Chapter 4 “The Exhibition,”

࿐ྂ༻꒦꒷𓇊꒷꒦༺࿐ྂ

“Chapter 3: The Exhibition,”

────── ꕥ ⋅ IVORY ⋅ ꕥ ──────

Nobody tells you what it feels like to be sold.

I can tell you now.

It feels like standing in too much light while the dark watches you. It feels like every eye in the room is a hand, touching things that don't belong to them. It feels like your body is present and your brain has quietly stepped outside because it cannot deal with what is currently happening.

That's what it felt like.

The stage was small. The spotlight was massive. And two hundred people were looking at me like I was something worth having.

I stood completely still and stared at a fixed point above the crowd and breathed.

Just breathed.

You need the money. I told myself. Stand here. Look alive. Go home.

"Five million," he said.

Low. Quiet. Certain.

The kind of voice that didn't ask for anything because it didn't have to.

The gavel came down so fast it almost sounded like a reflex.

Done.

The room exhaled.

He sat back down like nothing had happened.

And looked straight up at me.

This close - this impossibly, terrifyingly close - I saw it again.

That shift.

Blue to amber. Ice to fire. One blink and it was almost gone but I caught it this time, held it for half a second before it disappeared back behind blue.

His eyes on mine were steady. Unreadable. Patient in the way that only things with a lot of time are patient.

The pull in my chest got worse.

Stop it. I told myself. Stop whatever this is right now.

The handler appeared at my elbow and steered me gently back behind the curtain and I let him because my legs were apparently still working even though the rest of me had temporarily stopped.

Backstage. Dark. Quiet.

I pressed my back against the cold wall and breathed.

Five million dollars.

For me.

From him.

I didn't know his name yet. I didn't know anything about him except the color of his eyes and the way the air moved differently when he stood up and the completely inexplicable, deeply inconvenient way my body had decided to respond to both of those things.

I pressed my hand to my chest again.

Still there. That pressure. That pull.

This is fine. I told myself. Totally fine. Everything is fine.

────── ※⋅ RAGE ⋅※──────

I had not intended to bid tonight.

I had three properties to review, two meetings pushed to tomorrow, and absolutely no interest in Luné Devain's catalog. I'd been to enough of these auctions to know what they sold. Desperation with a pretty face on it.

I came because Imogen called in a favor and I owed her one.

That was all.

I was going to stay for one hour and leave.

Then they brought out Lot 24.

She didn't look like the others.

That was the first thing.

The others knew how to perform this. They stood with a particular kind of practiced grace - aware of the room, playing to it, giving the crowd what they came for. Selling the story along with themselves.

She just stood there.

Hands at her sides. Chin up. Eyes fixed on some point above the crowd like she was daring the room to make her look down.

Terrified. Clearly. Completely.

And refusing to show it.

There's something. I thought. And picked up my glass.

The bidding started.

I didn't join it. I had no intention of joining it. I watched the numbers climb with the detached interest of someone observing a game they aren't playing.

But I kept looking at her.

I couldn't stop looking at her.

There was something under her skin that the spotlight kept catching - not literally, not anything anyone else would have seen. But I'd been alive for eight centuries and I'd learned to notice things humans didn't have words for.

Her blood.

I could sense it from here. The warmth of it, the rhythm of it, the particular frequency of it moving through her veins.

It was - unusual. That's the only word I had for it in that moment.

Not like anything I'd tasted in a very long time.

My jaw tightened. I looked away. Looked back.

She was still staring above the crowd. Still refusing to perform. Still doing that thing with her chin.

The last competing paddle went down.

And something I hadn't consulted moved me to my feet.

Not hunger. I want to be honest about that. It wasn't hunger.

It was the other thing. The thing I kept locked down, kept quiet, kept buried under eight centuries of careful control.

It recognized something.

And it wanted it.

I stood.

The room went quiet - they always did, which I had never asked for and had long since stopped apologizing for. I felt the shift move outward from me, felt the weight of it settle over the room.

"Five million."

The gavel fell.

I sat back down and looked up at the stage.

She was looking at me.

Her hand was pressed flat against her chest, right over her heart.

Something moved in me that I hadn't felt in a very long time.

I kept my face perfectly still.

But I thought, there you are, my little muse.

────── ꕥ ⋅ ꕥ ──────