Chapter 97: Kōya’s Will to Snatch Her from the Auction

Beside him, the crack in his voice snapped Lyra’s head toward the stage, draining every drop of color from her cheeks. "Kōya..."

Under the spotlights, Kaela’s ears stayed flat at the sound of her name. Her vacant silver eyes stayed glued to the wood between her bare feet.

"This rare white tiger beastwoman," the announcer boomed, smiling up toward the fourth-tier boxes, "displayed extraordinary combat capability prior to her capture.

Despite her current fatigue, consortium testing confirms she possesses master-class swordsmanship."

Interest rippled immediately across the upper galleries.

"A silver-furred tiger-kin?"

"The muscle on those shoulders—she took ten catchers to bring down."

"Nothing a priest’s healing circle won’t mend."

"What’s the opening reserve?"

Kōya’s scarred fingers trembled on the leather wrap of his hilt as twin currents of white and black pressure surged behind his ribs, threatening to blow the roof off the hall.

"Freshly broken in the lower vaults!" the announcer called.

Kōya took half a step toward the stage rail, his thumb popping the throat of his scabbard.

"Don’t!" Lyra threw both arms around his right forearm, throwing her full weight on his elbow.

Kōya faced her with eyes gone pitch-dark and glacial. "Let go of my arm."

"No!"

"Lyra—"

"I am going to kill every man between this rail and that stage."

Before Kōya could wrench his arm free, the old innkeeper stepped squarely between his chest and the balustrade, bracing both wrinkled palms against the rail. "Keep that blade in the leather, boy, or you’ll kill her yourself!"

Kōya glared down at the old man. "What have they done to her?"

"I have eyes!" the innkeeper hissed back, keeping his voice fierce and low so the tier guards ten feet away wouldn’t turn around. "And if you draw steel on this floor right now, you lose her forever!"

Kōya froze with an inch of steel showing above the scabbard lip.

The innkeeper pointed a shaking finger at the twenty runed halberdiers ringing the orchestra pit and the four ward-pylons humming above the stage curtain. "The stage floor! The second a blade clears a sheath in the stalls, the floor drops into the deep vault chute and the guards have standing orders to slit the throat of any contested lot rather than let a thief carry them out!"

Kōya’s jaw clenched so hard his temples throbbed.

"That is how the Mega Slave Auction protects its monopoly," the innkeeper whispered. "In this room, the only hand that touches that stage without triggering the execution wards is the hand that holds the winning bid!"

Kōya stared across forty yards of open air at Kaela.

When the handler tapped her spine with the iron prod to turn her toward the noble boxes, she shuffled her bare feet forty-five degrees, keeping her chin lowered and her teeth sheathed.

Kaela obeying a shove hurt worse than the dried blood in her hair. His master had never bowed her neck to a living creature; her turn on command meant they had hollowed her out from the inside.

Lyra kept both hands locked around Kōya’s wrist. "Kōya..."

"The ink on her throat," the innkeeper warned in a low undertone. "That’s a blood-bound consortium crest. If one of the great merchant houses wins that paper, she goes straight into a warded estate tunnel before the next lot is called. And if a Demon Peer up in the fourth ring takes her—" The old man swallowed hard. "Not even the syndicate clerks ever see those prisoners again."

Kōya’s eyes stayed fixed on the dark crimson mark pulsing against Kaela’s neck. "What happens when the hammer falls?"

The innkeeper’s jaw tightened. "The crest keys the prisoner’s heart directly to the buyer’s signature. Try to cut the collar off by force without the transfer scroll, and the backlash stops their heart on the spot."

"Then how do you break the bind?"

"Nobody breaks a high-tier crest through the courts, boy. Whoever holds that parchment holds her breath."

The old man leaned closer, his voice dropping beneath the rising murmur of the hall. "This is a special bond entry. The winner must seal the contract with every coin he owns. If the seal fails, the lot passes to the next tally."

Down on the stage, the announcer raised his ivory gavel toward the glowing display board. "We open the bidding on this special bond beastwoman at—"

The hall went dead silent as the opening gold figure flashed onto the arcane slate.

A silk-robed broker in the first gallery raised his paddle at once. Two seats over, a noble factor countered. The glowing numerals climbed in rapid steps.

By the second-tier rail, every grand strategic objective Kōya had carried through Slane’s gates evaporated into thin air.

Scouting the syndicate directors, tracing the border raid routes, keeping a low profile under the Peers’ noses—all of it meant nothing while his master stood bleeding and empty-eyed on a wooden block waiting to be packed into a crate.

Kōya lowered his left hand to the canvas travel sacks resting between his boots.

Inside those three bags sat every road coin he owned in the world: the silver and gold salvaged from the cellar of his burned home, added to the massive war-chest of bullion and gems he had stripped from Zeref’s fortress vault. Beside them, his pit token carried five hundred earned crowns. It was supposed to fund six months of travel, bribes, weapons, and medicine across the eastern territories.

The dried blood matting Kaela’s hair and the crimson slave crest coiled around her throat erased the eastern campaign from the ledger.

Up on the board, a silk-robed merchant raised his paddle. Another private box answered immediately.

Then, high up in the fourth-tier ring, Zarth the Third leaned forward in his crimson leather chair, resting his chin on his gloved knuckles as his red eyes settled on Kaela’s silver hair. A slow, predatory smile spread across the Demon Peer’s face.

Zarth’s hand reached toward his box paddle.

In that heartbeat, the aristocrat in the fourth tier ceased to be a distant lead on a map and became a dead man walking.

"Does the floor offer an advance?" the announcer called out over the tiers.

Kōya straightened to his full height at the second-tier rail. Around him, a dozen wealthy brokers turned their heads in surprise at the blood-stained young swordsman standing among the velvet seats.

Kōya raised his scarred right hand.

"I bid."

Across the lower stalls, the whispering cut off for three beats before the announcer recovered his professional smile. "A floor advance from the second gallery!"

The glowing gold numerals on the overhead board jumped higher.

Down under the footlights, Kaela kept her eyes on the floorboards. Kōya locked his stare on the stage as the bidding war began.