Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
The baron spoke again, as if finishing his thought. “Everyone trying to pretend that things are going to go on just as usual.”
“They aren’t?” asked Madame Franla. Though I couldn’t see her face, I thought I could picture her raised eyebrows.
“Chalondra,” the baron said, catching me by surprise once again, making my heart jump at the sound of my true name in his deep voice, “you may look out the window. I don’t want you to miss your first sight of Vion City.”
My lips parted, as if I might have something to say. I definitely wanted to raise my eyes, but I found myself suddenly anxious at my new master’s addressing me not with a command but with a permission, an utterly unexpected development. I didn’t think it could represent a trap, really, but though a moment before I had longed to see all the amazing things outside the automatic carriage I suddenly dreaded that view. It would mean, somehow, that the company really had requisitioned me, flown me to the center of the empire, and sold me to a nobleman for his enjoyment in some way I still couldn’t fathom.
He’s going to… to…
Fuck me. And then, it seemed, I would no longer be a virgin?
“Chalondra,” said Madame Franla’s voice, a little chiding though not really strict, let alone menacing, “are you going to refuse such a kind gesture on your master’s part? Look, and thank his lordship for the privilege.”
I raised my eyes, but I found that although I had intended to look nowhere but out the window, I had instead fixed my gaze on my master’s face. He looked back at me with the last expression I had expected—a smile: a real smile, not the smug, mocking upturning of the lips that Agent Delvik had shown me, but a warm welcoming of my eyes on his.
“Th—thank you, Master.” I said it automatically, because—to my absolute chagrin—I felt it. I felt grateful to the man who had bought me, for letting me look at the sights of the city where I would serve him in whatever degrading fashion he chose.
CHAPTER 15
Chalondra
“You are very welcome, my dear,” he said, his smile growing slightly. “Now go ahead and look. That’s the imperial palace over there.”
I felt my eyes widen, and the unwelcome, warm feeling of gratitude grew. I had to obey him out of the sheer need not to see his face anymore, because of how distressingly it affected me. I had supposed that the worst thing that could happen at the auction would be that a cruel man, a man like Agent Delvik, might purchase me. I suddenly wondered whether having an owner who could show kindness and smile at his plaything as the baron just had, might actually do more to break my spirit than any punisher or paddle could.
I turned my face towards the window, an expanse of glass so wide and tall and transparent that it hardly seemed to divide me from the exterior of the car. My jaw dropped, and if I had thought my eyes had opened further at the baron’s smile, I knew they must now have grown to a nearly ridiculous size.
The palace to which my master’s finger pointed occupied fully a quarter of the view, despite seeming a kilometer away or more. It rose in sharp angles of rose-colored stone, so many stories high that I couldn’t count the rows of ornate windows and pointed arches. At its top, it soared towards the sky—a blue just a bit darker, I thought, than Kamnos’—in a spire tall enough that I had to lean forward a little to see its top.
But the palace only occupied the most prominent place in a city—the word finally took on real meaning for me, having seen what a city looked like—full of marvels. The road the car traveled along seemed to run in a broad curve around the edge of a central group of buildings, a wheel of which the palace appeared to serve as the hub. Around it loomed other buildings—palaces, too, I thought, remembering that my master had called the big one the imperial palace. As if their architects had wanted to reflect the glory of the emperor, they all seemed smaller versions of his home, though not in a way that seemed monotonous, for I could see that they had individual details that made each one distinctive: this one had three towers of equal heights; that one had two of different heights, but had an extra story and a roof of green rather than red.
“That’s Gravamir House,” the baron said, and he leaned over the space between the seats of the car and put his right hand between my knees while with his left he pointed to one of the palaces. He brought his face close to mine, as if to make sure he could point in the direction that matched my eyeline. “The one with the two unequal spires. My grandfather raised the height of the tall one because he wanted to be able to look down on the duke next door. They had quite a dispute, which my grandfather won despite our technically inferior rank.”