Page 108 of The Delta's Rogue
“Of course, we’ve been in the auction house this entire time,” I mutter under my breath as I observe the organized chaos.
Brenna shakes her head. “No,” she murmurs, avoiding my eyes. “There is a temporary spell on that door to transport us straight to the estate where they host the auctions.”
Brenna heads to our left, towards another large, open room similar to the one they used for our training. She’s walking in the opposite direction as the parade of cuffed and collared girls dressed in skimpy lingerie with faces full of makeup. They pass us with their chins dipped slightly, eyes locked on the middle of their trainer’s back. None of them show an ounce of resistance or rebellion. None have a spark of life or hope left in them.
We’re all the same. We’re all broken shells, with nothing to fight for.
“Over here, Brenna,” a blonde witch calls from a vanity near the center of the room. “Amara wants to see you in the lobby. She asked us to finish getting Anaís ready.”
Brenna deposits me into the chair in front of the vanity, where the blonde witch and a purple-haired witch stand, then walks away without saying goodbye as the two new girls swoop down on me.
Blondie jabs my forearm with a needle, drawing a fresh vial of my blood. They’ve taken so much from me they could fill an entire second Sarina with it. The purple-haired witch paints my face with a thick layer of makeup, contouring and highlighting and blending to hide any tiny blemish from sight and give my skin an airbrushed finish.
As they begin my final preparations, I watch Brenna disappear in the reflection. Even though she betrayed me, I can’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment that she left without a word.
However fake our tenuous truce was for her, it wasrealfor me. I spent the majority of my time here thinking she was something close to a friend, only to have it all shoved in my face at the last minute—an added, anchoring weight to the trauma I’ve endured.
“I’ll go grab her outfit from the rack,” Blondie says as soon as she removes the needle from my arm.
As she walks away, Purple Hair dusts shimmering shadows across my eyelids and lines them with black. The room grows quieter while she works, emptying of every captive girl and all of Amara’s witches as, one by one, they’re all called to the backstage area until the three of us are the only ones left.
The silence creeps closer to me, floating around me like the cold air slipping through the flimsy fabric of my robe. The temptation to lash out, to strike the witch who works on my face, grows stronger the longer I sit in the quiet room. But no good would come of that.
There is a witch in front of me, another walking around with a vial of my blood, and Amara could walk into the room at any moment. Not to mention I’m cuffed and collared with silver, and I do not know how to get out of here or where to go if I managed to escape.
They let me sit here without binding me to the chair because they know an attempt at escaping would be disastrous for me.
“I can’t find her outfit,” Blondie says from behind me.
“They’re all in garment bags marked with their names,” Purple Hair replies, not stopping her work on my face. “Just like they are for every auction.”
“This is all that was in hers.”
Purple Hair pauses, and I peek through my eyelids. Blondie dangles a pair of sky-high black stiletto heels from her fingertips. And nothing else.
Purple Hair rolls her eyes with a scoff. “I’m sure you just missed it.” She closes the eyeshadow palette with a snap, and her lips twitch with a short laugh. “It’s probably one of the super skimpy ones. One that’s just a bunch of strings or something. You know how much Amara loves putting her favorites in those.”
She sets the makeup on the counter, then disappears from my view. Blondie paces slowly behind my chair, her free hand clutching the vial of my blood.
I track her steps, eyes fixated on that vial.
Purple Hair returns in less than a minute, a frown on her face and nothing in her hands. “You’re right.” She shrugs. “Her bag is empty. Amara must have forgotten to put her outfit in there.”
I close my eyes. Amara wouldn’t forget. Everything she does is calculated. If she didn’t put an outfit in my garment bag, it was intentional.
She wants me naked for the auction.
When my eyes open, I find the two witches staring at my reflection. Matching smirks form on their faces, growing wider as they examine me through the sheer fabric of my robe. They’ve clearly come to the same conclusion I have.
“Please bring Anaís backstage.”Amara herself issues the order through the speakers. Excitement and anticipation vibrate in her voice.
It’s mirrored in my preparers’ eyes, and their faces go straight to the top of my “torture until dead” list—right beneath Amara, Brenna, and Nuncio.
They round the chair, shove the stilettos on my feet, and tug me from the seat, each gripping onto one of my forearms with impressive ferocity. Blondie clutches my blood in her other hand, preventing me from speaking or making any sound at all.
A growl echoes in my mind, a growl that would reverberate through the foundation of this building if I could release it.
The walk from the dressing room to backstage takes no time at all. One moment, I’m in the room with the vanity-lined walls and ultra-hot makeup lights, and the next, I’m in near pitch-black darkness, being guided to climb onto a platform.
