Page 23 of Shadow Waltz
But for now, I was lost. The crowd’s applause was muted, perfunctory. The auctioneer offered a closing remark I didn’t hear.
The reality should have hit me like a freight train, but instead it felt like slipping underwater. Distant. Muffled. Inevitable. I had an owner now, someone who'd just paid more than most people would see in a lifetime for the privilege of controlling my life. The thought should have terrified me, but terror required caring about the outcome, and I'd stopped caring about anything months ago.
The guards moved to escort me off the stage, but I shook them off, walking under my own power because it was the only dignity I had left. Small victories were still victories, even when the war was already lost.
As I passed the front row, the woman in silk leaned forward slightly. “Such a waste,” she whispered, and I realized she wasn't talking about the money. She was talking about me—the fact that The Prince had claimed me before she could explore whatever creative tortures her imagination had conjured.
The casual dismissal of my humanity should have hurt, but pain required nerve endings that still functioned, and mine had been burned out long ago. I was already dead inside; I was just waiting for my body to catch up.
The guards flanked me, but I let myself lag half a step behind, using the cover of their bulk to sweep the room one last time.The crowd’s attention had already shifted to the next lot—a girl with wild eyes and a broken wrist. Their hunger moved on so easily. I watched their hands, the exchange of business cards and coded nods, the choreography of predators playing at civility.
Even numb, I couldn’t stop cataloguing. I tracked the security details: two men near the emergency exit who never looked away from the floor, one with an earpiece he touched every time the auctioneer’s voice jumped a register. Another, hidden behind the champagne service, was bigger than the rest—bouncer, ex-military, judging by the stance. I clocked the way he let his eyes wander the crowd but never missed a raised paddle or a flicker of conflict. I memorized his walk.
As we reached the wings, I caught my reflection in a gilded panel—just for a heartbeat, enough to remind myself I was still here, still thinking, even if everything else had been hollowed out. They wanted merchandise, but I was still a problem to solve, a pattern to crack. Somewhere deep inside, the urge to map this system flared up again.
In the hush of the backstage corridor, a server passed close. Her eyes darted toward me for a fraction of a second—sympathy or calculation, impossible to tell. She dropped her gaze, but the movement of her hand as she adjusted her tray was deliberate. I noticed a scrap of napkin caught between two glasses, folded into a triangle. Not an accident. I didn’t reach for it, but I didn’t forget it, either. Details saved for later, in case survival required them.
The guards exchanged a glance as we approached the elevator. “Clear the floor,” one muttered into his radio. “Lot seventeen’s on the move.”
A subtle shift in the hallway—two doors closed, lights flickered, footsteps above. I pressed every sensory memory into the map forming in my mind. Elevator required a key card, but the number of floors displayed was wrong—six listed, but I’dcounted at least seven window rows from the outside. Hidden levels, then. Security by omission.
I kept my breathing steady, counting off heartbeats until the doors slid open. The inside smelled of new carpet and expensive aftershave, but the panel was a fortress—no seams, no screws, just a silent black lens above the control board. Camera. I looked directly into it, expression blank, but forced myself to blink twice, slow and measured. If anyone on the outside was watching for a signal, they’d see it. If not—no harm. Either way, I was leaving breadcrumbs.
We rose in silence, higher and higher, until my ears popped. I marked the time—eight seconds between floors, four floors climbed, then a pause. We weren’t just going up; we were being watched, evaluated at every turn. I listened for the subtle differences in the elevator’s mechanical hum—shifts that suggested we’d crossed into a restricted zone, a difference in pressure, the faintest whiff of ozone.
By the time the doors opened, I’d pieced together a crude map—at least three security checkpoints, one off-limits suite above the rest, and a staff member who might be more than she appeared. My body moved because it had to, but my mind was already working on the edges of possibility.
I wasn’t just merchandise. Not yet.
Not if I kept thinking. Not if I kept counting.
Not if I kept watching for the pattern everyone else missed.
In the wings, Carina waited with paperwork and an expression I couldn't quite read. Professional satisfaction mixed with something that might have been concern, though concern seemed unlikely from someone in her position.
“Congratulations,” she said dryly. “You've just become the most expensive lot we've sold this year.”
“Lucky me,” I said, and meant it as much as a corpse means anything.
She studied my face with calculating eyes, and I wondered what she saw there. Probably nothing. That was all there was left to see.
“He's never bid on anyone before,” she said quietly, as if the information was some kind of gift. “The Prince has never shown personal interest in any lot. You should consider that significant.”
But I didn't consider it anything, because I'd heard similar statements at my previous auctions. They all said something to make their buyers feel like they'd acquired a prize instead of just another piece of damaged goods. Whether The Prince was different from other buyers or just more expensive in his cruelty, the outcome was the same.
They led me through corridors, past rooms filled with computer equipment and medical supplies and things I didn't want to think about too hard. The building was larger than I'd realized, a maze of interconnected spaces that suggested serious money and serious planning behind the operation.
But instead of taking me to a holding area like I expected, they led me up—through floors I hadn't seen before, past offices and conference rooms and spaces that looked almost normal if you ignored the armed guards at every junction. The elevator they put me in required a key card to operate.
The room they brought me to wasn't what I'd expected based on my previous experiences. Whitmore had kept me in a converted basement that looked like a high-end dungeon. Webb had provided a sparse but clean bedroom in his penthouse. This was something else entirely—what looked like a luxury hotel suite with marble bathroom, silk sheets, fine furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered stunning views of the city while remaining unbreakable barriers to freedom.
The opulence felt like a mockery after the sterile holding cells. Egyptian cotton sheets soft enough to be clouds, abathroom bigger than any apartment I'd ever lived in, artwork that probably cost more than most people made in a lifetime. It was the kind of place Julian used to dream about, back when we both believed in fairy tales and happy endings.
I tested every door and window methodically, but the locks were electronic and the glass was clearly reinforced. Military-grade security disguised as luxury amenities. “Gilded cage,” I muttered, remembering what Cass used to say about the foster homes that looked perfect from the outside but hid horrors within their walls.
The bathroom mirror showed me a stranger wearing my face—expensive clothes that fit perfectly, probably tailored based on measurements taken while I was unconscious. The barcode sticker had been removed from my collarbone, but I could still feel its phantom presence like a brand burned into my flesh.
My ice-blue eyes looked back at me from the reflection, but they might as well have belonged to someone else. Empty windows in an abandoned house, offering no clues about who might have lived there once. I touched the glass with fingertips that felt like they belonged to a dead man, and the mirror Ash touched back with equal emptiness.