A Price on My Soul
1601 Words
The last thing I remembered was chasing a ghost through the woods.
The next thing?
Chains on my wrists and a goddamn auction paddle hanging over my head.
My skull felt like it had been jackhammered open by a drunk, blind gorilla, and the sickly glow overhead wasn’t helping. I blinked, real slow, like maybe if I took it easy, the universe would show some mercy.
I remembered getting shot—no bleeding now. No blood, no hole. Just unfamiliar skin that didn’t feel like mine.
My heart hammered inside a body that was way too thin, way too... frail.
Where the hell were my muscles? My strength?
I looked down at my wrists—skinny, almost breakable, cuffed with heavy iron shackles like I was about to be marched off to a goddamn medieval execution.
Fantastic.
I bit down on the scream building at the back of my throat. Panic wanted to take the wheel, but I kicked it in the teeth. Hard.
Because I’m Eliana D’Argon — youngest detective to ever crack Major Crimes.
Not some helpless little deer caught in the headlights.
The woman who cracked the East River Strangler case in six months flat — while the boys upstairs were still arguing over coffee.
The woman who was laughing with her partner about a Bigfoot sighting, fifteen minutes ago— or was it a goddamn lifetime?
We never thought we’d actually find something.
We never thought it would find me first.
And now — this.
Across the platform, other poor souls shuffled beside me—boys, girls, all dressed like some sick cult ceremony had spat us out. Everyone wore the same pathetic sheer tunic and underwear like props on sale. Same bruises, same hollow-eyed stares.
Except me.
I watched.
The first sound that cut through the chaos was a voice—loud, booming, fake as a three-dollar bill:
"Welcome, honored guests, to the Solstice of Chains!"
A polite ripple of applause answered him, like we were at some goddamn Broadway matinee.
I froze.
Solstice of what now?
My brain flipped into detective mode before I could even breathe.
I ransacked my memory, tearing through every file I'd ever touched — trafficking rings in Queens, cults outta Jersey, the occult freaks upstate who tried to summon a demon in a Waffle House parking lot.
Not once — not once — had I ever heard of a "Solstice of Chains."
Trust me, if some back-alley nightmare this big existed back home, I'd have been the one kicking its door down, badge out, boots first, and maybe laughing while I did it.
But this?
This was new.
This was something so old, so deep in the rot, it never even made it onto our radar.
And that scared me worse than the cuffs around my wrists.
I shifted my weight to stay warm, the stone stage leeching the heat right out of me. Every inch of my body screamed: Wrong. Wrong. Get out.
I could pick these chains if I wanted to. The shackles were crude, a hairpin away from being a non-issue. Hell, without a hairpin, with the right angle, I could probably slip free.
But I stayed still.
I swept the room with my eyes, cataloging faster than my brain could process.
No phones. No cameras. No neon exit signs blinking in hopeful green.
Just guards—lots of them—wearing enough armor to outfit a low-budget fantasy flick. Swords, crossbows, nets. Like they were expecting us to turn feral any second.
The crowd was a who’s who of "People I'd Like to Punch in the Face"—rich merchants dripping with jewels, bored nobles twirling wine glasses, veiled women with eyes sharper than switchblades.
Predators, a lot of them.
And here we were—the prey.
The line moved. Step by step, closer to the center spotlight.
Girls were dragged forward, names announced, bids shouted.
Gold coins—real f*****g gold, the heavy, clinking kind—changed hands like candy at Halloween.
I was halfway through planning a five-exit escape route and estimating how many guards I could take down with broken shackles when—
"Presenting our next offering!"
"Bella Crescens!"
There was a hard shove between my shoulder blades.
I stumbled, feet scraping against the stone, catching myself at the last second because pride is a hell of a drug.
The spotlight hit me square in the face.
I blinked against the sudden glare and twisted to shoot the guard behind me the filthiest look I had in my arsenal.
"Lay another hand on me, and I'll rip your spine out through your ass, giftwrap it, and call it modern art."
A ripple of laughter flickered through the crowd.
Some gasped. Some chuckled behind jeweled fans.
The auctioneer's eyes narrowed. He turned his full attention on me, lips pursed in clear disdain.
I glared right back.
Go ahead, try me. You think this little circus act scares me? I've stared down murderers with knives and guns and absolutely no conscience. You're just a freak with a God complex.
He huffed, brushing imaginary dust from his lapel like I was beneath even acknowledging.
But my mind didn't stop working.
Bella Crescens. Bella f*****g Crescens.
I almost laughed out loud.
Of course.
New name, new life. Classic move in trafficking circles.
Erase the girl. Sell the body.
Over my dead body, assholes.
The auctioneer sniffed, adjusting his robes like I’d contaminated them by existing.
He lifted a scroll and roared:
"Opening bid: Five hundred gold coins!"
The crowd erupted in a frenzy of shouting numbers.
Six hundred!
Seven hundred!
Eight!
The shouts cracked through the air like bullets. Somewhere, the auctioneer was damn near wetting himself from excitement, voice climbing higher with every bid like he was trying to hit the Mariah Carey whistle note.
I stood dead still, arms hanging loose at my sides, head tilted just enough to look casual — you know, like I wasn’t about two seconds from decking someone and sprinting for the nearest exit. Eyes sharp, brain sharper. That's how you survive a shitshow like this.
The serious cash wasn’t coming from the smug idiots flashing rings and gold teeth up front.
No, the real fight was brewing in the back.
In the frigging shadows.
A voice, dark and slow, rolled out from the shadows to my right.
"One thousand."
Before auctioneer-boy could even wet his lips, another voice sliced through the tension from the left. Low. Clipped. Deadly.
"Two thousand."
The auctioneer damn near giggled.
"Excellent! Two thousand! Do I hear three?"
His voice had the same tone as someone selling a used car — except instead of a rusty Honda, it was, y'know, me.
"Three."
"Four."
I didn’t need a badge and a partner yelling in my ear to know what was happening here.
This was the kind of hate you don't just wake up with — the kind that stews for years, thick and rancid, like a body left too long in summer heat.
The numbers climbed — slowly, at first.
Testing each other. Weighing each other’s bloodlust.
The crowd started to fidget — fancy little nobles shifting in their seats, pretending not to sweat through their perfumes. This wasn’t normal auction bloodlust.
Nah, this was personal.
And personal fights? They get messy.
"Fifteen thousand!" barked the first guy — and suddenly the guards at the edges of the room started doing that awkward shuffle security does right before someone pulls a gun.
"Twenty!"
"Thirty!"
Whispers started to snake through the crowd — not about the money, no. Nobody here blinked at a little fortune changing hands. But the who? The who bidding that kind of money? Now that was hot gossip.
"Forty!"
"Fifty!"
And then the gears shifted.
The first guy, the one who sounded slick and cocky?
He hesitated.
Good. Hesitation meant leverage. Meant cracks to pry open.
And even from where I stood, I felt the air around him buckle.
The auctioneer pounced, voice trembling with greed: "Do I hear sixty—?"
No.
Not sixty.
The second voice, colder than a winter grave, rolled out across the room:
"One hundred thousand."
Silence slammed into the room like a brick wall.
The richies up front stopped breathing.
The guards froze.
Hell, even I blinked.
One hundred thousand?
One. Hundred. Thousand.
You could hear a mouse fart in that place, it got so quiet.
The first bidder didn't answer.
Couldn’t.
Game over.
The auctioneer, practically vibrating out of his shoes, turned on his stage, arms flapping like a drunken rooster:
"S-Sold! Sold for one hundred thousand gold coins — to His Highness, Prince Nikolai of Valeriya!"
My brain stopped.
Wait.
Prince?
PRINCE?!
VALERIYA?!
I ransacked my mental Rolodex of every criminal syndicate, every mafia baby prince, every underground organization from Queens to goddamn Jersey Shore.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
No "Valeriya."
No Prince Nikolai.
Either I hit my head harder than I thought falling through that wooded portal-of-doom, or…
Or I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.
The dry taste of panic scratched at the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down. Tight. Cold. Professional.
You wanna live?
Don’t show weakness. Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe wrong.
Prince Nikolai. Gold coins. Robes. Medieval-ass decor.
And zero cell service.
As the crowd buzzed like kicked-up hornets around me, my brain started stitching together a cold, ugly picture.
Wherever I was...
I wasn’t going home anytime soon.
And if a "prince" just dropped a hundred thousand coins on me like pocket change?
Oh honey, things were about to get real ugly, real fast.
- Writer
