Page 1 of Seized to Sacrifice
CHAPTER1
RYE
It couldn’t be her.
He focused his eyes on the figure, but the blinding sun was in just the wrong spot, and he couldn’t see properly across the square. A cart stopped in front of him further obscuring his line of vision and he cursed aloud.
It wasn’t really her anyway. It couldn’t be. Not after all this time.
Ryder was going to leave. He meant to. He had finished his business in Evesmere, and it would be night soon. He should return to the keep while the roads were easiest to navigate; before thedarkerthings came out. He was long past looking for fights.
But, as he turned with his horse, he grimaced and swung back. He couldn’t let it lie. He’d think back to this moment for days to come and, if he wasn’t sure, he’d drive himself mad from wondering. He had to know.
The town of Evesmere was still heaving as it always was when the bridge was open. Now that it was one of the only portals left, people came from all around the realm to trade here despite the recent quakes that were keeping so many away.
Leaving his large, black mount where he was, Ryder skirted around the stalls of Dark Realm goods, the human and other-realm peddlers calling out their merchandises in booming voices that added to the frenzied atmosphere. There was an air of desperation. Everyone knew the portal would close soon and, with things being how they were, gods only knew when …ifit might reopen.
Rye edged around the short wall of the stone well, those who knew him as one of the local lords letting him through the throng with nods or murmured words of greeting.
He reached the row of cages that held their human wares and was gratified to see that many were empty despite the auction not having begun yet. Moving down the row, he peered into each one, trying to see which of them had been the female he’d seen. But all of them were men, ragged and dirty … until he got to the final pen.
She was huddled in the corner, her white knuckles gripping the iron bars. Her deep red hair, what had made him notice her from the other side of the square, hung limply around her face in clumps. Her dress had clearly once been white, but was dirty and torn now, stained from a recent wound on her temple. Blood was smudged down her cheek and neck and he canted his head as he stared at her, his heart hammering in his chest.
He must have made a sound because her eyes, eyes he hadn’t seen in so long, found his.
Vibrant blue.
His breath caught in his throat, and he almost choked on it, knowing her instantly. But there was no spark in her expression. She didn’t show him any recognition at all.
He got over his shock and surprise at seeing her here and his lip curled. How quickly had the bitch forgotten them?
The slaver came up behind him.
‘Auction starts soon if you want ‘er,’ he said.
He was a plump, jovial man that Rye had seen around before. One wouldn’t instinctively know he was a skin merchant by looking at him, but by the way she flinched back from him in her cage, Rye wondered who the man really was behind his jolly smile. These were hard times. Men were forced to do things they didn’t like so that they and their families survived, but some relished the excuse to unleash their darker natures. Rye would wager this man pretended to be the former but was actually the latter.
‘How much do you think you’ll make?’ Rye asked, his eyes returning to her, moving over her more carefully.
He saw the signs of the lash on her shoulder and his jaw tightened. Had this man been the source of her head wound too?
‘I checked her myself and she’s a maid so fifteen maybe, as she’s the only female I have today,’ he said, stroking his whiskered cheek with the backs of his knuckles as he thought.
‘Where did you come by her?’ Rye asked, ignoring the man’s incendiary words about checking her virtue, his eyes not leaving her, afraid she’d up and disappear in front of his eyes despite being trapped in her little prison.
The slaver’s face lost some of its cheer at the question. ‘Round abouts,’ he said, not giving anything away.
“I’ll give you thrice that if you sell her to me now.’ Rye pulled out his coin purse.
It was a fortune, and the slaver knew it, but still he hesitated, his eyes flicking to the center of the square where the portal to the Dark Realms still shimmered. He had another buyer lined up. A Dark Realm customer. Despite the man’s estimate for fifteen, the fae in particular paid very well for human females these days as breeders. Rye’s chest tightened. Was forty-five enough?
A low rumble was heard from the tunnel where the slaver looked – the signal that the bridge would soon fail – and Ryder thanked his stars for the timing.
The sound put the market into even more of a tumult, the sounds of buying and selling increasing tenfold.
He glanced at the slaver who was still staring into the breach, hoping that whomever he was waiting for might still appear.
‘But perhaps I’m being impulsive,’ Rye muttered. ‘I don’t really need such a slave at the moment—’
