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Gains unchained her wrists, and to her astonishment, he opened her collar.

She hardly had time to memorize the spell he’d used to unclick the bolts before the collar was off her.

He grabbed her jaw and pushed her lips apart with his fingers on her cheeks.

Her teeth were still snapped together, but he poured an elixir into her mouth, letting the liquid slosh into her throat.

She choked, recognizing it as the magic-suppressing elixir that Orion had brought her.

Then she was shoved forcefully onto the platform, tripping over her feet and landing on her elbows. One of the women laughed as she brought herself up. They were talking among themselves, sitting in comfortable chairs, barely giving her a glance.

The older man tipped his glasses up his nose and said, “Name?”

Briony didn’t have a voice, but Gains supplied it for her. The older man wrote it on a slip of paper. He glanced at the ink on the inside of her left elbow, and Briony watched him notate Gains’s ownership.

“Age?”

“Twenty-five,” Gains said.

“I see here that her medical bill is clean.” The older man—the appraiser—glanced at Briony quickly, as if he’d rather not see her face, see her soul.

He twitched his fingers, and a measuring tape jumped out of his bag.

It quickly took in her height, then after an infinitesimal pause and a glare from Gains, it wrapped itself about Briony’s hips, waist, and chest before returning to his bag.

The appraiser spread his arms in front of Briony and cast a spell she didn’t recognize. A light glowed between his palms, steadily pulsing brighter.

A murmuring reached her from the Bomardi in leather chairs. Something about the pulsing light had caught their attention.

“That’ll be the Rosewood blood,” Genevieve Trow said, sipping from a glass. “Fascinating to see the strength of it like this.”

“Is that a five, then?” Gains asked hungrily.

“From the rudimentary scale you’ve given me,” the appraiser said, “yes. This is the closest grading to a five we’ve seen today.”

It was a spell to measure her magic? Briony’s eyes flickered to the men and women lounging and smoking cigars. Orion Hearst’s gaze was on her, calculating.

The appraiser cleared his throat.

“Starting bid for Miss Rosewood should be no lower than seventy-five hundred gold based on your grading system.” He pulled his glasses from his face. “But I’ve heard that Miss Hardstark and the Miss Rosewood will be starting at ten thousand, regardless.”

Briony stared at him. Ten thousand. That was the same sum a magician would earn after a year’s commitment to the king’s army in Evermore.

“Apologies,” he continued, squinting at his numbers again. “With the virginity, they will be starting at fifteen thousand.”

Briony took a silent inhale through her clenched teeth.

“And what’s your estimation?” Gains asked greedily.

The appraiser rubbed his forefinger and thumb over the bridge of his nose before turning to the room of Bomardi. He spoke loudly, possibly magically enhanced.

“Briony Rosewood. Estimating thirty thousand gold.”

Briony felt like she was swallowing sand. That was enough to buy a farm with acreage to keep a family of four fed. That was enough for the fees at Heatherly, the school across the sea that taught the highest degree of magical healing.

She would not be killed. No one would be idiotic enough to buy her and then kill her off. No, it would be a slow death for her. Maybe years.

How on earth did Reighven think he could afford this?

The Bomardi chuckled, not surprised by the estimate, and she heard Genevieve Trow say, “Does Reighven even have that kind of gold?”

“He certainly thinks he does,” Quill said. He raised his voice to Gains. “You’re about to be a rich man, Hap!”

Gains had a bounce to his step as he led Briony back the way they came. As they descended the staircases into the bowels of the castle, a guard led a dark-haired man up the stairs past them.

“Briony! Briony!”

It was Didion. She didn’t have the strength to struggle like he did and could do no more than watch dully as he thrashed in the guard’s arms, calling her name as they dragged him up the stairs.

“It will be all right! I promise!”

Briony listened to his voice call out to her the entire way down. She could almost still hear the echo of it in the dungeon when she was dragged back into the cell with the women.

It was only a few short hours before every woman was cleaned and dressed for the evening.

They were bound in new collars, but the chain between their hands was left off.

Briony couldn’t be sure in the darkness of the cell, but she thought the new collars were brightly metallic.

Some of them were given white dresses in the Bomardi style, tight in the bodice and long flowing to the floor.

Others were given black dresses. She could guess what the white meant.

Then the Bomardi fighters came to collect their prizes.

When the first man entered the cell, he collected two women, placing his palm over the ink on their arms and then drawing a portal to step through, dragging the women with him.

Briony made a note of the skin contact.

There were a few scrappy commoners who came to collect three or four women, claiming they had a few men as well. They were hunters, looking to turn profit by capturing and selling as many Eversuns as possible.

When Reighven entered, he took Cordelia and three other women, most of them in white. And Briony began to have an idea of how he thought he would be able to afford her.

As the numbers dwindled, soon it was only Briony, Larissa, and Larissa’s father.

Briony watched with bated breath as Hap Gains commanded Larissa to join them in the center of the room.

Larissa stood on shaking legs in her black dress, her whole body trembling.

“Come here,” Gains repeated.

“Daddy …”

Briony watched in horror as Larissa started to cry, her body heaving with sobs.

“Daddy, don’t do this.”

Gains adjusted the cuff buttons on his wrists, ignoring her.

“I’m your only daughter—”

Gains snapped his head to look at her directly, the first time Briony had seen him do so in the past week.

“I don’t have a daughter,” he growled. “Not anymore.”

Briony’s eyes were wide as Larissa seemed to breathe into a deep place inside of her, calming her sobs with a last gulp before walking forward to join them for the portal.

Gains turned to Briony. With a twist of his fingers, her dress pulled tighter to her body. She gasped soundlessly as the fabric shivered on her, turning gold.

Gains smiled. “Our gold-blooded royal.”

Briony glared up at him. He took Larissa’s arm, then hers, and dragged them through the darkness.