Lilith woke up.
The first thing she remembered was a man's voice saying she should be knocked out. Then the floor. Then nothing.
Her vision was blurry for a few seconds before it settled. She blinked, looked around, and found herself in a different cell, larger than the last one, cleaner by a small margin, and occupied.
Seven other girls.
They sat or lay in various positions around the cell, none of them looking particularly alarmed. The specific quality of their stillness wasn't peace, it was something else. The kind of quiet that came from having already processed the worst of something and arrived on the other side of it into a flat, hollow acceptance.
They knew what was coming tomorrow.
Lilith sat up slowly and pressed a hand to her head.
Duke Drazeil. That was the name she'd heard right before everything went dark. She turned it over now, examining it. The way everyone in that room had reacted to it, the guards, the woman, Callinis himself. The specific kind of nervous that moved through a room when a name was spoken that everyone already knew the weight of.
And tomorrow he was coming here.
"Auction," she said quietly to herself. "They're going to put me on auction. Like a good."
She pressed both hands over her face.
This is very bad.
She lowered her hands and looked at the other girls. They might know things. About this place, about the auction, about Thaloria. About the name that made grown people flinch.
She arranged her face into something approximating friendly and raised a hand.
"Hi." She smiled.
"Tsk." A girl near the wall made a sound of flat disbelief. "You still have the ability to smile. Here. In this place."
Lilith's smile dropped immediately.
That was not a good first impression.
"I'm sorry," Lilith said.
The girl — Sophia, as it turned out — sighed and shook her head. "It's alright. You're new. I won't take offence."
"Sophia."
The voice came from a girl seated on a wooden stool near the far wall. She was striking, red hair, purple eyes, the kind of beauty that felt deliberate, like it had been arranged rather than simply inherited. She was looking at Lilith with an expression that communicated nothing in particular and everything in general.
"Don't make friends when you don't know your fate tomorrow," she said.
"I know, Jacinta," Sophia said. "You don't need to worry about me."
"I'm not worried about you." Jacinta's eyes moved back to Lilith, cool and assessing.
"Hi," Lilith tried.
Jacinta looked out through the bars without responding.
"Don't take it personally," Sophia said. "She's always like that."
"You two seem close," Lilith noted.
"Ehh." Sophia scratched the back of her head. "She's my stepsister. She's always been… a lot. She genuinely believes she's a Princess." She let out a small, uncertain laugh.
Lilith looked at Jacinta. The way she sat. The way she'd spoken. The specific quality of her disinterest.
She does act like a Princess, she thought.
"Okay," Lilith said, turning back. "I have an urgent question." She looked around the cell at all of them. "Does anyone here know who Duke Drazeil is?"
The silence that followed was immediate and total.
Then the gasps.
Not one or two, several, rippling through the cell like a stone dropped in still water. Someone made a small sound of distress. Another girl pulled her knees to her chest. The energy in the room shifted so completely that Lilith felt it physically, a drop in temperature, a tightening of the air.
Just a name. One name.
Sophia grabbed her arm. "Where did you hear that name?"
"From Lord Callinis. He said the Duke is coming tomorrow."
"What."
"Oh no."
"I was hoping for an easy death. That's gone now."
Lilith looked around at all of them, genuinely baffled. She didn't understand what the fuss about a Duke was always about.
"Duke Drazeil."
Jacinta's voice. Low, deliberate, landing in the room like something placed rather than spoken. Every other voice stopped.
Damn, Lilith thought. This girl's presence holds real weight.
Jacinta uncrossed and recrossed her legs slowly, looking at Lilith with something that might have been mild interest.
"An ancient vampire," she said. "The oldest kind. Mismatched eyes — one red, one green — and a very bad temper. He hates Witches. Not dislikes. Not avoids. Hates, in the specific way that comes from something personal and never healed." She paused. "His method of killing is consistent. He holds his victims by the throat and removes their heart with his hand."
Lilith's dream flashed across her mind.
The chains. The dragon tattoo. The hands around her throat. The eyes, one red, one green.
That has to be a coincidence, she told herself firmly. It has to be.
"He doesn't buy slaves," Jacinta continued. "His butler, Ulric, handles acquisitions when necessary. Drazeil himself has never attended an auction. If he's coming here tomorrow, it isn't for the auction." She looked away. "That's what I know."
"Thank you," Lilith said. "I'm Lilith, by the way."
Jacinta played with a strand of her red hair and said nothing.
She really does act like a Princess. Lilith thought again.
"Sorry for the questions," Lilith said, looking around. "Can anyone tell me more about this kingdom? I'm not from here and I need to understand where I am."
From the corner of the cell, a girl who had been crouched with her knees drawn up raised her head slowly. Brown short hair. Red eyes. She had been so still that Lilith had almost forgotten she was there.
"You talk too much," she said quietly.
"I'm asking questions because I'm not from here," Lilith said evenly. "I need to understand my surroundings."
"What use is that," the girl said, "when you'll likely be dead tomorrow. Your buyer will probably drain you the moment the transaction is complete." She smiled, and fangs slid from her mouth as she did.
Lilith stared.
Blinked.
Stared again.
Those were fangs. In this girl's mouth. Actually there.
"Oh my God", she thought, keeping her face completely still. Did I just acknowledge out loud that I'm looking at a vampire. Am I mentally unwell. That is a vampire. That is an actual vampire sitting three feet away from me.
She took a breath.
"If you're trying to frighten me by showing me you're a vampire," Lilith said calmly, "it's not working."
The girl — Layla — frowned. Of the seven girls in the cell, only she was a vampire, and she was accustomed to a very specific reaction when people realised that. This was not it.
She looked down at the chain around her wrist. If not for this, she thought, looking at Lilith, "I would drain her right now".
She picked up the iron cup beside her, drank the last of the blood in it, bland, barely sustaining, and then, without looking at Lilith directly, threw it.
It connected with the back of Lilith's head with a sound that was not small.
"Ow — what the — who threw that?"
She turned. Iron cup on the floor. Several girls laughing. Layla laughing most of all — the particular laugh of someone who had done something and wanted to be known for it.
Something moved through Lilith that was not quite anger and not quite calm. Something older.
The laughter. The watching. The deciding not to help.
She had lived this before. In different clothes, in a different world, but the same shape. And she had made a decision a long time ago about what she would and wouldn't allow.
Not here. Not again. Not in this world or any other.
"I wouldn't," Sophia said, stepping forward slightly. "Whatever you're thinking."
"I want to see what she does," Jacinta said from her stool, sounding the most interested she had been since Lilith arrived.
"What, are you going to hit me?" Layla stood up, walking toward her slowly. "A weak little human girl like you?" She stopped directly in front of Lilith and looked into her silver eyes. "I dare you. Slap me."
"Ooh."
"Drama before the auction, finally."
Sophia moved toward Jacinta urgently. "You have to stop this."
"Stop what?" Jacinta said. "They're not going to kill each other. And that girl needs to learn how to hold her own in a kingdom like this. Let her."
Sophia pressed her lips together.
Something was happening inside Lilith that she didn't have a name for. A warmth that wasn't warmth — more like a current, something running just beneath her skin, collecting itself. She didn't think about it. She reached into the pocket of her ragged garment.
A black fan.
She didn't think about where it had come from or how it had survived everything. She just took it out, flicked it open in one motion, and swung.
The crack it made against Layla's face was not the sound a fan should make.
"I couldn't afford to use my hands on someone like you," Lilith said.
Layla didn't move.
For a long moment she simply stood there, hand raised slowly to her chin, touching the place where blood had already begun to appear. The pain was the kind that arrived before the body could process it, so complete that no single part of her could respond. A fan. A single fan had done this.
How.
Lilith crouched slightly until she was level with Layla's face and said, quietly, directly into her ear:
"Don't try me again."
She straightened, folded the fan, slipped it back into her pocket.
The sound of heels on stone reached them before anyone had time to process what had just happened.
"Quick," someone hissed. "Act normal. If she finds out there was a fight it'll be worse for all of us."
The cell rearranged itself rapidly. Lilith sat down, heart still running fast, and pressed a hand to the back of her head where the cup had hit.
Her fingers came away dry.
She frowned and touched the spot again. Nothing. No blood. No wound. Not even the tenderness of recent injury.
She pulled her hand back slowly and looked at it.
"Am I okay?" she asked herself quietly.