt his hand reaching between her legs. Cordelia hadn’t looked into Mallow’s eyes as she told her it was over.
The only purpose they would have in this new world was to make a Bomardi’s magic stronger. Briony would cease to be an Eversun, cease to be a Rosewood, and cease to be a human. She was starting to understand that, even if Cordelia wasn’t ready.
“You can’t give up on us,” Cordelia hissed. “You worked for four years to keep Evermore safe—to keep faith when battles were lost...and now you give up? The prophecy wasn’t true—so what?” Her throat swallowed thickly, and her eyes were unforgiving. “Rory’s dead,” she said, voice cracking. “So what? You’re not.”
Phoebe stood up. “All right, Cordelia. Let her rest a moment.”
“No!” Cordelia threw off Phoebe’s arm and their chains clicked together.
“I want to know why she won’t fight anymore. Because we all lost people, and I can’t lose her—” Cordelia broke off in a choking gasp. Tears filled her eyes.
Briony came to her feet and dragged Cordelia into her chest, unable to hold her properly with the chains. Briony whispered soundless promises to fight, to find her, to build it back. Cordelia sobbed against her shoulder.
The first door opened with a bang, and they sprang apart. The women scurried into corners like rats in the light as the second door opened.
And Canning Trow stepped inside with a smirk on his wide face, eyes surveying the room.
Briony stepped back in surprise. To see someone they’d gone to school with, gloating at them...It brought back too many memories. It reminded her that just days ago, Toven Hearst and Finn Raquin had torn through her bedroom, hunting her.
“Ladies,” he said jovially. “So many familiar faces.” His gaze cast over the room, finally stopping at Briony. “Miss Rosewood, always a pleasure.”
He held a paper in his hands and looked down to consult it. “Ah. Of course
not.” His eyes flicked up to her again, sighing dramatically. “It would have been too good to be true.”
Briony eyed the paper warily as Canning took a deep breath.
“Let’s have Velicity step forward, Coral step forward, and...” His brows ticked up and his eyes cast over the room, searching. “Larissa Gains,” he said gleefully. “Step forward.”
“For what,” Larissa said, and his eyes finally found her in the corner she’d claimed.
“I have a new elixir to test out,” Canning said, rocking on his toes like a child on winter solstice. “It’s all a bit hush-hush for now, but I think it will be incredibly lucrative in this climate, to help...initiate Sacral Magic. They said I get my pick of anyone on this list, or else I’d owe someone five thousand gold.”
Briony’s heart thumped. It was something sexual then. He had a list of the
non-virgins.
“So, step forward,” he said darkly.
Velicity and a woman with short red hair obeyed. Larissa stayed put.
Canning looked them over and consulted his list, clicking his tongue. Briony glanced at the open door behind him; she could just make out Reighven’s profile though the crack in the door.
“Mm, Velicity, step back. Let’s see...Oh, Jellica Reeve!” His eyes searched the room until they landed on a tall blond woman whom Briony recognized from school. She had been a few years older. “Jellica, dear, it’s been ages.” He grinned at her, baring his teeth. “Step forward, step forward.”
Jellica moved on shaking legs. She had been beautiful at school as well, with large blue eyes and full lips. She stood in front of Canning with her chin tilted up.
Canning leaned in and whispered, “Do you remember when I kissed you in year five, and you slapped me across the face?” He laughed, his wide face grinning at her.
She didn’t respond, just held her head high.
Faster than a bolt of lightning, Canning’s palm shot out and slapped her, knocking her head to the side.
Briony jumped as others gasped. Velicity stepped forward before stopping cold.
Jellica slowly turned her face back to him, staring him down.
“I’ll take these two,” he said, gesturing to Coral and Jellica. “And we’ll bring Larissa along in case anyone prefers a Bomardi girl.” He winked at Larissa. “You know quite a few tricks, if I remember.”
Larissa glared daggers at him, and it wasn’t until Reighven tugged her forward with magic that she fell into line behind the others.
The doors locked behind them.
Cordelia turned to Katrina and asked quietly, “What did he mean? What’s Sacral Magic?”
Katrina’s voice shook. “It’s—it’s meant for love matches. It’s a kind of...escalation of the heartspring bond. Much like boosting, in some ways,” she said, glancing at Briony. “But in the way that sharing a physical union strengthens your marriage in some cases, the heartspring magic grows stronger when you...” Her breath shuddered, and her eyes flitted as panic set in. “It’s meant for love matches,” she repeated.
“And when it’s not a love match?” Cordelia asked, her voice tight. “When they chain our magic to them and drain us for power? What does Sacral Magic become then?”
Katrina swallowed thickly. “The power gained from a physical union...it only works when freely given. You can’t—force someone to share Sacral Magic with you.”
“But Canning thinks he’s found a way?” Cordelia asked. “A way to benefit from Sacral Magic when it’s not freely given?”
Phoebe, who had stood silently until that moment, turned to them with a flat voice. “I spent five years in school with Canning Trow. I’d bet anything that that elixir will do something to those women—something to make them ‘give freely.’”
Briony chewed on her lip as Cordelia finally realized what Briony had known since the moment Reighven had put his hand on her: Regardless of the magical benefits of holding the Eversuns captive to be heartsprings, for some
of them, they would still be a woman locked in a man’s house. And Canning Trow had figured out how to make the most of it.
She could only hope that Canning’s “hush-hush” comment meant that his elixir would not be widespread in Bomard. Briony knew her own future —Reighven had made that clear—but her friends might not have to suffer in the same way. Many Bomardi, primarily the women on the line, would find this in poor taste. She wondered at Canning’s audacity in distributing such an elixir with a woman on the Seat.
“Why in the waters does it matter if some of us are virgins then?”
Cordelia said, eyes wet and voice cracking. “Virgin’s blood and and virgin’s tears are important for obscure and dark elixirs, but why pay extra gold for a
virgin if you’re just going to—to—?”
Cordelia choked. Briony took her hand.
Katrina’s voice was hollow when she spoke. “They used to tell us as young girls that our heartspring magic with our future husband would be stronger as virgins, but I had always assumed that was—”
“Utter bullshit,” Phoebe finished for her. “A woman can be on the Seat or on the line in Bomard, but it’s all the same shit as Evermore.”
Briony watched Phoebe’s fire burn hot as Cordelia’s was extinguished.
Coral and Jellica were returned four hours later. They didn’t speak to anyone, only lay in a corner, not wanting to be touched.
Larissa didn’t come back.
* * *
Briony woke on the day of the auction to a quiet room, only the sound of muffled weeping. She pulled herself from sleep and opened her eyes.
Larissa Gains was sitting next to her, staring down at her face with an open expression, as if she’d fallen asleep with her eyelids open. When she saw Briony was awake, she closed herself up, painting on the familiar pout of her lips and arch of her brow.
Briony looked her over. She was still in her chains. She didn’t know how long Larissa had been gone, and she longed to ask her what the elixir was, even if Larissa wouldn’t tell her.
Larissa gazed down at her.
“I used to envy you,” she said in a low voice.
Briony blinked up at her, not understanding. She waited for Larissa to laugh at her or mock her hair or her clothes. Something familiar.
“When I was nine, my father told me he wouldn’t leave his position in line to a woman, so I’d better find a husband quick.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulder and stared out over the room. There were bite marks on her neck. “I thought it was an odd thing to say to someone who hadn’t started to bleed, but what did I know. He was furious to see all the Bomardi boys falling over themselves to dance with you at that state dinner between first and second year. He said that should have been me. He sent me to an evening woman to learn how to seduce men. I was seventeen.”
Briony blinked up at her in astonishment.
Larissa sighed. “She was good, though.” She smiled secretly. “Really good. The two weeks I had with her were...” Larissa nodded, laughing.
“When I came back, it was time for year two to start. My father said goodbye to me and told me he wanted me engaged by the end of the summer. And if I wasn’t, then I should be pregnant at the very least.”
Briony’s teeth ground together, anxiety swimming in her veins.
“But I said, ‘Don’t worry, Daddy. The Hearst boy is wrapped around my finger. I’ll have him by the end of the year.’”
She chuckled darkly, like there were layers upon layers to the joke.
Briony stayed curled on the floor in her same sleeping position, not willing to break this dream—this dream of Larissa...sharing with her? Being open with her? She tried to think what could be so funny. How had Larissa and Toven ended that year? She struggled to remember.
Larissa bit her lip, still laughing to herself.
“And now here we are. At the end of the world. Standing in a line to be sold and drained of our magic, and some of us raped, too. And still, I can’t sleep for envy of you. Of what your life will be.”
Larissa’s head leaned back on the wall, staring up at the ceiling. Briony wished she could speak, ask her what she meant.
Briony watched as Larissa turned to look at her lazily. She seemed to be
taking in every inch of her face. Larissa’s lips parted as she took a breath to speak again.
“Get away from her! What are you doing?” Cordelia jerked awake,
pulling Briony away from Larissa.
The commotion woke several other women.
Larissa rolled her eyes and stood. “Nothing. Just a little girl talk. Calm down.” She waltzed back over to her side of the room.
Cordelia asked Briony if she was all right. Briony watched Larissa as she stared at her nails and played with her split ends until the door opened hours later.
Larissa’s father entered with an older gentleman with white hair and spectacles. He had a kind face and reminded Briony of her grandfather who’d died fifteen years earlier. His fuzzy white brows twitched as he took in the room of women. He cleared his throat and carefully avoided eye contact with
any of the prisoners.
“Is this all of them?” he asked Gains.
“There’s about twenty men down the hall.”
The older man nodded and took off his glasses to clean them. “If you wish to start at eight tonight, perhaps we should start the appraisals with the men while the women are...prepared.”
Gains nodded. “Trow will meet you upstairs with the first men in five minutes. Princess,” he called out, gesturing for Briony. “Come with me.”
The older man quickly left the room, while Gains waited for Briony to walk to him.
He led her out and toward the staircase. When they passed Reighven in the hall, standing guard, he smirked at Briony.
“Tell Trow to collect Meers for appraisal, then do the rest five at a time.”
Briony’s heart leapt. Sammy was just behind one of these doors.
Reighven nodded and whistled at Gains before they turned the corner.
Gains looked back.
“Tell them to take it all,” Reighven said lecherously. “I like ’em bare.”
“Don’t we all,” Gains said flatly.
It wasn’t until Briony was bathed and dressed in a robe with two beautiful
women with accents from across the sea tending to her that she realized she was having her body hair removed, her skin buffed, and her hair styled. A lot was being done to her, and several of the other imprisoned women were coming and going in the time it took Briony’s skin to look glossy. She had the distinct feeling that Gains was in charge of this demand.
When the women with sharp faces and patronizing smiles were done with her, Gains gave her clean undergarments and a chemise to wear, then brought her to the next set of stairs. She followed him curiously. No one had been up this flight. He brought her up through the kitchens, bustling with servants. In Bomard and Evermore, these were usually non-magicians from across the sea looking for work.
When they came to a large room, Briony was immediately aware that she was in her undergarments in the drawing room of Trow Castle. But more important, the Bomardi elite were across the room near the fireplaces, smoking pipes and drinking amber alcohol.
As she was led toward a two-foot-tall dais at the center of the room, she counted them out.
Mallow was missing, but the man who stood as first in line for the Seat was there: Cohle. He was a brutish man who loved power more than leading, which was why Evermore had suspected he was allowed to keep his place in line when Seat Pulvey was assassinated. Canning’s mother, Genevieve Trow (third in line), was chatting with two other women whom Briony recognized as fifth and seventh in line, respectively. Liam’s father, Caspar Quill, who was sixth, laughed boisterously at something said by Gidrey—tenth. Florence Kleve, a woman in her seventies with deep-bronze skin, whispered to Carvin, second in line. And Orion Hearst, eighth in line, drank from a glass of amber liquid, eyes glued to her. With Gains, fourth in line, at her side, leading her to the platform, she deduced that the Ten were accounted for. It seemed the men and women here were getting an advance viewing of those to be auctioned.
The older man with the spectacles from earlier stepped forward. He seemed like he didn’t want to make eye contact with her at all.
Briony shivered in the morning air as she reached the platform, some thirty feet away from the Ten.
Gains reached for the cuffs on her wrists and the collar around her neck, and to her astonishment, he took them off. She hardly had time to memorize the spell he’d used to unclick the bolts before they were off her. He grabbed her jaw and pushed her lips apart with his fingers on her cheeks. Her teeth were still snapped together, but he poured an elixir into her mouth, letting the liquid slosh into her throat. She choked, recognizing it as the magic- suppressing elixir that Orion had brought her.
Then she was shoved forcefully onto the platform, tripping over her feet and landing on her elbows. One of the women laughed as she brought herself up. They were talking among themselves, sitting in comfortable chairs, barely giving her a glance.
The older man tipped his glasses up his nose and said, “Name?”
Briony didn’t have a voice, but Gains supplied it for her. The older man wrote it on a slip of paper. He glanced at the ink on the inside of her left elbow, and Briony watched him notate Gains’s ownership.
“Age?”
“Twenty-five,” Gains said.
“I see here that her medical bill is clean.” The older man—the appraiser— glanced at Briony quickly, as if he’d rather not see her face, see her soul. He twitched his fingers, and a measuring tape jumped out of his bag. It quickly took in her height, then after an infinitesimal pause and a glare from Gains, it wrapped itself about Briony’s hips, waist, and chest before returning to his bag.
The appraiser spread his arms in front of Briony and cast a spell she didn’t recognize. A light glowed between his palms, steadily pulsing brighter.
A murmuring reached her from the Bomardi in leather chairs. Something about the pulsing light had caught their attention.
“That’ll be the Rosewood blood,” Genevieve Trow said, sipping from a glass. “Fascinating to see the strength of it like this.”
“Is that a five, then?” Gains asked hungrily.
“From the rudimentary scale you’ve given me,” the appraiser said, “yes.
This is the closest grading to a five we’ve seen today.”
It was a spell to measure her magic? Briony’s eyes flickered to the men
and women lounging and smoking cigars. Orion Hearst’s gaze was on her,
calculating.
The appraiser cleared his throat.
“Starting bid for Miss Rosewood should be no lower than seventy-five hundred gold based on your grading system.” He pulled his glasses from his face. “But I’ve heard that Miss Hardstark and the Miss Rosewoods will be starting at ten thousand, regardless.”
Briony stared at him. Ten thousand. That was the same sum a magician would earn after a year’s commitment to the king’s army in Evermore.
“Apologies,” he continued, squinting at his numbers again. “With the virginity, they will be starting at fifteen thousand.”
Briony took a silent inhale through her clenched teeth.
“And what’s your estimation?” Gains asked greedily.
The appraiser rubbed his forefinger and thumb over the bridge of his nose before turning to the room of Bomardi. He spoke loudly, possibly magically enhanced.
“Briony Rosewood. Estimating thirty thousand gold.”
Briony felt like she was swallowing sand. That was enough to buy a farm with acreage to keep a family of four fed. That was enough for the fees at Heatherly, the school across the sea that taught the highest degree of magical healing.
She would not be killed. No one would be idiotic enough to buy her and then kill her off. No, it would be a slow death for her. Maybe years.
How on earth did Reighven think he could afford this?
The Bomardi chuckled, not surprised by the estimate, and she heard Genevieve Trow say, “Does Reighven even have that kind of gold?”
“He certainly thinks he does,” Quill said. He raised his voice to Gains.
“You’re about to be a rich man, Hap!”
Gains had a bounce to his step as he led Briony back the way they came.
As they descended the staircases into the bowels of the castle, a guard led a dark-haired man up the stairs past them.
“Briony! Briony!”
It was Didion. She didn’t have the strength to struggle like he did and
could do no more than watch dully as he thrashed in the guard’s arms, calling her name as they dragged him up the stairs.
“It will be all right! I promise!”
Briony listened to his voice call out to her the entire way down. She could almost still hear the echo of it in the dungeon when she was dragged back into the cell with the women.
It was only a few short hours before every woman was cleaned and dressed for the evening. They were bound in new collars, but the chain between their hands was left off. Briony couldn’t be sure in the darkness of the cell, but she thought they were brightly metallic. Some of them were given white dresses in the Bomardi style, tight in the bodice and long flowing to the floor. Others were given black dresses. She could guess what the white meant. Then the Bomardi fighters came to collect their prizes.
When the first man entered the cell, he collected two women, placing his palm over the ink on their arms and then drawing a portal to step through,
dragging the women with him.
Briony made a note of the skin contact.
There were a few scrappy commoners who came to collect three or four women, claiming they had a few men as well. They were hunters, looking to turn profit by capturing and selling as many Eversuns as possible.
When Reighven entered, he took Cordelia and three other women, most of them in white. And Briony began to have an idea of how he thought he would be able to afford her.
As the numbers dwindled, soon it was only Briony, Larissa, and her father.
Briony watched with bated breath as Hap Gains commanded Larissa to join them in the center of the room.
Larissa stood on shaking legs in her black dress, her whole body
trembling.
“Come here,” Gains repeated.
“Daddy...”
Briony watched in horror as Larissa started to cry, her body heaving with sobs.
“Daddy, don’t do this.”
Gains adjusted the cuff buttons on his wrists, ignoring her.
“I’m your only daughter—”
Gains snapped his head to look at her directly, the first time Briony had seen him do so in the past week.
“I don’t have a daughter,” he growled. “Not anymore.”
Briony’s eyes were wide as Larissa seemed to breathe into a deep place inside of her, calming her sobs with a last gulp before walking forward to join them for the portal.
Gains turned to Briony. With a twist of his fingers, her dress pulled tighter to her body. She gasped soundlessly as the fabric shivered on her, turning
gold.
Gains smiled. “Our gold-blooded royal.”
Briony glared up at him. He took Larissa’s arm, then hers, and dragged them through the darkness.
