[Chapter 6] Chains

  Until the procession arrived.

  It came from the opposite end of the street: two lines of chained slaves, escorted by guards.

  There were perhaps twenty of them. People of every race and origin. Some wore the remnants of clothes that had once tried to look noble; others had the plain rags of those born with nothing. All of them shared the same expression: the hollow, heavy-eyed surrender of those who had stopped expecting anything from the world.?

  Sunken cheeks. Skin clinging to bone. Bent backs. Slave Marks burned into flesh.

  At their head walked a portly aristocrat, rings flashing on his fingers, gaze fixed somewhere far above the level of the street. He spared the crowd as little attention as he did the people dragging their chains behind him.

  The sound of iron links on stone cut through the market noise. It was a rhythm Yssavelle knew too well, hammered into her over years. Each clink landed inside her skull like an echo that had never really stopped.

  Her breath caught. Her fingers tightened around the paper cone until it crumpled.

  Eyes. Bruises. The way they moved because the line moved, not because they chose to.

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  Her own years in chains surged up, not as images but as sensations—numb feet, raw wrists, the taste of dust and old fear.?

  Then one slave stumbled out of the line.

  It happened fast.

  A tug, a misstep, a slip in the wet dirt. The chain jerked, dragging two others with her. She lurched forward, then tore herself sideways with the desperation of someone who had decided that punishment was worth the chance.

  She fell at Yssavelle’s feet.

  An Elf. Thin to the point of breaking. Ears torn and scarred, hair hacked short in uneven tufts. The Mark at her neck glowed faintly under the grime.

  Her eyes were empty in the way Yssavelle’s had once been. Yet her body moved with a kind of frantic, broken purpose. She clawed at the ground, hauling herself the last few inches the chain allowed.

  She looked up at Yssavelle.

  Her lips moved. No sound came. When she opened her mouth wider, Yssavelle saw why.

  The tongue was gone.

  The shapes her mouth tried to form were familiar anyway.

  You’re here.

  Or: There you are.

  Or perhaps a name Yssavelle couldn’t bear to recognize.

  Yssavelle’s pulse roared in her ears. Her legs refused to move. The paper cone slipped from her hand, sweets scattering across the cobblestones like tiny fallen planets.

  Panic flooded her veins, not loud but total—a silent, suffocating tide that drowned everything else.?

  "Back in line," one of the guards snapped.

  The Elf didn’t respond quickly enough. Or perhaps she did, and it simply didn’t matter.

  The sky had been greying over already. Now, the first drops of rain began to fall.

  One. Two. Ten.

  Then others joined them, not from above but from the Elf’s neck and the side of her head, where a guard’s weapon had cracked bone and flesh in a single, practiced motion.

  Sound peeled away. The world narrowed to the sight of that body folding in on itself, chains clinking once more as slack limbs hit stone.

  The last thing Yssavelle registered was Haru’s hand on her shoulder, firm and steady, anchoring her to a present that had already slipped.

  Then the street tilted.

  Darkness rushed up to meet her.