Knowing she hadn’t much time, Ceres hurried over to Nesos’s bench-bed and placed the sack of gold beneath his pillow. He’d find it when he turned in for the night, and she didn’t doubt he’d keep it a secret from Mother. She blinked, trying to fight back the tears while wondering if she’d ever see her dear brothers again. Her heart squeezed as she thought about Rexus. Would he forget about her?
Suddenly she jumped as the front door flung open, startling her. To her horror, in stepped Lord Blaku.
He grinned an awful, victorious grin.
“If it isn’t the runaway,” he said, his upper lip curled back, revealing yellowing teeth, the stench of sweat saturating the room.
Taking a few steps back, Ceres realized she needed to get away – quick. Thinking she’d be able to escape through the window in her parents’ bedroom, she dropped the loaf of bread and darted toward the back door.
But just as she reached the doorway, her mother stepped into it, Ceres colliding with her.
Briefly, Ceres noted that her mother wore a new dress made of the finest silk, and that she smelled like floral perfume.
“Did you really think you could beat me bloody and blue, steal my money, and get away with it?” her mother asked in a hateful tone as she grabbed Ceres’s hair, pulling it so hard Ceres let out a cry.
Steal her money? But then it all made sense. Of course her mother wouldn’t be collaborating with the slaver if she knew he had taken back the gold he’d paid for Ceres. However, he probably told her mother Ceres took the gold and ran off with it. Her mother was, after all, unconscious when he snatched the pouch of fifty-five pieces.
Before Ceres could explain, her mother slapped her across the face and shoved her so she fell to the floor. She then kicked Ceres in the stomach with her new pointy shoes.
Ceres couldn’t breathe. Yet she forced herself to her feet, preparing to lunge for her mother – when the slaver grabbed her from behind in a deadlock. He squeezed her so hard she was certain the wounds on her back reopened.
She kicked and screamed, wriggled and scratched, trying to wrestle her way out of the fat old man’s iron grip. But it was to no avail. He carried her through the room, and toward the front door.
“Wait!” her mother yelled.
She walked over to them and wrapped covetous fingers around Ceres’s sword.
“What is this?” she asked, her eyes angered.
Still not giving up the fight, Ceres kicked her mother in the shin as hard as she could muster with the slaver squeezing the life out of her.
Her mother’s face turned red, and she socked Ceres in the abdomen with such force Ceres thought she might vomit up the little food she had managed to swallow.
“That is my sword,” her mother said.
Ceres knew her mother would recognize how valuable the sword was, and that there was no way she would let the slaver take it with him.
“I paid for the girl, and whatever is on her person, I own that now,” Lord Blaku sneered.
“The sword was not on her person when I sold her to you,” her mother retorted, her fingers fumbling to undo the scabbard around Ceres’s waist.
Lord Blaku growled and threw Ceres against the kitchen table so her head hit the corner, a sharp pain spreading across her temple. Lying on the floor, dizzy from the blow, Ceres heard her mother scream and furniture being thrown across the room. She opened her eyes and sat up and saw the slaver standing over her mother, slamming a chair against her mother’s head.
“Ceres, help!” her mother yelled, but Ceres no longer had it in her.
Barely able to move, Ceres crawled on hands and knees toward the door. Once she had crossed the threshold, Ceres climbed onto her feet. But she had no time. She could feel Lord Blaku’s arms reaching for her, his eyes burning at her back. She needed to hurry if she was to escape, but her body wouldn’t move as swiftly as she told it to.
Her heart leapt in her chest when she stumbled across the front yard, and just as she reached the dirt road, she thought she was free.
Just then, Lord Blaku roared behind her. She heard the crack of a whip and then felt a thick leather cord wrap around her neck. Being tugged backward by the whip, throat strangled, blood pooling in her head, she crashed to the ground. Her hands reached for the cord, trying to loosen it, but it was secured too tightly. She knew she needed air or she would pass out, but a breath could not be drawn.
Lord Blaku picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and threw her into the back of the carriage. Slowly, her surroundings started to turn dark. Then darker.
In a rush, he chained her ankles and wrists, and then he loosened the whip from around her neck.
Wheezing and couching, she gasped for air, her surroundings becoming clear again, the slaver’s stench oozing into her nose as she panted.
He tore the sword from around her waist and studied it for a moment.
“This is a very fine weapon indeed,” he said. “Now it is mine, and I shall melt it down.”
Ceres reached a hand out toward her father’s sword, the chains rattling as she moved, but he slapped her hand away and hopped out of the carriage.
He headed back into the house and when he came back out, he was holding the sack of gold Ceres had left for her brothers.
The carriage bounced as he climbed onto it, and after he whipped the horses, the wheels creaked to a start. As the carriage drove off, she kept her eyes on the near black sky, watching as silhouettes of birds flew above. A tear rolled down her cheek, but she made no sound. She had no strength to cry. Now everything had been taken from her. Her money. Her sword. Her family. Her freedom.
And when she didn’t show up tomorrow morning at the palace ready to work for Prince Thanos, she would have lost everything.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Miles and miles ago, Lord Blaku had unchained Ceres and had thrown her into an enclosed slave cart, and now she sat in the light of the moon, numb, beside dozens of girls in a cage wagon, bumping forward on the main road out of Delos.
The night had been freezing – it was freezing still – and with little protection from the rain, Ceres hadn’t been able to sleep, shivering all the time. Cold hands gripping the bars, she huddled at the end of the moving prison on soggy straw that reeked of urine and rotting flesh. It had stopped raining about an hour ago, and now the moon and stars were out.
She had listened in on the guards’ conversations, seated up above, and a few of them had mentioned something about Holheim, the capital of Northland, which, she knew, was several months’ journey away. Ceres knew if she were taken there, she would have no chance of ever seeing her family or Rexus again. But she stuffed those thoughts deep down into the dead part of her heart. Glancing back, she noticed that the girl who had been coughing the entire trip had become silent and was now slouching in the rear corner, lifeless, lips blue, skin white.
A mother and two young daughters sat next to the corpse, oblivious to the girl’s passing. All the daughters were focused on was competing for their mother’s lap. Better they do that than be aware that death was their neighbor, Ceres thought.
A few girls seated against the wall opposite Ceres carried a look of fear in their defeated eyes, and a few others cried in silent sobs as they longingly gazed out through the cage. Ceres didn’t feel fear or sadness. She couldn’t allow herself to be afraid here. Someone might sense it and judge her weak, and then use her weakness against her. Instead, she numbed herself so completely, she almost didn’t care what happened to her.
“Get out of my seat,” a blonde girl shouted to another.
“I have been sitting here all along,” the second girl replied, her skin smooth and olive in the glow of the moonlight.