Page 38 of Cold Hearted
I sat up, and that’s when I felt the thick metal collar at my neck. My eyes widened in panic as I looked at the girl with mousy brown hair next to me. She was about my age, maybe a year older, and had a set of delicate green dragonfly wings hanging limply behind her.
“You must be powerful. Only those with strong magic get the collars,” the girl said.
I flicked my gaze around and noticed out of two dozen women, only a handful had collars, including the girl I was speaking to. I stared at each one and they nodded as if to say that what she said was true.
“What does it do?” I asked as I reached up and tried to rip if from my throat, to no avail. The metal simply bit into my fingertips and delicate neck skin, causing pain.
“It makes your magic useless,” she said flatly.
Panic seized me again as I pulled on my power and tried to light up my palms with sunlight magic.
The collar heated, growing very hot and singeing my neck, but no magic came forth from my palms. It burned so bad that I was forced to stop trying to pull my magic in fear I would melt my own skin.
No. No. No.
But then an even worse thought occurred to me. My dagger. I quickly checked my sheath to find it empty. Dread sank into my gut like a thousand-pound stone.
They took it.
The only way to save my people and get home had been stolen. I sucked in a steady breath as panic and fear threatened to consume me. I would break free and get the dagger back. But first things first, I needed to assess the situation to know how to get out of it. The blade would be no use to me if I didn’t escape.
“I’m Alexandria.” The girl curled her fist over her chest and her iridescent wings fluttered once. I wondered what kind of unseelie she was and the extent of her powers but felt it rude to ask.
“She’s always happy and never shuts up.” One woman, a fellow neck collar wearer with skin and hair the color of a blade of grass, smirked from the corner. Tree nymph perhaps? My knowledge of the unseelie was so limited.
Alexandria shrugged, her wings drooping. “No sense in complaining all the time like you.”
I took my fist and covered my chest to match her gesture, assuming it was the local greeting and knowing I would need friends if I were to survive this.
“I’m Dawn,” I croaked, my parched throat making my words sticky.
One of the women went to the front bars and stuck her arms out, grasping a ladle that hung on the side of a giant stainless-steel pot. She filled a cup of water and brought it inside and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I muttered and drank the entire water cup in three swigs.
My heart had been hammering in my chest since I’d woken up, but now that I wasn’t in immediate danger I took three deep breaths to calm down and turned to Alexandria.
“How long have you been here?”
She sighed. “I was captured while I was foraging for food for my family about nine days ago, but I heard the guards say there was another auction coming up next week.”
My eyes bugged at the wordauction.
An auction in Faerie was where you sold something to the highest bidder. I hoped with everything I had that I’d heard her wrong or misunderstood.
“Auction for what?”
“For us, you dimwit,” the woman with the green hair who’d been snippy before snarled.
“Oh shut up, Nysa, we’re all scared. Being mean won’t fix anything,” another woman, this one much older than us, in her fifties, spoke up. She had two pearlescent horns protruding from her head that twisted like ram’s horns, and I tried hard not to stare. Fae in Faerie didn’t have wings or horns or different colored hair and skin. These women were all beautiful, but I just wasn’t used to the differences, and it was hard not to take them in.
Nysa shrank back, rolling her eyes, and the older woman shuffled over. I noticed she too was collared.
“Sabine Hawksberry. If this thing wasn’t on my neck, I’d heal that headache,” she told me, and crossed her fist over her chest. She plopped down right in front of Alexandria and me.
How did she know I had a headache? A healer? Wow. Those were rare in Faerie among the courtiers. The royals could self-heal, but it still took time, and we couldn’t heal others. Her gift was incredible.
I put my fist over my chest as well. “Well met, Sabine. Can you tell me anything else? I’m feeling lost, as you can imagine.”
