The House of the Stone

I make sure to look at each woman, preferably in the eye, as I stand there in this ridiculous dress with ridiculous makeup on my face and a stupid hairstyle. I won’t let them make me feel any less like me.

There’s one woman, so fat I’m surprised she can fit into the tight black satin dress she’s wearing, who smiles ever so slightly as I meet her eyes.

That one smile is enough to send a cold shiver down my spine.

All right, I think. Anyone but her.

“Lot 192,” the auctioneer begins, and I see that he has lit a thin white candle and placed it on his podium. The flame glows bright blue. “Age seventeen, height five feet eleven inches, weight one hundred and thirty-one pounds. Five years of training with scores of 9.5 on the first Augury, 9.8 on the second, and 9.6 on the third. Skilled in mathematics, with outstanding scores on all diagnostic tests since the beginning of her time at the holding facility. The bidding will start at two hundred thousand diamantes. Do I hear two hundred thousand?”

If I was drinking anything at the moment, I’d spit it out. Two hundred thousand diamantes? That could probably buy Southgate. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they know there are children starving in the Marsh? I think about my visit home yesterday—my father wasting away, both my sisters and their husbands and their children all squeezed in under one roof. Crow, my brother, so thin, his face permanently darkened with soot from the Smoke. And my mother, treating me like the Electress herself. Which only made everything worse.

“Two hundred thousand to the Lady of the Pine.” The auctioneer’s voice brings me back to the present, as a middle-aged woman in the third row raises a copper fern. “Do I hear two hundred fifty?”

My stomach shrivels as the fat woman with the cruel smile raises a silver block on the end of a thin rod.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand to the Countess of the Stone, do I hear three hundred thousand?”

The bidding continues. I stop listening to the numbers, only focusing on who is doing the actual bidding.

The fat woman, the Countess of the Stone, is fighting hard for me. There is a lazy confidence about the way she flicks that rod in the air and it makes my skin itch.

I allow my vision to soften, to blur these women together in a haze of colors, and try to pretend I’m somewhere else. I think about Violet. I bet she’d be fine on this stage if she could have her cello with her. I remember the first time I saw her. She was such a small thing with wild black hair and big purple eyes, and Amber Lockring called her a freak, so I twisted Amber’s arm behind her hard until she took it back. I don’t know if I ever told Violet about that. She was so scared, like all the other new arrivals, and I didn’t want her to feel even more different. We all felt different at first. Southgate may as well have been an entirely new universe compared with the rest of the Marsh. I saw her and knew I wanted to protect her. I knew we would be friends.

But I can’t protect Violet from this. I can’t even protect myself. “Sold!” the auctioneer cries and I’m yanked back to the present. “Sold for three million five hundred thousand diamantes. To the Countess of the Stone.”

No. I almost can’t believe it. Of all the royals in this room, why did it have to be her?

But the last thing I see as the X I am standing on sinks below the stage is the Countess’s eyes, alight with a sick pleasure.

“I am Raven Stirling,” I say, but I may as well be talking to the wind. No one hears. No one cares.

The platform I’m standing on travels down deep below the stage. I look up and see a circle of light where my X used to be. Then another platform eclipses it until the darkness around me is complete. But not before I hear the auctioneer announce, “And next up, ladies, we have Lot 193. Lot 193, please take your mark.”