Chapter Three

“Wake up!”

Anastasia felt sick, hot and feverish and completely uncertain of anything as she struggled towards wakefulness. Her memories were a jumbled mess, her thoughts spinning in circles as she tried to make sense of what had happened to her … for a moment, she was certain she’d merely had a very bad nightmare and when she opened her eyes, she’d find herself in her own bed with Patsy bustling around her, opening the curtains and allowing sunlight to chivvy her the rest of the way into the waking world. Patsy … horror ran through her as some of the memories fell into place, warning her that she wasn’t trapped in a dream. Patsy – no, Circe – had betrayed her and taken her place and … where was she?

She gasped in pain, struggling to breathe. The air was heavy with incense, the scent pressing down on her like a physical force. Her body was lying on a thin blanket, too thin to protect her from the hard flooring underneath. It shifted oddly, a faint sensation of movement that meant nothing to her. Was she on a train? She’d seen the railway lines driven through the mountains and into Rockfall, turning the kingdom into a hub of the railway network slowly spreading over the Allied Lands … she hadn’t been allowed to actually ride on the train, she had no idea what it actually felt like to be on one …

A foot kicked her ribs, hard. “Wake up!”

Anastasia’s eyes snapped open. She was lying on her back in a darkened room, the only source of illumination a weak lantern hanging from the ceiling. A shadowy shape loomed over her … she was sure, although she wasn’t sure how, that someone was staring down at her. There were faint chinks of light in the distance, as if the walls weren’t quite solid, but … horror ran through her as she realised she was alone and helpless, at the mercy of a complete stranger. Her mother was going to be horrified, if she ever knew. But if Circe had been telling the truth, Anastasia’s mother didn’t even know she was missing.

“Good to see you’re awake,” a voice said. It was masculine but oddly scratchy, as if the speaker had forgotten how to talk long ago and was trying to relearn the art the hard way. “I have bought your contract.”

Anastasia felt her head spin as she forced herself to sit upright, despite the throbbing pain in her head. The floor below her was rocking very slightly, a faint and yet very disconcerting motion that bothered her at a very primal level. Her body ached, a dull pain that made it hard to think clearly. She was alone, with a man … she gritted her teeth. She had more important problems, right now, than her reputation.

Her mouth was dry. It was hard to speak. “Who are you?”

“You may call me Master Avitus,” the voice said. “I am your master.”

He snapped his fingers. A lightglobe appeared in midair, so bright Anastasia felt as if daggers were being driven through her eyes and straight into her mind. The pain was agonising … she gritted her teeth, trying to recall the mental disciplines the Court Wizard had tried to teach her. She really should have paid more attention, she told herself bitterly. There were no painkilling potions here … somehow, she had the feeling Avitus, whoever or whatever he was, had no interest in her comfort. It was just impossible to think clearly, yet … she forced herself to grow accustomed to the light, to look up at Avitus. He was …

She stared, numb horror pervading her thoughts. He was a walking skeleton … for a horrified moment, she thought he was a lich before realising he did have skin, skin so tightly stretched over his skull that she could practically see the bone underneath. His robe concealed most of his body, but his arms were painfully thin and his fingertips long and angular in a manner that was disturbingly inhuman. She met his eyes and recoiled at the sickly yellow gaze, the impression of a human body kept alive by spite and raw magic. The stench of decay struck her a moment later and she nearly retched. It had barely been covered by the incense.

It was difficult to think clearly. Where was she? The Blighted Lands?

She looked down at herself. Her riding clothes were gone, replaced with a tunic that was so loose she couldn’t help wondering if it had been made out of a potato sack. The boots were the only thin she’d been allowed to keep … her hand reached for the amulet, a flash of horror running through her as she realised it was missing. It was … her memories caught up with her a moment later, reminding her that she’d given it to Circe willingly. Or close to willingly. It hadn’t been much of a choice.

“Get up,” Avitus ordered. “I want a look at you.”

Anastasia gritted her teeth. “Do you know who I am?”

Avitus gave her a sallow smile that was chillingly inhuman. “Who are you?”

“I am …”

Anastasia choked, her lips twisting painfully the moment she tried to speak her full name. It was suddenly very hard to breathe, as if someone had wrapped invisible hands around her neck and was squeezing gently but firmly, crushing the life out of her. She heard a high-pitched giggle from above as she bent over, fighting to get some air into her lungs. Circe hadn’t missed a trick, she realised dully, as the sensation slowly ebbed away. She’d ensured Anastasia couldn’t tell anyone who she was. Even trying would likely get her killed. And she had no idea if she could remove the curse without it killing her first.

“Anastasia,” she managed, finally. She could say her name, but any hint of her title brought the choking sensation back into being. “I come from …”

Her vision blurred. She couldn’t say the name of her kingdom either. Or anything beyond her own name. She wondered, suddenly, just how common her name actually was. There’d been a few hundred copycats back home, girls named after their princess before she’d even seen her first birthday, but where was she? Not, she supposed sourly, that it mattered. Just because someone had the same name as the princess didn’t mean she was the princess.

“Get up,” Avitus repeated. “Now.”

Anastasia forced herself to stand, looking around the chamber to keep from staring at his horrific face. The room was larger than she’d realised, somehow managing to look like a demented cross between a kitchen, a slaughterhouse and a wizard’s lair. The tables were laden with glassworks, the walls lined with shelves groaning under the weight of jars, cauldrons and a handful of books her instincts warned her not to touch. A handful of bodies hung from the rafters, like pigs and sheep in the castle’s stockrooms … her gorge rose and she retched, helplessly, as she realised they were human bodies. They were being drained of their blood, the liquid flowing through glass pipettes into the floor … she dreaded to think what might be below the oddly shifting wooden floorboards. It was an abomination. She might not have paid much attention to her magic lessons, but even she knew that anything that involved human sacrifice was bad news, a sign of the dark arts. Where was she?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I neither know nor care from where you came,” Avitus said. She forced herself to look at him. He was actually slightly shorter than herself, but his presence was strong enough to make her want to take a step backwards. It poisoned the air. “All that matters is that I bought your contact. I own you until you pay me back.”

“That’s illegal,” Anastasia protested. It was effectively slavery, banned in all civilised kingdoms. “I …”

Avitus snorted. “Where do you think you are?”

Anastasia had no answer. Circe had told her she’d be sent a long way away … but that could cover anywhere from the Southern Continent to Dead Man’s Castle on the southern side of the Blighted Lands. Avitus couldn’t go unnoticed somewhere normal, could he …? Perhaps she was in Celeste. The city ruled by magicians for magicians wouldn’t give much of a damn about an inhuman man, as long as he paid his taxes and didn’t cause trouble. Or perhaps she was in the Blighted Lands. There were all sorts of stories about warped and twisted creatures that had once been men, too alien to have any sort of life in the north. If she was that far from home …

“You’re in the free state,” Avitus told her. “It doesn’t matter how you got here. All that matters is that I own your contact. I own you.”

He turned away, exposing his back. “You’ll be working for me until you pay off your debt,” he continued. “You’ll find me a decent master, if you behave yourself. If not …”

Anastasia stared at his back. His hairless scalp made a very tempting target. She could hit him … she caught herself, suddenly very aware she was dealing with a dark wizard. He wouldn’t turn his back unless he was deliberately giving her a chance to strike him, unless he knew he could absorb her blow and use it as an excuse to punish her. She was no longer in the castle, no longer in a place where only her father could so much as scold her, she was … she swallowed hard. She was helpless. Circe had taken her place and sold her into slavery and … and what? She was trapped.

Avitus didn’t turn to face her. “How much magic do you know?”

“Very little,” Anastasia said. There was no point in trying to lie, not when she would likely be tested. It was hard to fake competence … or so she’d been told. “I can read and write and a few other things …”

“Oh, goody,” Avitus said, with heavy sarcasm. “That’ll come in handy.”

He kept walking, motioning for her to follow him into the next room. It looked like a storefront, with an open door and no visible windows. The shelves were near-empty, only a handful of jars visible in the shadows. She couldn’t keep herself from staring out the door, a faint whiff of salty air teasing her nostrils as she stared at the wooden walls. Was she on a ship? Or somewhere near the seashore? Or …?

“This place needs a good scrubbing,” Avitus said, leading her into a third room. It looked slightly more comfortable, but the stench of decay was ever-present. “You’ll be doing it, of course.”

Anastasia gritted her teeth. “And how much will I be paid?”

“I’ll be charging you for your lessons too,” Avitus said. “If I need to teach you how to be useful …”

“Of course,” Anastasia muttered. She’d watched when an apprentice sought the king’s justice by filing a complaint against his master. The older man had been very careful to ensure his apprentice never quite reached the point he could strike out on his own, keeping him as unpaid labour by constantly fiddling the accounts. Her father hadn’t been amused and ruled against the master. “Am I going to be paying for my upkeep too?”

“Of course,” Avitus echoed. “Consider yourself lucky you haven’t been collared.”

He kept talking, his words battering against what remained of her mind. She was trapped, effectively enslaved, and … she was going to do menial work. She was a princess, a young woman of royal blood … not here. She had never even heard of the free state and that meant … she wasn’t a princess, just someone who happened to share a name with a young woman the locals probably didn’t even know existed. Even if she somehow managed to disclose her true name, would anyone care? And would she regret it if they did?

Avitus walked though another door, still talking. Anastasia saw her chance and slammed the door closed, trapping him on the far side long enough – she hoped – to get the hell out of the nightmarish shop before it was too late. She wasn’t slow on her feet … she turned and ran, slamming the other door as she darted into the shopfront and out the door and …

Her body just stopped, as if she’d run into an invisible wall. She had a second to realise she was standing on wooden decking before her body turned around of its own accord and walked back into the shop, through the door, and dropped into a full prostration. No matter how hard she tried to get her body to budge, she couldn’t move a single muscle. She’d often thought it absurd how some maidservants prostrated themselves in front of their masters – their heads pressed against the floor, their bottoms high in the air – and yet, she’d somehow never realised how humiliating it was to be trapped in such a position, unable to so much as lift their heads until their master released them. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could sense Avitus walking towards her. His presence was overpowering.

He kicked her rear, hard. Pain shot through her as she collapsed onto the floor, the agony more than she could bear. She had known some maids were beaten, if they made mistakes or talked back to their superiors, but no one had ever dared strike her. Even her father was too kind an d gentle to lay a hand on his daughter … the kick, so hard and shocking, brought the true horror of her situation into her mind in a way the magical compulsion had not. She was completely and utterly at his mercy. And there were worse fates than being turned into a frog.

“Get up,” Avitus ordered, coldly.

Anastasia forced herself to sit back on her haunches, then stand. Her owner – she cursed herself for even thinking of him as anything other than her captor – seemed amused, although it was hard to be sure. His smile was weirdly stretched … Anastasia couldn’t help wondering if he was even remotely human, if he was really something so strange it didn’t quite know how to pretend to be human.

“I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility,” Avitus informed her. There was a hint of snide amusement in his tone, as if he relished the chance to rub her nose in her own helplessness. “You may not leave this establishment without my permission. If you try, you will find yourself back here and trapped until I choose to release you. Later, when we come to understand each other a little better, I will let you do tasks for me outside … but you will always be on my leash, unable to go further than I choose to permit. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” Anastasia muttered. The Court Wizard hadn’t told her anything about compulsion spells. The amulet was supposed to protect her against such tricks … the amulet that was hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles away, wrapped around Circe’s neck. She wanted to think the amulet had turned on the sorceress, when she donned it, but she couldn’t convince herself. Circe was too smart to let herself be defeated so easily. “I understand.”

“Good.” Avitus’s expression didn’t change. She couldn’t help wondering if his face had stuck that way. “You’ll find brushes and washcloths under the sink. I want this room clean before nightfall.”

Anastasia turned away, trying not to show her despair as he left her alone. The stories about kidnapped princesses had been horrific, but their captors had always known who they were and been careful not to do anything that would hurt or kill them. Not physically, at least. The idea there was something exciting about being kidnapped had been absurd even when she’d been a child, before she’d learnt a little more of the facts of life. And how stories could cover up a horror no one deserved to face.

She forced herself to open the cupboard under the sink and retrieve the tools. She’d never stood and watched the castle’s staff do any cleaning and she wasn’t sure where to begin, but she had no choice. If Avitus thought she was genuinely useless, who knew what he’d do? Her imagination provided too many answers, from things unthinkable to a normal sane human mind to things that somehow managed to be even worse. Avitus wasn’t a necromancer, but that didn’t make him harmless. Whatever he was, he was the exact opposite.

It was harder than she realised to scrub the floor, to remove layer upon layer of dirt and grime from rotting wooden floorboards. The wood looked as if it had been shiny once upon a time, but now it was tainted, so unsteady she had the uneasy feeling it was on the verge of collapsing under her weight. She knew two stableboys had been dismissed after they climbed into the loft, feel through the floorboards and landed on the ground below … was that going to happen to her too? She honestly didn’t know. It was hard, so hard, to remain focused on the task. If she ever made it home, she promised herself she’d give the castle staff a raise. She had never realised how hard they had to work, just to keep the floors clean. Her father …

Anger boiled through her. Circe was in her place, pretending to be her … and she was here, trapped and helpless and utterly alone. She was a slave … she gritted her teeth, promising herself she’d do whatever it took to get back home and save her parents, then reclaim the place that was her birthright. She would do anything to get home.

And when I do, she swore on her soul, I will make that bitch regret she ever heard of me.