Chapter 1
She woke up to intense pain in her stomach, angrily demanding food that she hadn’t had in weeks. Slowly she pulled herself to a kneeling position and tried to open her eyes. The world was hazy in her exhaustion and it was hard to focus when she was swaying so badly. Finally, her muscles gave way and let her come to rest ungracefully on the side of the box she found herself in.
It wasn’t the dark cell she had been in before. No, this was a small box, barely tall enough to sit up in and only big enough to curl up on the floor as she had been before. Its sides were made of glass, it was cold against her exposed skin. The cold and the hunger told her to go back to sleep, her common sense told her to stay awake.
Figure out where you are, it told her. They moved you, you may be able to escape now.
Slowly, she obeyed and lifted her head to scan her surroundings. There were people outside her box in the dimly lit room they were in. They wore cloaks and those who looked her way seemed to be disgusted at her. It was hard to focus beyond those people, their beating hearts called to her. Some were light but most were a delicious dark color. Their thoughts of what they would do to those who they would buy today were dark and called for her. The hunger pains increased as her mouth salivated ever so slightly, she swallowed and imagined how satisfied she would be after eating just one of them.
Just one and these pains would go away, she thought to herself. Just one and I would have the strength to break free.
Alas, she didn’t have the strength to even really sit up on her own, forget breaking free from her glass box. She let herself imagine the feeling of fullness and satisfaction of a meal while she closed her eyes, for just a moment, she told herself.
Common sense pulled at her from her dreams of food, Someone is looking at you, it told her. Open your eyes, find them.
Weaker now, her eyes rose into the crowd outside. The hearts were distracting but she looked past them. She felt the heat of someone’s gaze and traced it to a man across the room. Her eyes locked on his grey-green eyes and she felt like those eyes were familiar in some way but her mind was tired and hunger ate away her memories. He was interesting, his heart was blurry as if encased in ice or very far away.
How bizarre, she thought, what kind of magic do you have in order to hide your heart from the likes of me? Unfortunately, she couldn’t ponder it any further as her body was weak and her mind spent. She collapsed in a heap onto the glass floor of her cage.
Asphodel nervously fretted with his cloak as he walked around the dimly lit room. He was staying to the outside walls of the room, trying not to attract attention from anyone. Carefully he lifted his eyes to scan the room again, he wished he wasn’t here but his common sense had never led him astray and it had told him to come. It had nagged at him to come here ever since he heard the merchant in the village whisper about the secret auction of human slaves in the mountains. He pulled his gloves down on his hands and continued to search the room. He desperately wanted to free all the humans from their glass cages but he knew doing so would cause more harm than good.
They seem well-fed and healthy, he told himself. They wouldn’t be charging so much if they weren’t. Sighing, he spied one girl who was propped against the side of her cage. She didn’t look well-fed nor healthy. Her skin was pale and there was barely any muscle to her bones. His heart ached for her as he saw the thin sheet of a dress she wore; it wouldn’t be doing much to keep out the winter cold.
His sad heart then leaped in shock as he moved to her hair; limp and muted brown hair pooled around her but the ever so slight shimmer of green had caught his eye. Quickly, he found her face amidst the tangles of brown and he was frozen where he stood.
Unable to blink, unable to breathe, her green eyes caught and held him fast. They marbled with rivers of blue in them and even though they were dull and distant, they were enchanting. They stayed like that for a long moment before Asphodel was let go by the girl’s stare, and he was left to watch from across the room in horror as she collapsed lifelessly to the floor of her cage.
Quickly he scanned the room again, no one saw what had just happened between them. Quieting his racing breath and heart, Asphodel had to think fast. I have to buy her, he told himself, to save her from the world, and the world from her.
Taking one good deep breath, he maneuvered his way towards her cage slowly. He counted his blessings as he noted that no one seemed interested in a slave that was already at the point of exhaustion. Up close, he could pick out the shimmer of green in her hair when he was looking for it, but he could also tell that she was severely starved. He memorized her information on the plaque in front of her glass cage then tried to casually find his way to an attendant.
