Page 1 of Beautiful Prey

PROLOGUE

From up here they don’t look like people yet.

That’s the trick of the observation deck, a glass gallery three stories above the intake hall. Five hundred candidates move below us, fresh off the shuttles, carrying packs, paperwork, and whatever they think this place will give them.

The banner hangs across the far wall. Thank you for volunteering to improve your future. Stars, I love that line. Dad writes them himself, and nobody sells a cage like the man holding the keys.

I take the glass someone hands me and set it against the rail. Intake is the deck’s day, and I never miss it. This is where the market opens.

Below, attendants press free water into every fist. You can tell who comes from money by who takes it without looking at the bottle first.

Most of them look.

Where they come from, water has a price. Kindness usually has a bigger one.

They drink anyway. Of course they do. They’re thirsty.

We notice things like that up here.

“Recruitment’s going to have a good year. The densest intake in six seasons.”

Ryven, my cousin, appears beside me with a plate in one hand, his dirty blond hair falling into pale blue eyes. He smiles easily. People tend to trust him because of it.

That usually lasts until there’s paperwork involved.

“Recruitment always has a good year.”

“Mm. Düren over-sent again.” Ryven nods toward a group of broad-shouldered men near the far pillar. “Concord’s been busy.”

Concord controls enough of Düren that people there know when it’s time to leave.

Ryven takes something off his plate. “Nothing drives applications like deciding Tempest might be safer than home. You can smell the desperation from here. Or maybe that’s just the dust.”

“They’re not here because it looks safer.”

Seren stands a few feet away at the rail, dressed in black like the rest of us. His dark eyes remain fixed on the floor below.

“They’re here because they’re already dead where they came from.”

He isn’t wrong.

They come here voluntarily. That’s the important part. They sign their names. They walk through the doors. They agree to the Hunt.

The version they know is simple enough. The Hunt lasts seven days across Tempest’s northern territory. Stay in contention until the seventh sunrise, when a House sponsors you.

Every evening, a checkpoint opens somewhere ahead. It means food, water, and a guarded place to sleep if you get there before it fills.

Reaching it is optional. Miss the checkpoint or arrive too late, and you spend the night in the forest.

Candidates can eliminate one another in the field. Every person cut leaves one fewer name between you and the top scores.

We, Adjudicators, can eliminate them too.

Finish among the highest scorers, and you earn the part printed in bold on the invitation. You stand before the Vultures, the men who own the Reach, and ask for the thing that brought you here.

That’s what happens on paper.

The other part starts before the gates even open.