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A deep moan escaped Tazm’s throat as Maria was now riding Peter, who clawed at her dress and grabbed her breasts.

Both seemed to be running out of breath already.

There was a wild desperation in their lovemaking, one that made sex a strenuous exercise with locked muscles and intense pounding.

Covered in sweat, their chests heaving, they kept changing poses, fucking hard until they both finally collapsed, looking utterly exhausted.

All the fae who were connected to the couple had slid to the floor at one point or another, looking just as out of breath as Peter and Maria and just as exhausted. They disconnected their tendrils, but most let them drop to the floor, as if too tired to even retract them completely.

“Good stuff,” Watrat finally exhaled, running a hand down his face.

“The mage was a hack, but he brewed perfect tea.” Tazm stretched, looking ready for a nap.

Piara returned, leading a big camel to the cages.

“We’d better get packing,” she said. “I want to leave before the night is over.”

“What does it matter whether it’s over or not,” Tazm grumped. “You’ll travel night or day anyway.”

“A day storm hides our tracks well, but we don’t make much progress during the day. The camels refuse to walk when it gets too rough. Come on. Get those cages up.”

Reluctantly, with complaints and curses, the fae climbed to their feet.

Watrat peered into the cage at Peter and Maria, who seemed to be slowly recovering from the effects of the magic used on them. Maria was the first one to get up into a crouch. Holding her ripped dress up to her chest, she crawled into a corner, hiding her face from everyone.

Peter was still lying on the floor of the cage with his knees bent and his face up to the sky. But his hard-on was at half-mast now, slowly drooping even more.

“Leave these two here for now,” Watrat ordered Piara.

“We don’t have enough camels for you to take all the cages anyway.

” He ran his gaze along the row of cages.

“This one also doesn’t look like she’s fit to travel yet.

” He pointed at an older woman a couple of cages down from ours.

“Put her in with the one who arrived last. Load the rest.”

As the thugs rushed to comply with his orders, I realized he had meant me when he said “the one who arrived last.” Piara sauntered to our cage, unlocked it, then reached inside to grab Elaine.

“Come here, Sweet One,” the fae hissed with an expression that didn’t promise anything good.

“Leave her!” I managed to catch Elaine’s hand as she was being dragged out, but Piara yanked Elaine out of the cage and from my grip. “Take me too then. I’ll come with her.”

“That’s not what Watrat wants,” Piara dismissed me.

Elaine turned to me as Piara dragged her toward the other cage.

“If you ever get out of here, Ciana, go to Teneris. Ask for Prince Rha,” she said quickly.

“Shut up.” Piara punched Elaine in the face.

Air rushed from Elaine’s lungs with a moan of pain. She fell, clutching the injured side of her face.

“What are you doing?” I screamed. “Leave her alone!”

“Hey,” Watrat yelled. “Don’t damage the wares.”

“Oops. My hand slipped.” Piara smirked mockingly.

She then grabbed Elaine around her middle and lifted her from the floor.

“That’s for punching me in the leg, Sweet One ,” she hissed, tossing Elaine into the other cage.

“You better behave from now on or there will be more. I have a way with camels and horses. Taming a human can’t be much different. ”

Tazm shoved the other woman in my cage in Elaine’s place. The woman gave me a quick glance before crawling into a far corner and pulling her knees up to her chest. Tazm and the others then hauled the cages out and attached them to the camels, one cage on each side of the animal.

“Elaine!” I screamed into the night as the camels formed a line and moved along the black dunes that sparkled in the moonlight as if their crests were dusted with diamonds. Not a word came back from the cages. I didn’t know if she heard me or if her reply got lost in the distance.

Elaine’s presence had brought a breath of home for me, a memory of the world I’d thought I had lost completely.

Now, she was taken into the unknown by the people who gave only brutality, and I could do nothing to help her.

Helplessness and sorrow squeezed my heart, and I wanted Elaine at least to know that she wasn’t alone in this strange hostile world.

“I’ll see you again, Elaine!” I screamed into the darkness of the desert.

“Sure you will,” Watrat mocked. “Once the camels are back, you’ll be heading the very same route too. Who knows? You may even end up owned by the same master.”

Yanking the fabric back in place over the two remaining cages, he tossed a long board over it with a thud.

“Are you really going to sell us all?” I yelled through the shroud over the cages.

Watrat didn’t deign to answer me. I was just one of the “wares” to be sold, not a person who deserved a reply.

“He will,” the woman in my cage said somberly. “We’re nothing but property to them.”

I turned to face my new cage mate. She was about twice my age or slightly older, with dark tight curls cut close to her skull and a guarded expression in her brown eyes. Like Maria, this woman was dressed in a long shift dress.

“You’re not from Prince Rha’s sarai ,” she stated, giving me a once-over.

“No. I was held in Kalmena. I used to belong to the queen.”

“You still do. There is no such thing as a free human in this world.”

“I ran away,” I argued.

“And where did that bring you?” She gestured at the cage with a sad smile .

I dropped my gaze, faced with the bitter truth.

My impulsive escape resulted in nothing but a perilous journey through the desert that ended right back where it started—in a cage.

Actually, the finish was even worse than the start.

I traded a comfortable room in the sarai for a cramped cage in the desert.

The woman sighed, her voice softening with compassion. “We tried to run too.”

“From Prince Rha?”

She nodded. “Teneris is a nice place, but a golden cage is still a cage. When they said that Joy Guardians were opening another portal to our world, the last one to ever open, we escaped Teneris and tried to make it through the portal.” She sighed. “Many did.”

“Was a girl named Dawn in your sarai too?” I asked, thinking about what Elaine had told me.

“Yes,” the woman said, and my heart leaped to my throat. “She was the prince’s sweetheart.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She shrugged. “She was his favorite. Lived in his rooms. Ate with him. I don’t get into anyone’s business much. I spent most of my time in the sarai doing gardening with the Joy Vessel Keepers instead of listening to gossip. But they said Dawn and Prince Rha were lovers.”

“Lovers?” Blood rushed from my limbs. “But Dawn is only twelve!”

The woman shook her head. “She looked much older than twelve, honey. Definitely an adult. Must be a different Dawn then.”

Only how did Elaine recognize me then? How did she know my name?

Maybe I said my name out loud at some point while being delirious.

Or maybe, all of this had something to do with that time warp thing that happened when one crossed the River of Mists? I tried to recall what exactly Kurai had said about that but couldn’t remember the details. The very idea of time travel seemed incredible even for such a magical world as Nerifir.

Also, why would Elaine tell me to go to Teneris if they all ran away from it? Even if I managed to escape here, there’d be just another sarai waiting for me in Prince Rha’s city.

“I’m Shyanne, by the way,” the woman introduced herself.

“I’m Ciana,” I replied mechanically.

“I know. I heard Elaine call you that.”

“Why do you think Elaine wanted me to go to Teneris?” I asked.

She shrugged again, then said with a deep sigh.

“I guess she figured that if one had to be someone’s property, it was best to belong to a man like Prince Rha.

We were safe, well fed, and not bothered by anyone in his sarai .

Things like that… ” s he tipped her head at the cage of Peter and Maria, “certainly never happened there.”

I glanced at the pair. Peter sat hunched over, staring at the ground. Maria curled into herself, crying quietly in a corner.

After discovering the intoxicating effect that alcohol had on humans, the Joy Vessel Keepers in Kalmena strongly encouraged us to drink it.

Wine was readily available and offered persistently.

However, it was never physically forced down our throats.

I’d never seen anyone using this cursed tea before, either.

What Peter and Maria had gone through was brutal.

I sensed it would happen again—to all of us.

“We need to get out of here,” I determined. “And we’d better do it before the camels return and they take us wherever the hell they’re planning to sell us.”

Digging under the blanket, I found the knife I’d stolen.

“What are you planning to do?” Shyanne asked with worry.

“These guys make better thieves than handymen, see?” I pointed at the place where a wooden bar connected with the metal floor.

The cages had been clearly hammered together in haste to accommodate the sudden bounty of captured humans.

Mismatched nails and screws held the bars together at the top.

To connect the bars to the metal floor, they used a thick, braided rope tied around each bar then threaded through narrow slits in the metal.

“I’ll cut the rope,” I said, sawing the nearest coil of rope. “We’ll lift the cage and run.”

“Run where?” Shyanne asked skeptically.

“Away from here,” I replied through my teeth, focusing on cutting the thick rope.

“There’s nothing but desert out there. We’ll die from thirst and get buried in the sand during the next storm.”

“Better than spending the rest of our lives like this.” I subtly tilted my head at the cage next to us.

Following my gesture, Shyanne threw a quick glance at Peter and Maria.

“That was messed up,” she agreed, but still looked doubtful about my escape plan.

I didn’t blame her for hesitating. No one wished to live in a cage, but in a cage at least we stayed alive, which wasn’t guaranteed during a journey through the desert. I had spent many nights out there, however. The desert didn’t scare me as much anymore.

Of course, I had been with Kurai. Without him, I would not have survived.

But death didn’t scare me as much, either.

I’d come so close to it so many times now, I was well prepared to face it.

What I could no longer accept was losing my freedom again.

And this time, it wasn’t even about losing the ownership of my body.

They clearly had the means to mess with my mind too.

How could life with no control over my body or my mind be better than death?

“At least out there, we’ll have a chance to survive.” I strained my muscles, cutting through the rope with all the strength I had.

Having no idea when the camels would come back or if Watrat or someone from his thugs would decide to check on us, I listened carefully to every noise outside.

By their muffled noises and a faint crackling of fire, I assumed they must be having their midnight meal.

It seemed late, since I remembered Piara had mentioned the night was about to end.

But these people didn’t belong to any court or city.

They lived by their own rules and probably ate whenever they felt like it.

The rope proved harder to cut than I’d hoped.

After working for some time, I’d only managed to free two bars.

Each bar was tied separately, when I hoped I’d be able to just cut the rope in one place and unravel the rest. It’d take forever to cut every piece of rope around the entire perimeter of the cage to lift it from the floor.

Shyanne tapped me on the shoulder. “Here. Let me try this.”

She sat on the ground, propping her feet into the two bars I’d freed, then shoved at them hard. The bars cracked where the nails and screws connected them to the bars of the roof.

“Not big on engineering, these guys,” she muttered before shoving again and loosening the joints even more.

“I can fit through now, I think. Let me try.” I crawled closer to the opening we’d created while she shifted aside to give me space.

Pushing the two bars out, I spread them away from each other, fit my head through, then crawled out onto the sand outside the cage.

“It worked!” I whispered excitedly. “Come.”

She shifted closer hesitantly but didn’t leave the cage.

“You go,” she said. “And may the gods of this place help you since all ours have clearly forsaken us.”

I opened my mouth to convince her, then realized that I had no good argument on my side other than the intense desire to be free even if it meant risking to die alone in the desert. How could I force this woman to follow me if I couldn’t guarantee her survival?

“Okay.” I nodded. “Thank you. May they look after you, too, and maybe one day we’ll meet again.”

I glanced at Peter and Maria, but they both turned away instantly. Maria’s shoulders shook as she tried to swallow her tears in vain. Compassion swelled in my heart .

“It’s not your fault,” I said softly. “And it’s not your shame, either.

Whatever happened, it’s on the fae, not you.

Don’t shoulder the blame for them by feeling guilty or ashamed.

Here.” I slipped my hand between the bars of their cage and left my knife on the blanket by Peter’s foot. “Use it however you like.”

I turned around and lifted the edge of the fabric that covered our cages, then peered outside carefully.

I glimpsed the stars, the sparkling crests of the sand dunes, and the glow of embers in the dying campfire surrounded by round tents in the distance.

Then a thundering boom exploded.

Bright, white-green light blinded me. I dropped face down, covering my head with my arms as the sky seemed to crash down onto the desert.