Stock.
The word struck harder than any blow.
The man with the ledger began pointing.
"What happened to your eyes and where is Dragor?" The man with the ledger asked
" Some bitch tried to escape, my lord. Thankfully lord Dragor handled it. Lord Dragor left mid journey, my lord, he said he had urgent business to attend to." The wagon driver replied.
Dragor, Elysia repeated it over and over in her head she was almost sure who the name belonged to. The man, who slaughtered her friends with no mercy.
"They were supposed to be twenty girls. Might I asked what happened to the rest."
"Casualties." The wagon driver replied with a nonchalant shrug.
The man hummed in response.
Ignoring the exchange the third man said pointing
"That one. And that one. Separate them."
A girl near the front whimpered as rough hands seized her arm and dragged her down from the wagon. She tried to twist free, but hunger had made them all weak. Her shoes hit the stones below. She stumbled. The chain came next.
Cold metal snapped around her neck.
The sound echoed in Elysia's mind.
Clink.
Francesca leaned close again. "Do not cry," she murmured under her breath. "They price tears lower."
Elysia swallowed hard, forcing her eyes to stay dry. Her heart pounded so violently she feared they could see it through her ribs.
Another girl was pulled down.
Then another.
Then another.
The man with nothing in his hands finally stepped closer to the wagon and looked inside. His gaze swept over them slowly, thoughtfully.
It paused on Elysia.
Her breath stopped.
He tilted his head slightly, as if considering a piece of art.
"She'll fetch well," he said calmly.
The words made her skin crawl.
A hand shot out and gripped her wrist. She gasped as she was yanked forward. Her knees hit the edge of the wagon before she was dragged down onto the street. The cobblestones were warm from the sun, but they felt like ice beneath her palms.
Before she could fully rise—
Click.
The collar locked into place.
It was heavier than she imagined. Cold. Tight.
She fought the urge to claw at it.
Francesca landed beside her moments later, pushed down with less ceremony. Their eyes met briefly.
No tears.
Only understanding.
Around them, the city carried on.
A woman laughed as she adjusted her pearl necklace. A pair of gentlemen debated the quality of imported wine. Somewhere, music drifted faintly from an open window.
And in the middle of it all, children were being fastened into chains.
The man without gloves gestured toward the street.
"Move them."
The chain attached to Elysia's collar jerked forward.
She stumbled.
And the beautiful city swallowed them whole.
They were led into a small corridor. It was lit faintly by a row of candles, the flames trembling as though they too feared the darkness pressing in from every side. The light shone just enough to catch the rows of cells on either side, iron bars stretching from floor to ceiling, their shadows clawing across the stone walls.
The air was damp and heavy, thick with the scent of rust and something odd… something forgotten—the smell of rot.
Elysia's steps slowed. Inside the cells, shapes shifted. Some figures sat huddled in corners, their faces hollow and pale in the flickering light. Others stood silently, fingers curled around the bars, watching the new arrivals with eyes that held no welcome.
A girl in the cell nearest to them lifted her head. A thin scar ran from her brow to her cheek, stark against her ashen skin. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came out.
Elysia looked around, trying to find the girls they had come with, but they were nowhere in sight. Fear gripped her as she imagined the horrors they might be enduring. She wondered why she and Francesa had been chosen out of the rest.
She turned to check if Francesca was still behind her, but the guards pushed her forward harshly. The clank of boots against stone echoed sharply, bouncing off the narrow walls and swallowing the fragile silence.
At the far end of the corridor stood a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands and a small opening on the door. Unlike the cells, it bore no window, no crack of natural light just a faint red glow of a candle. Two men stood before it, their expressions carved from stone. One of them held a ring of keys that chimed softly as he shifted his weight. The sound felt louder than it should have.
Elysia's pulse quickened. She didn't know what lay beyond that door—but the stillness of the prisoners behind the bars told her one thing clearly: whatever waited inside was far worse than the cells.
She watched as the guard slid the key into the lock.
The hinges groaned as the door creaked inward, the sound long and aching, as if the wood itself protested what lay beyond.
"Inside," one of the guards ordered, pushing her.
The guards hooked the ends of their chains to iron staples fixed into the wall, securing them in place. Once secured the guards stepped out, the door shutting behind them with a heavy thud.
Only then did she hear Francesca let out a shaky sigh as she sank to the ground.
Elysia sat beside her, staring absently at the stone ceiling as tears ran down her cheeks. She sniffed, the sound small and fragile in the suffocating dark.
Though she had been calm the entire journey, reality was only now beginning to settle in. Her life as she knew it was gone. She was far from home—somewhere unknown, somewhere unkind. She had been sold for a few gold coins.
Just when she thought she had finally found a home, she lost it. She should have believe the rumours when the villagers were saying Miss Valerie was involved in the random disappearance of some of the children living in the orphanage.
She turned to Francesca and realized she had been silently sobbing too.
"What do we do now?" Elysia asked, rising to her feet and pacing.
"Nothing," Francesca replied, wiping her eyes.
"What do you mean, nothing? We can't just sit here and wait to be sold. You told me the stories. Who knows who we'll be given to?"
"We do nothing, Elysia. This is our fate."
"Fuck fate! You can't just give up. You ran before—we can do it again." Elysia yelled, angry tears rolling down her face. She felt as though she was losing her mind.
"Keep your voice down," Francesca whispered.
"No! I don't give a damn. I've been—"
"Sixty-six scars…"
Elysia stopped and stared at her. Francesca rose slowly to her feet and lifted the hem of her cotton dress.
That was when she saw it.
For a moment, Elysia did not understand what she was seeing. Then her breath caught in her throat.
Thin, jagged lines crossed Francesca's back in every direction—some pale and faded with time, others darker, raised, cruelly etched into her skin. They overlapped like a map of suffering, a tally carved by someone who had long ago stopped seeing her as human.
Elysia staggered back a step.
"Sixty-six," Francesca repeated quietly. "That was the last count. I stopped keeping track after that."
Her dress fell back into place.
"Who did this to you?"
"Sixty-six times I tried to escape from my master. Every time I failed, life grew much worse for me. If we act blindly now, we will die — a painful, gruesome death," Francesca said, the pain visible in her eyes. "So trust me when I say I don't like it here any more than you do. I suffered here every night for twenty days before I was sold, surviving on hard bread and barely any water, tortured and trained to obey day after day. We can't do anything now— not until we are out of this fortress. This fortress we can't escape from but masters we can."
Elysia slowly sank back to the ground, closing her eyes as she curled into a ball. There was indeed no one coming to rescue them.