flinches before focusing his attention on me and Sadie. He frowns when he sees Sadie curled up and crying, but I meet his gaze dead-on and glare daggers at him. When he smiles at me, I curl my lip in disgust.
He points at me and says something in a foreign language. Giovanni sighs and bends down slightly, settling his cold black eyes on me. “He wants me to let you out, human. Behave yourself.”
I scoff and narrow my eyes. “You’re fucking stupid if you think I’m going to make this easy for you.”
Giovanni tenses and grits his teeth, and he says something in the same foreign language the monk spoke. Monk Guy chuckles and bends down so he’s more level with me, and he grins broadly when he speaks again. Giovanni sighs in defeat at whatever was just said, and he moves to open our cage.
The door swings open, and I hold my breath for a few seconds while I gather my courage. This guy wants to buy me. There’s no other reason they’d be opening the cage. Two of the businessmen who were eyeing the selkies are watching on in interest, and they stand silently just a few feet behind Giovanni and my potential new owner.
I crawl out slowly and cautiously, and I shakily pull myself into a standing position once I’m out. I balance most of my weight on my right foot, but my knees still buckle since I haven’t been able to stand up for several days.
Even though I’m scared, and I’m weak enough that I need to lean against the cage in order to stand, I give Monk Guy the haughtiest expression I can muster. He speaks rapidly with Giovanni while he looks me over. To keep myself distracted, I try to decipher what language they’re speaking. I’m certainly not an expert. I can only speak English, and I only took, like, one year of Spanish in high school before I dropped out. But I think he’s maybe speaking Russian or some other Slavic dialect.
Monk Guy steps forward and picks up a lock of my hair, still speaking words I don’t understand. I’m so startled by the sudden closeness of him that I panic and act without really thinking it through. I bring my hand up and punch him right across his cheek, hard enough that he stumbles backwards and almost loses his balance.
One of the guards runs over and slaps these heavy, primitive-looking handcuffs around my wrists so quickly I barely have time to blink. I’m terrified I’m going to be hurt or punished, or even killed, but Monk Guy just starts laughing wildly.
“Dokonalá,” he chuckles as he clasps his hands together in front of him.
Giovanni snorts at me and raises a dark eyebrow. “Well, the crazy bastard thinks you’re perfect. I’m not one to judge a man’s taste, so it looks like you’ll be heading off world. Good fucking riddance, if you ask me.”
Off world? My heart drops into my stomach, and my mouth falls open in shock. He can’t be serious, can he? I’ve never heard of anyone actually traveling between worlds and realms, though I’ve heard stories of those places existing. But if I get stuck somewhere that far—not even on the same fucking world as Alistair—there’s no way in hell my best friend will ever find me. No matter how long he searches or who he has helping him.
I’m so shocked that I don’t even notice the stupid guard putting cuffs around my ankles right away, but I let out a sharp hiss of pain when I feel the rusted metal press against my injured ankle.
Giovanni and the creepy monk exchange a few more words, and they exchange payment. That’s when I seriously lose my shit. I kick and scream and fight and plead, but it doesn’t help whatsoever.
I’ve been bought and paid for. Any sliver of hope I had left of finding my way back home to my best friend and the life we’d built together shatters into a million pieces.
He bought Sadie too.
I was kind of surprised, to be quite honest. The Monk—his name is Amias, but I’m pretending I didn’t understand him when he spent a good five minutes gesturing to himself while repeating the name over and over—didn’t really show much interest in Sadie when we were at the warehouse. But here she is, crying and clinging to me and asking where we’re going. She’s not restrained like I am, and I’m pretty fucking irritated about that.