Page 39 of Freeing Hook

“You know he’s always early.” Even in my daze, I detect a sneer in Zane’s voice. “But he always underpays. Male owns half the region, yet we’ll be lucky to have enough to keep our lamps fed…”

I flutter my eyes open, taking in my surroundings. I’m laid across a table, the chill of its surface seeping through my clothes and into my back. Muffled by the walls of the windowless room, the clacking of hooves against cobblestone and the bustle of footsteps hint at a city outside this room. When I try to move my fingers, they don’t respond. The rushweed must still be working its way through my system.

It doesn’t matter.

There’s not much fight in me anyway. I’d hardly been able to summon it against Teeth. I wonder what the captain did to him.Teeth never made it onto the boat, and I’m certain the captain witnessed him casting me overboard.

It doesn’t really matter what happened to the traitorous crewman. It doesn’t change my circumstances one bit.

The room itself is dimly lit. There are a few faerie lamps on the wall, but everything else is cast in shadows that stretch over velvet duvets and a cedar post bed. It’s the type of place where I imagine the lighting is supposed to serve a double purpose. Intensify the aura of seduction, the allure of the forbidden, while also distracting from a few key details: the leopard skin rug on the floor is fake, the gilding on the walls made of pyrite paint. If I had to bet, the table I’m laid across is finished with scagliola, made to imitate a block of marble.

Growing up with my mother’s tutelage, I could sense these things with my eyes closed. She thought it was a useful skill for getting a husband. As if the men of the aristocracy cared about these sorts of things.

The second man, Boris—the one who smiles as if he believes himself to be kind—offers me a pitying look and takes a cold rag to my face. I wince when he applies pressure to my nose, a spark of pain budding there. But I don’t cry out.

I’m well schooled in not crying out.

“Sorry about your nose,” Boris says. “Don’t think it’s broken, though.”

I don’t answer. I don’t even look at him. Just stare up at the ceiling above me, trying not to think about why he needs to clean me up before their prompt client arrives. As he wipes my face, tears well in my eyes. Partly from the stinging, partly because of what my future holds.

“Oh, don’t cry, missus. You’re going to the best of our clients. Say, you have the look of a lady. Am I right?” When I don’t answer, he continues, undeterred. “It won’t be all that different from being married off, I swear.”

When again I don’t acknowledge him, he sighs. As he brushes off the last of the blood from my nose, he says, “You’ll want this first one to like you. My master’s other clients aren’t so gentle with their women.”

One tear trickles down the side of my face before I blink the rest away. When I speak, my voice is cracked and dry. “Will he keep me like this? Unable to move?”

The man doesn’t meet my gaze. “No. But the others would.”

The manwho intends to purchase me strides into the room what must be only a few minutes later, shedding his coat. He doesn’t have to utter a word for Boris to grab it from him and hang it on a nearby pyrite hat stand.

When the client looks at me, his eyes peel me apart. He’s the sort of handsome that’s off-putting. Symmetrical in a way that’s almost dizzying. Unnatural, though his ears are as rounded as mine. His ash-colored hair is perfectly combed out from a straight part down one side, the hair trimmed close to his head below the part. His jaw is firm, and altogether he has the look of someone who is used to getting what he wants.

Must be nice.

“It’s rather subtle, isn’t it?” the potential buyer says, tracing a cold, pointed fingernail down my mark.

“True, but with the proper attire, I’m sure it could be made to stand out, Master Vulcan,” says Zane, the man clearly in charge of this enterprise.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” the buyer—Vulcan—says. “There’s a place for subtle beauty. With my collection being as extravagant as it is, there’s certainly a place for a piece that’s more…subdued.”

For some reason, I don’t get the impression that this man is an artist looking for inspiration.

Zane opens his mouth, but his client cuts him off. “Leave us. I wish to speak to the girl alone.”

Zane hurriedly scuttles out, leaving me alone in this man’s presence. Unprotected against his cool, assessing stare. I close my eyes, readying the little corner in the back of my mind, the place I’ll escape to so I don’t have to witness what this man does to me.

“There is no need for that yet, my dear,” says Vulcan. “I wouldn’t dare take you in a place like this. You are too precious to be treated like a common whore.”

“Just an uncommon whore then,” I say, surprising myself with my boldness. I’m past the point of feeling. Cold and numb, and unfiltered. “How delightful.”

I wait for Vulcan to slap me, but he doesn’t. “I understand your reticence. You’ll hate me for a time; they all do. But you’ll come around.”

“You sound so confident,” I say.

The man offers me a noxious smile. “I can only form my opinions based on the evidence provided. My muses are happy. They live a life of luxury they never would have dreamt of on the streets.”

“Those men didn’t get me from the streets,” I say.

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