Wheels rattled noisily on a dirt road.
Kerrigan’s head bounced against a wooden slat before she jerked upright with a groan. She immediately regretted the action, crumpling back into a ball against the hard flooring. Her head felt like it had been cleaved in two. Her stomach was an empty pit. Her skin felt like a thousand pinpricks. If she took any sudden movement, the feeling came back stronger than ever.
“Oh gods,” she groaned.
“Shh,” a woman whispered somewhere nearby. “Don’t let them hear you’re awake.”
“Pain,” she hissed out. “Whole … body.”
“Yes. It’s the magic,” she said, barely louder than a breath. “Give it time. It’ll wear off.”
Kerrigan forced back tears as the pinpricks continued up her arms, across her collarbone, and traced the line of her neck. She felt them from her toes, up her legs, and into her stomach. Everything was a trail of fire. What kind of magic could do this?
At least the girl was right. Already, the pain was receding. Kerrigan gasped as the last of it disappeared, and the full sensation of her limbs return to her.
“What … was that?” she gasped.
“Shh,” the girl repeated.
Kerrigan took in her surroundings. It was worse than she had anticipated. She was in a cart with hard slats along the bottom and sides. Wire had been added crudely to the top with holes large enough to stick her hand through, but nothing else. A large lock held the back gate firmly closed.
It was a cage.
She was in a cage attached to the back of a two-seater carriage and hitched to horses. Felix was driving the horses down the rocky road, and a cloud of dirt kicked up behind them for ages on the otherwise desolate landscape. All she saw were yellowing grass fields as far as the eye could see. And maybe, if she squinted, some distant mountains. Very distant.
Flavia was nowhere to be seen, which probably meant she was out of the dust in the small carriage. The weather was sticky and hot. Kerrigan couldn’t imagine being closed in with all of that moisture. Not that it was better to be coated in the red dust. And coated she was.
She slid her clammy hands down her arms, but all it did was make the fine dust a rusty-brown smear. So much for her bath.
She assessed the lock to see how the mechanism worked. Not that she had anything to pick it with, and she didn’t have her magic to do it for her. No one in the entire world knew where she was. She was still cursing herself for taking the stranger’s help, but she’d never expected … whatever this was.
Which meant she needed answers.
Kerrigan vaguely remembered Flavia saying that she had come for one girl and was leaving with two. This must be the other girl.
“Where are we?” Kerrigan asked, barely above a whisper.
The girl whipped her face toward Kerrigan. She had tanned skin, as if the sun had turned it copper from labor. Her hair was a rich dark brown, hanging limp nearly to her waist. Her eyes were small and a washed-out brown. The only distinct feature on her was the dimple in her chin. She wore a similar-style dress to Kerrigan, except dirtier and ragged on the edges.
She put her finger to her mouth.
Kerrigan nodded and scooted across the rocking cart. “Where are we?”
“I don’ know,” she whispered.
“How long was I asleep?”
“All nigh’. We’ve been traveling ha’ the day.” The girl glanced up at the carriage again. “Though they say you should have been out a whole ’nother day. They won’ like it.”
Kerrigan considered that. So, they’d dosed her with some sort of magic, and she’d woken up a day early. Was that because she’d previously had magic?
“What’s your name?”
“Nella.”
“I’m Felicity,” Kerrigan said. “Do you know where they’re taking us?”
Nella shook her head. “Just know what they told my mam.”
Kerrigan waited, but when Nella said no more, she prompted, “What did they tell her?”
“Jus’ that I won’t be worth the silver to take all the way. She gives her a handful o’ copper instead.” Nella shrugged. She didn’t seem to register Kerrigan’s horrified expression. “My sister went for two silver piece. I went for one.”
“Your … mom sold you to Flavia?” Kerrigan asked, trying to suppress the horror in her voice.
“Course. She couldn’ feed us all.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Kerrigan didn’t know where to begin.
“And what is her plan for you?”
Nella shrugged. “Suspect same as my sis. The matron said she put her in a wealthy house, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of babes.”
Kerrigan had no way to know if that was true in the least. A person who purchased humans might have lied about what exactly she did with the people once they were purchased. And where exactly did that put Kerrigan?
“And me? Do you know what she has in store for me?”
“Don’ right know,” Nella said. “But they’re all in a fuss ’bout it.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause you look like a … Doma,” Nella said, lowering her voice even further on the last word. She looked frightened to even mention it.
Kerrigan had heard of Doma before. When she’d been only twelve, Cyrene had shown up, proclaiming herself a Doma—a human with powerful magic. She’d competed in the Society dragon tournament and won. She’d taken the dragon and her powers and left a power vacuum in its wake. The start of all their problems. Or maybe just the fire that had lit the fuse that had already been there.
But she didn’t understand it in this context. Kerrigan didn’t look like Cyrene at all. She was only half-human and her magic had come from her half-Fae heritage. Maybe the word meant something else entirely here.
“What’s a Doma?”
Nella looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head. “How hard did you hit your head?”
Kerrigan bit her lip. “I don’t … remember. I don’t remember anything about my past.” Easier to play dumb to get answers than to complicate things.
“Doma are … they’ve the …” She squeaked slightly as she looked around in fear. “The …” She gestured to the sky. “The on high.”
Kerrigan furrowed her brow. “Gods?”
“That’s what my mam said,” she said quickly. “They rule Domara from the capital in Carithian.”
“Carithian. Do you think that’s where they’re taking us?”
Nella shook her head fervently. “No, gods no. We be weeks from Carithian.”
“What’s the closest city then?”
“Three days to Eivreen. I been once when we gots salt from the mines. Went with Pa before he pass.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was a right bastard but kept food on the table. Mam had more trouble wit’ him gone. Though plenty a trouble wit’ him.”
“I see,” Kerrigan said.
The girl didn’t seem bothered by any of it. Only young, so young for someone who seemed to be very accepting of being sold into servitude in another city. The only fear she’d displayed was having Felix or Flavia overhear them.
Kerrigan wanted to ask so many more questions. She just wasn’t sure that Nella actually had any more information for her. The way she kept glancing warily up at Felix, as if he might come back and beat her for speaking at any moment, Kerrigan was reticent to keep her talking.
Luckily, a half hour later, the horses began to slow, and Felix pulled off onto the road under the first copse of trees they’d encountered. He grunted as he dropped onto the rocky ground and put feed bags on the horses. He checked on Flavia first, who dismissed him after he provided her a meal.
“All right,” Felix said, swiping a hand across his sweat-soaked forehead. “I’ve got some crusty bread, cheese, and a dribble of wine for you.”
He came around the back, mechanically reaching for the lock, when he noticed Kerrigan sitting up and vigilant. He jumped in the air, released the lock, and let it tumble into the dirt.
“By gods,” he breathed. “What are you doing awake?”
“You mean, after you drugged and kidnapped me?”
Felix looked flummoxed by that assessment even though that was exactly what had happened. “You shouldn’t be awake.”
“Well, I am.”
“Flavia isn’t going to like this,” he grumbled under his breath. His eyes cast past Kerrigan to where his matron was stuffed inside the stuffy carriage. “Nothing to be done.” He pulled the door of the cart open. “You do your business quickly if you need to, and then I’ll give you provisions for the rest of the way.”
Kerrigan slipped her feet over the edge of the cart and dropped down onto the ground. Her knees buckled, and she crumpled forward into the dirt.
Felix stared down at her with a sigh. “Magic hasn’t completely worn off. You need to take it easy.”
He grasped her under the armpits and hefted her back to her feet. She clutched the edge of the cart on unsteady feet. This was worse than she’d thought.
“Go ahead. Do your business. There’s nowhere to go for miles.”
Nella dropped down and rushed behind one of the small trees to relieve herself. Kerrigan couldn’t even make it that far. After she finished, she came back around to Felix. He wasn’t wrong. She’d noticed that there was nowhere to run or hide in all of this. She couldn’t escape into a forest and fend for herself. With her jelly legs, Felix could easily outpace her. She’d have to think more carefully about this.
She stepped closer to him. “Why are you working for her?”
“That’s none of your concern,” he said stiffly. “Just get inside. We’ll be to Eivreen in two days’ time.”
“What are we going to do there?”
Felix glanced down at her, then quickly away. “That’s for Matron Flavia to decide.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will,” she argued.
Felix said nothing. Clearly, he thought that they could. And they had for the last day.
Kerrigan pushed her way toward him. “What you’re doing is against the law. You are going to get caught and punished for this.”
Felix blanched slightly. “We’re following all the laws. You might look like a Doma, but if you were, you would already be gone.”
That was true enough. She wasn’t a Doma. Whatever that was. But she didn’t understand how selling people could be legal here.
“Now, get back in the cart. I have to inform Flavia that you’re awake, and it’ll be better if we’re ready to go when that happens.”
Nella scurried back inside, taking the food Felix offered without complaint. Felix looked at Kerrigan, as if waiting for her to make an ill-advised run for it, but where could she go? She pulled herself back into the cart, looking skeptically at the food.
“It’s safe,” Felix told her. “Just eat it. Flavia isn’t going to waste more magic on you.” Then, he unceremoniously slammed the cart shut, reattached the lock, and headed back to the front.
Kerrigan took a bite of the small meal she’d been provided. She wasn’t going to squander it. Even if he was lying about the magic, they had two more days until their destination. She’d wake up again. Not that she would look forward to the magic leaving her system.
A moment after Felix went to speak to Flavia, she stormed out of the carriage, messy and sweating, as she stomped toward the cage.
“You, girl, tell me who you are.”
“I already told you,” Kerrigan said.
“Magic resistance like that is done through bloodlines. If you’re not of the nobility with that hair and skin, the resistance says it all,” she snarled.
Kerrigan shrugged. “Then, let me go.”
Flavia huffed angrily. “No one claimed you. That makes you fair for me.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Kerrigan asked, leaning heavily against the cart and arching an eyebrow.
“I’m never wrong.” She whirled back to Felix. “Keep her locked up and haste be with us.” She slammed the door of the carriage.
Kerrigan gritted her teeth as Felix hurried back to the horses. Soon, they were bumping along at an uncomfortable pace. It was much faster than when they’d set out. She and Nella bobbed up and down on the hard wooden slats until her bottom ached with every new movement. They were handed a wine skin through the wire cage for dinner. And both girls fell asleep with grumbling stomachs.
The next day followed much the same, except Felix insisted on tying her wrists and leading her by a rope to do her business. It wasn’t the most humiliating thing she’d ever done, but it was close on the list. Flavia wasn’t seen again. She even slept in her carriage. It sounded miserable to Kerrigan since the evenings were so mild.
By their last night, she could even smell the salt in the air that meant they must be close to the water.
“Nella,” she whispered on their last night in the cage.
“Yeah?”
“Are you afraid of who she’s going to sell you to?”
Nella reached across the space between them and touched Kerrigan’s hand. “No. I’m sure they’ll be wonderful. I’m sure yours will be too.”
Kerrigan had no intention of being sold to anyone. She would have already run if she’d thought that there would be an inkling of escape. But with the flatlands, there was no opportunity. In a city was a different story. Tomorrow would be a new day.