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For more than a week, I was at the mercy of the wretched leader of the Diplomats, Dimmon Plank. The foul bastard kept me bound by tight ropes to the leg of his bed—the only actual bed among all the Diplomats. He kept the best things for himself, including me.

My young age was no deterrent to him.

It was not a loss of innocence that ruined me. That had been lost long ago, before I’d reached the age of ten.

No, it was the helplessness that fueled my inner pandemonium. It drove me insane every time he dragged me onto that rancid-smelling cot and did his worst.

I quickly learned to escape in my mind. To lock away the pain and torture of his ministrations into a compartment all its own—one I would not access for years.

Sometimes the daydream I lived involved the snowy sunflower from my dreams; other times it was the nightly feasts atop the rooftop overlooking the bazaar, not with Baylen in my head, but with Sister Cyprilis.

The poor girl I had seen getting defiled, when I was powerless to stop it. Now I was living her life and still powerless to stop it.

Suffice to say, I lived. Dimmon Plank skyrocketed to the top of my list but it meant nothing considering my current situation. I had no idea what my list was about , other than it being people who had wronged me, people I hated with every fiber of my being.

I became more than despondent afterward, if it was possible. There was listlessness in my eyes, I was told, because my spirit had been broken. I no longer cared to live or die, no matter what my mind told me to feel when Jeffrith had attempted to do the same thing Dimmon forced upon me.

He brought me scraps from nightly dinners. Just enough to survive on. I was trapped in darkness, both in the slovenly dwelling he called a home which hid me from the sun, and in the chaos of my own mind.

What did I do to deserve this? How can I ever escape this fate? What must I do to win my freedom?

I asked myself those questions night after night—every time he dragged my bound body onto his bed, every time I fought through the numbness and pain, every time he finished with me, every time he sneered that bearded, disgusting face in my direction.

“You understand, don’t you?” Dimmon asked me one night, a week into my captivity.

I kept my eyes on the mucky ground, sitting hunched against the side of his bed, stripped of all garments. I did not respond.

“You took one of my best from me. Something special.” He crouched in front of me, his rank breath washing over me as he smiled and cupped my chin between his thumb and forefinger, trying to lift my gaze to his eyes. “So I must take something special from you, you see?”

I didn’t fight back or snap at him as I should have.

Though I had been relegated to a beast of burden for Dimmon Plank’s pleasure, my mind swirled with hallucinations.

I wasn’t myself, couldn’t be myself, because keeping myself inert, dormant, and lifeless was the only thing keeping me alive.

It was the only thing stopping me from bludgeoning my forehead against the ground every morning when I had a moment alone.

“Tomorrow, the Diplomats will be rid of you. Can’t have an unhinged murderess on our hands, now can we?

Bad for business and morale. It is a sorry loss, but you’ll fetch a fine price given your prettiness.

” He shrugged, throwing my face aside and standing with a sigh. “Perhaps as fine a price as Jinneth.”

At mention of Jeffrith’s sister, I stiffened. I wondered if poor Jin had learned I had killed her brother, wherever she was. I imagined my own name on her list.

I kept the thoughts of Jinneth brief, not letting them invade my head and bring me back to reality.

Reality meant death.

Dimmon dropped his pants and tore his shirt off his bulky body. He stood in front of me, nude and wretched, and I kept my eyes on the ground.

“I suppose sullying you was not in my best interest in terms of remuneration.” He shrugged to himself, sitting on the edge of the bed and lifting the rope that held me tethered.

“Alas, it couldn’t be helped. A life for a life, I say.

” He toyed with the rope, starting to pull it and force me to my feet because it was wound so tightly around my neck.

“What’s one more night of fun before I hand you over to your new master?” Dimmon chuckled to himself. “Given your luck, he’ll be worse than me.”

I emerged from Dimmon’s tent ten days after my torment began. The sunlight of the morning—the first I’d seen of its warm face the entire time I’d been kept away—brought an instant blur of tears to my eyes.

Though I was human, I felt how a vampire might when stepping into the light of the sun’s rays.

Diplomats scuttled out of their hidey-holes to watch Dimmon march me from his hovel to a wagon he had procured. He made a show of it, exerting his power over me by pulling the rope that held me like a leash.

I kept my eyes downcast, shuffling forward. At least he had given me clothes to wear, not suffering the humiliation of a nude withdrawal.

Most of the Diplomat boys and girls had their heads bowed. A few bit their lips nervously, seeing their unwashed, debauched peer being dragged and hauled into a wagon led by a single scrawny horse.

Then there was Baylen, whose eyes I never met. Out the corner of my vision, I noticed his face was a ruin—two scars stretched from his jaw to his nose. He was missing his left eye.

Seemed Jeffrith’s bottle had done a number on him.

He watched me with arms crossed over his chest, clamping his jaw as I scuttled past him, staring at me like I was a creature from a bog. I heard his feet carry him away once I had passed, his gait plodding and broken.

I did not know if he pitied me and the beast I had become, or if he was simply dismayed at seeing me in such a state.

It didn’t matter. Baylen Sallow had brought me here.

He had caused this, far as I was concerned.

He did nothing to stop it—never stealing into Dimmon’s tent in the night to try and rescue me or plunge a knife through the bastard’s throat.

Just as he had hesitated to stop Jeffrith, his apprehensiveness to my situation showed his true character. It solidified my fate.

Baylen was as dead to me as Jeffrith was to the rest of the world.

It was Taclo, Koylen, and Dimmon himself who rode the wagon with me. Dimmon and Koylen stayed at the front bench, while Taclo sat in the bay with me, where I was chained to a spoke.

After giving me a pitying look, he threw a bag over my head, making everything dark again.

Then the wheels of the wagon creaked, the skinny horse whinnied, and we were off to my new future.

The shouting and yelling would have overwhelmed me if I wasn’t lost in my own broken mind.

I stood on a raised platform made of wooden pallets stacked on top of each other. My hands were tied behind my back, and my ankles were bound. I was clothed in only rags. I kept my eyes downcast.

Below the platform, hard men yelled numbers at each other. Their voices rose as they argued my price.

Dimmon stood in the back with a smug smirk behind his beard. He was pleased with how the bidding war was going over my freedom.

I was the only woman in a cramped back-alley room full of a dozen men. And I wasn’t even a full woman yet. Not by age, anyway.

My moon-cycle had started early, years ago. Dimmon had crudely pointed that out a few days before, when he wasn’t sure if my bleeding had been caused by him or by my natural progression.

My body was allegedly that of a woman’s, though I suppose it depended on who you asked. It was my mind that was that of a child’s. It had regressed over the past few days—I could feel it, inching toward ruination that might never heal.

The shouting match died down after a time. Dimmon shook hands with a hooded man and departed without a single glance over his shoulder at me.

The bag was thrown over my head and I was led off the platform, now with complete strangers around me.

The hooded man pushed me forward, torchlight showing in flickering rasps through the weave of the wicker-latticed hood I wore.

I walked blindly until I was turned around and plopped down on a bench. Minutes later, the telltale sign of creaking and the wobbliness of my body told me I was moving again, inside another wagon.

When the bag was torn off my head an hour later, I blinked rapidly and scanned my surroundings. I was in a dark room, seated. Two torches were lit on sconces against a crudely hewn wall of stone. A dripping sound of leaky water nearby informed me I was underground.

The most horrifying part? I was not the only prisoner here. Six other souls, my age and slightly older, were similarly bound to chairs, looking frightened and lost as newborns.

The heavy thudding of boots snapped everyone’s attention to an arched entry of the room and the tunnel beyond. A tall, cloaked man walked toward us with a lantern in hand, guiding his path down the darkness.

My skin prickled with vexing anticipation. A few of the other prisoners writhed in their seats, trying fruitlessly to escape.

The man stopped at the archway and pulled his hood back.

My eyes bulged at the sight of him—tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair spilling down past his shoulders, and fine features on a handsome face.

Yet it wasn’t his features that made me startle. It was the ashen texture to his skin, the slight point to his canine teeth as he gave us a fanged frown. His voice was dark, brooding, with a hint of exhilaration.

“Welcome to the Firehold, little grimmers. My name is Lukain Pierken, and I now own you.”