They’d taken four girls that morning. No one had stopped it. No one ever did.
Allora fixed her eyes on a knot in the barn wall and counted her breaths. In. Out. Don’t shake.
Then she heard it.
“Three.”
Not shouted. Not eager.
Just said.
Heads turned. A tall man stepped forward from the shadows. Long coat dusted pale from the road. Hat low. Not smiling. Not leering.
He walked straight to the platform and dropped three silver coins into the auctioneer’s palm.
“I claim nothing,” he said.
The barn went still.
Then he did the unthinkable.
He knelt.
Right there in the dirt, before her.
Allora’s pulse roared in her ears. No man had ever lowered himself in front of her. Men stood over her. Loomed. Grabbed. Ordered.
This one untied the cracked leather laces at her boots — hands steady, movements deliberate — and slipped them off as though he were removing shackles, not shoes.
“You don’t belong to them,” he said quietly. “And you don’t belong to me. I just bought your silence from monsters.”
Her knees trembled.
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