Kiera smelt him even before he flung the chamber door open. The stench of old sweat, mixed with ale that had long gone sour, and a bitter, smoky tang that stung her nostrils and filled her with dread. He had been smoking ayahuasca again.

Her eyes snapped open just as he lunged towards her, yanking her up from the pallet of threadbare straw. His thin, cruel fingers and sharp fingernails dug into her arm, pinching painfully.

That’s going to bruise, she thought dully, just before he landed an open palmed blow to her face that sent her staggering backwards, tripping over the still body of another girl on the floor behind her. Not too hard a blow - he knew not to mark the merchandise just before the customers were set to appear.

“Get up, you filthy wenches!” He screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “We have customers that need servin’!” He lunged at another girl who was whimpering in the corner near the door, huddled against the wall. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he began shaking her back and forth like a bloodhound with a rabbit, a crazed gleam in his eye. Kiera recognised that look. He was still under the influence of the hallucination herb, which made him even more dangerous than usual. She watched as the choker that the girl wore around her neck, the same as the one they all wore, began to pulsate, turning a faint rust colour. The colour of old, dried blood.

Other girls were now fleeing the room, pressing themselves against the frame of the door as they squeezed past, terrified of touching him or attracting his attention. Kiera knew she should leave, but her legs were leaden, her eyelids weary.

She was tired, so very tired.

Loud, boisterous male voices were heard from downstairs. The man lifted his head towards the door, attracted by the sounds. Some of the feral excitement in his eyes cooled, and without even looking at the girl he had his hands on, he threw her out the open door and into the hallway. “Go make me some money!” he snarled, before turning around slowly to face the room.

Only Kiera and the girl she had tripped over earlier remained.

Get up, she willed the girl. Get up. All you need to do is get up. You can rest later, just get up now.

The girl didn’t stir. Kiera recognised her as one of the new arrivals. She had been brought here just last week. Or was it last month? Time didn’t have any meaning any more, not in this cursed place.

The man moved towards the girl, slowly uncoiling the thick whip he had tied to his belt, a hard smile beginning to play at the edges of his thin lipped mouth. “And what do we have here?” he asked, sharp eyes on the girl on the floor.

Kiera’s stomach churned. She knew where this lead. She could almost smell the blood, taste the coppery flavour in her mouth. Despite all her instincts screaming at her to run, to escape, her feet stayed rooted to the floorboards.

“Please,” Kiera whispered, her voice barely audible through her dry, cracked lips. “She’s just-”

The man’s face swung towards her, nostrils flaring like a predator scenting new prey. He smiled at Kiera, the unnatural movement making his eyes narrow into dark slits. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted his left hand. Wrapped around his smallest finger was a ring, the exact, perfect match to the one set in the choker around Kiera’s neck. It began to pulse a dull red.

Oh Goddess no, Kiera thought, wishing she could take back her words. The ring in the band around her neck began to pulse as it abruptly turned hot, lighting up like a flame, searing deep into her flesh. She knew the skin under the ring was made up of layer upon layer of scar tissue from years of continuous burns that had painfully crusted and healed over, time and time again. It was only a few seconds before the smell of burning flesh, her burning flesh, reached her nose. Shards of agony pierced her, and out of sheer instinct, her hands reached up to grasp at the band of fire around her throat. Some distant part of her mind shouted at her not to - she knew that touching the band would cause her hands to scorch and bubble like they had been thrust into acid, but those thoughts were muffled. Everything was muffled, as though she couldn’t quite hear, couldn’t quite think, through the haze of pain descending around her.

There was nothing to do but beg. When she had first arrived here, she had sworn she would never beg. She had told herself that she would die before a plea ever left her lips. But that was so long ago. Now, all it ever felt like she did anymore was beg. Beg for a few drops of water. Beg for some scraps from the kitchen slop bucket. Beg for a strip of cloth to cover herself with when the Winter chill seeped in through the broken slats of the chamber all the girls were locked in. Beg for the pain to stop. There was no shame in begging anymore.

But the words were hard to form through the dense fog, the darkness that was slowly creeping in from the edges of her vision.

The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was the sound of a whip snapping open flesh.

*****

Kiera awoke to a small hand roughly shaking her shoulder.

“Are yer dead?” A boy’s voice asked, irritated. “B’cause I didn’t bring him all the way here from the Underworld for yer to be goin’ to him.”

The words made no sense. For a disorientating moment, Kiera didn’t know where she was or who was talking. It wasn’t until her senses cleared and she was reminded of the sensation of a shard of burning glass piercing her throat that she remembered what had happened. The man - Cadius - had used the soul ring on her. Used a piece of her own soul against her.

She slowly pushed herself upright, biting her lip to stop herself from screaming and clutching at the charred skin on her throat. For one precarious moment, her vision swam in and out. When it finally cleared, she found herself squinting at a boy she guessed to be around 10 years old, with a messy straw-coloured mop of hair half covering his face and shrewd blue eyes staring at her.

“Puck,” she croaked hoarsely, wincing at the resulting sharp stab of pain in her throat. “What are you doing here?”

Puck was the urchin that she had met not long ago in the tavern connected to Cadius’s brothel. He had claimed he was assigned to helping the kitchenhand, but during the few times she had been allowed to pour drinks in the tavern for her customers, she had noticed him eagerly watching the patrons playing games like King’s Quarters, Chance’o’Die, or Wager Cup. She had also, on more than one occasion, seen his small hand deftly pluck coins from an unsuspecting gambler’s coin purse, the silver and bronze vanishing instantly between his fingers as he did so.

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In fact, it was only a few months ago that she had been confronted by a drunk nobleman from Ashera, who had loudly and angrily accused her of having pocketed his change after he purchased a drink from her. She knew she had seen Puck, the little thief, helping himself to the customer’s coin earlier in the night - and when she looked over to him, the boy had the audacity to waggle his eyebrows at her, as though challenging her to reveal the truth. Kiera had held her tongue, even when the furious lord had pulled out a gold, jewel encrusted dagger with the most beautiful deep red ruby embedded in the hilt, brandishing it in her face. The dagger, although exquisitely crafted and no doubt worth a small fortune, was too gaudy for Kiera’s taste, but the ruby was the most stunning gem imaginable. The small stone shone with varying shades of red bleeding into orange, catching the light at different angles and casting magnificent, shimmering hues in all directions, depending on the angle in which it was seen. It was like a glass prism being tossed into the air under the rays of a sunset.

Living deep inside the mountains of Ashera, the kingdom north of Alderheim, the Asherian people were famous for their talents in mining rare, precious stones, as well as in manipulating metal, making them the master forgers of some of the most deadly and intricate weapons on the Continent.

They were also known for their inhumane treatment of women.

This Asherian lord was no different. As he had moved closer to Kiera, standing behind the bar top, Puck had appeared at his side, tugging on his sleeve. “I found yer coin, m’lord. She must’ve pushed it off the bar, the clumsy wench.” And in between his fingers, he held a single silver coin. Kiera was sure she’d seen him take more than that from the man’s purse. The lord had slapped his hand down on the bar in irritation, making Kiera flinch, and reached for the coin. For one heart stopping moment, Kiera had sworn that the urchin boy was going to click his fingers and make it disappear, with that sly smile she’d seen on his face before. But instead, the coin was returned, and Puck had merely winked at her as he sidled away. The next morning, Kiera heard that the lord’s prized ruby dagger had gone missing, and she hadn’t seen Puck since.

“Yer been sought for,” Puck said, jerking his head towards the door. “And his Highness,” the boy said with a crafty smile, as though he’d just made a joke that only he understood, “don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

Kiera swallowed. She wasn’t sure who Puck was referring to, but she assumed he meant Cadius. Her master. Her nightmare.

The other girl who’d been lying on the floor was nowhere to be found, but Kiera saw the blood, now seeping through the wooden floorboards, not too far from her feet. She wondered if the girl was alive. Likely not. She knew that when Cadius was under the influence of ayahuasca, he would be thirsting for blood. And when he’d had his fill of that, he’d be thirsting for a girl to abuse.

It looked like tonight, she was that girl.

She moved stiffly from the room to the lavatory chamber next door, illuminated by a few candles already burning low, their fat droplets of wax encrusted down the side like frozen tears. The mirror against the far wall was crusted and cracked, dirt and dust covering so much of it that she had to tilt her head at an angle to be able to see her reflection. Tired, dull eyes the colour of deep green moss looked back at her, the dark circles underneath them even more prominent against her pale skin. Her high cheekbones, once rosy, now only accentuated the gauntness of her face. She had overheard some of the patrons saying that the crops had been poor this year, but Kiera couldn’t remember a time when her belly didn’t ache from hunger.

Worst of all, her hair was limp and lacklustre, sticking to her face in sweaty clumps, and the colour - once what she distantly remembered to be a vibrant, deep red - was now dull and lifeless, cropped short in order for it to be hidden. One of her first memories of Cadius was him holding her down as a child while she screamed in fury as he hacked at her unruly locks with a dagger. He had sliced her ear then - fortunately a shallow cut - before backhanding her and threatening to slice her throat. She’d gone silent after that - after all, it was only hair.

Devil’s hair, the other girls had whispered. The colour of hellsfire. The colour of Rathnos, God of the Underworld. She is a creature of death. And so it had to be cut. The patrons wouldn’t want to bed a wench with hair that reminded them of death, so Kiera was forced to wear a wig whenever customers were around.

Or whenever Cadius wanted her.

Kiera’s hands trembled as she began the process of pinning the wig to her scalp, the tiny clips inside the wig scraping along the crown of her head as she did so. This one was a deep burgundy, and a small, dark voice inside her mind wondered where it came from.

Don’t think about it, she told herself numbly. Just get through tonight. Just get through it, and I can think about it later. Once, a lifetime ago, she had asked Cadius where the wig he’d given her came from. That one had been a luscious, bright blonde, the colour of the sun captured in a flaxen mop. And before she had realised what she’d done, he had dragged her through the kitchen, down to the dank depths of the cells hidden beneath the brothel, past cell after cell full of cowering, whimpering girls chained to the walls. When they finally reached the third last cell from the end, he had shoved Kiera up against the bars.

Inside lay the bloodied body of a girl who looked to be a few years older than Kiera, although it was hard to tell with the whip having flayed both her clothes and her body until there was hardly anything distinguishable left of either. The only thing Kiera recognised was the girl’s wide dead eyes, the whites of them showing in agony, and her mouth open in a silent scream. That, and the blood pooling around her head, her hair having been removed, along with an inch of skin from her scalp.

That had been the first time she’d seen the brutality of what happened in Cadius’s cellars. It wasn’t the last. After that, Kiera never asked him about the wigs. In fact, she had hardly spoken a word to Cadius again until tonight.

“Are yer goin’ to be gawkin’ at yer reflection all eve?” Puck asked from behind her, a quizzical look on his face as he watched Kiera finish tucking the last strand of her cropped hair into the wig. She didn’t have the energy to respond to the boy; barely had the energy to stand. Any life that was left in her had been scorched by the fire from the ring on her neck, turning her thoughts and her anger into wisps of charred cinder that crumbled when she reached for it. Instead, she took a small piece of clay from the shelf - it was cheap clay, not the beautiful, rich resource that came from the Kingdom of Sahare - and was the same rusted blood colour that matched the ring around her neck. A reminder for Cadius that he was in control, that he had the soul ring that made her do his bidding. She quickly applied it to her lips, noticing the deep cut in her bottom lip that was still bleeding. She must have bitten it when she was thrashing on the floor in agony.

“I’m ready,” she whispered, but it wasn’t to Puck that she was talking to. Just get through tonight. Get through tonight and you can think about it all later.

When she turned from the mirror, the boy was watching her shrewdly, eyes evaluating. The expression on his face looked much older, much more calculating, than the smug, mischievous look he usually wore. But it was gone a moment later, and as she followed him out into the hallway, Kiera wondered if she had imagined it.

He led her down to a room at the far end of the narrow corridor, lined with doors leading to other cramped quarters. Cadius’s chambers. Kiera’s stomach churned, and she held her hand out to steady herself against the wall. You can do this. Just do it, then you can sleep, and tomorrow will be a new day. You can think about it all later. As her stomach continued to roil, this was quickly replaced with a horrifying new thought. She was going to be sick right outside Cadius’s door, and then he would punish her, put her back in the pitch-black, tiny hole in one of the cells underground…No. She wouldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t let herself go there.

Puck pushed the heavy, wooden door of Cadius’s bedchamber open, before standing aside and motioning for Kiera to go in with a jaunty wave of his hand.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. The dull words bounced around in her mind.

Taking in a deep inhale, she stepped into the room.

But it wasn’t Cadius that was awaiting her inside.