“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to tonight’s auction. As always, your silence is mandatory. I have taken…liberties, shall we say…to ensure this. I will be able to hear you, but to protect the privacy of the winner, you will not be able to hear one another.”
Ironwood drummed his fingers against his knees, nodding repeatedly in an eager, childlike manner. The man’s entire world was winnowed down to this moment, as he stood on the edge of grasping the only thing that had ever been truly denied him.
“The winner of this item will be liable for its transportation and protection outside the barriers of this site. All sales, regardless of satisfaction, are final and binding. Upon the conclusion of the auction, the winner will be allowed to leave first, followed by the rest of you in the order of my choosing. Rather than conduct multiple rounds of bids, please submit your best offer as it stands. I will call each designated bidder forward to hand it to me.”
Nicholas’s fingers dug into the muscles of his thighs. He dropped his eyes to the floor. Please, God, keep her safe, let this end—
“I thank the consigners who entrusted me with this sale. Without further ado, I present lot 427, a purported astrolabe—”
Purported. Nicholas actually laughed.
“—of unknown, ancient origins. First bidder, please.”
Nicholas leaned forward, trying to peer through the smallest of gaps where the side of the stall met the curtain. His breathing had taken on that uneven quality that made darkness dance in his vision. Etta—where was Etta?
“Second bidder, please.”
Hell and damnation, he thought, wiping the sweat from his forehead, his eyes. He tasted rust in his mouth. Not yet. Not yet, damn you—
A dark splatter—deep enough to show through the thick fabric—whipped against the curtain directly across from theirs. Nicholas and Sophia jumped to their feet just as the bidder’s lifeless body, still spilling blood, was thrown out of the stall, a darkness deeper than night exploding after him.
AS SHE MADE HER WAY up to the Belladonna, Etta squared her shoulders, the scrap of paper on which she’d written her offer, A secret about Ironwood’s desires, soft and damp in her hand. The candles’ flames shook in their stands, the dimly flickering light outlining each of the stalls as she passed them. It was the silence that was unleashing her anger, unbraiding the knot of fury she’d wrapped around herself. Her hands clenched by her side again, as if to keep the feel of Nicholas’s rough skin trapped there a moment longer.
May the best pirate win.
It wasn’t even that they were at odds; she understood his line of reasoning, even as she wanted to strangle him for simply accepting it. It was what he had so clearly withheld: the reason why the fire had left his heart. Why, when she kissed him that last time, had he shuddered, as if on the verge of shattering? Something’s wrong, something is so wrong, her mind had screamed as her hands skimmed over him, searching for a wound, a bandage that might explain the exhaustion, the weakness.
Pattern. She hated that word now, the lack of control it implied. The way it had hooked into what Henry had told her in Russia, grown through her like a winding, barbed vine. You will see the pattern, too.
They were both wrong. Etta didn’t have to accept that anything was meant to happen. She had been orphaned in Damascus, flung centuries away from Nicholas, but that was nothing compared to being trapped almost three hundred years ahead of him, locked away from her family, from the Thorns, from this hidden life. This wasn’t a pattern unless she let it become one.
We cannot possess the things and people not meant for us, we cannot control every outcome; we cannot cheat death. Etta hardened herself, straining to listen to the sound of her feet so she wouldn’t have to hear Henry’s words rising in her mind again, to see his bloodied face.
Etta stepped up to the table, feeling the icy pressure of the Belladonna’s gaze on her. When she was sure she’d released enough of her frustration in order to keep her expression neutral, Etta met her eyes and held out the offer. The woman plucked it out of her hand like a petal off a flower.
Standing near the table, Etta picked up the murmurs of the bidders, the debates they were having with themselves, as if all of their words had been funneled to that exact spot. But even those conversations were lost to the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.
If she reached out, she’d be able to brush the smooth, dark wood of the box that held the astrolabe. The candlelight caught all of the intricate detail, the etchings and marks of the device resting on the box’s velvet interior. Etta had held it for only a moment, but she recognized it all the same.
The flames flickered with her next step forward, and the sight gripped her, made her hold the next breath she drew in—because when the flames danced, so did the image of the burly guards.
A projection? An impressive one. How—?
Don’t do it, don’t do it— But she couldn’t help herself. She brushed her fingers against the edge of the astrolabe’s box.
The lid snapped down. The Belladonna’s long fingers, knotted at the joints, held it firmly in place.
“I see your heart,” the woman said. “It cannot be you.”
The scream set Etta’s pulse stuttering long before she saw the splash of dark blood against the curtain. A piercing laugh followed, an attack on her eardrums, and her legs were suddenly weak beneath her.
Them.
The Belladonna merely took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest, and watched as the same bidder’s body was tossed through the curtain, landing in a sickening, blood-soaked heap in the central aisle, his mask askew. The force of it blew out the candles at the table and the guards vanished like shadows meeting sunlight.