Page 5 of Daughter of No Worlds

“They’re always like that,” the slaver said, matter-of-factly. “Unsentimental.”

You did this,the little girl wanted to scream.You refused to take her with me.She wanted to shout, she wanted to sob. She wanted to let herself collapse on this dirty cart floor, pound the wood with useless fists, weep until she vomited.

But instead, she was still, her back straight and her chin raised, pantomiming her mother’s stone strength. She bit down so hard on the inside of her lip that warm iron flooded over her tongue. The echo of her mother’s kiss burned on her forehead.

You have what you need to survive, her mother had told her. The girl had no possessions other than her sweaty nightgown, but she knew she had tools. On that long, dark ride to the city, she counted them, over and over again. She had her unusual appearance, looks that might one day turn into something worth desiring. She was a good listener and a fast learner. She had her magic — silver butterflies and pretty illusions, yes, but more importantly, she had the ability tofeelwhat people wanted of her.

And, most valuable of all, she had the gift that her mother had given her: permission to do whatever it took to survive, without apology, without regret. She would do absolutely anything, except cry.

Chapter One

Eight Years Later

1, 2, 3…

When I danced, I never stopped counting.

The truth was, I was a terrible dancer. I wasn’t sure that I believed in the concept of talent at all, but even if I did, I could recognize that I didn’t have any. At least when it came to dancing. But talent, I had learned, was optional. It could be substituted with long nights and early mornings, bleeding feet, obsessively memorized footwork.

No one needed talent when you had brute force. And, despite my willowy size and my unassuming doe-eyed smile, I had more brute force than anyone.

…4, 5, 6…

Twirl.

And— fire.

I smiled at the merchant man seated in front of me, opening my palms to let blue fire unfurl from between my fingers. The audience, Esmaris’s party guests,ooh-ed andaah-ed appreciatively. There were several hundred people mingling about the large marble room, all dressed in their finest clothing. Lots of gold thread and floaty, sheer chiffon. Lots of white. Rich people loved white, perhaps because it proved that they had the money to spend on a small army of slaves to keep it clean.

All of those white-clad bodies bent towards me in that moment, rapt, as I unleashed a wave of my signature translucent butterflies into the air. Four dozen of them fluttered to the high ceiling and disappeared, unraveling into puffs of blue smoke.

All except for three.

Three fluttered to three separate men in the audience, circling their necks, flitting against their cheeks before they disappeared.

Every one of the men flinched as the butterfly approached, then laughed with varying degrees of enthusiasm when they realized they felt like nothing but air. Their gazes had been glued to me this entire time, and I could tell that they were itching for the opportunity to throw coins in my direction, if I used what I had correctly.

I focused on the youngest one first, a merchant man perhaps only a few years older than myself. He had something to prove. New money. I danced closer to him, and as my fingers reached out to flirtatiously touch his shoulder, my mind did too — tasting the air for his thoughts, his preferences. This one, it turned out, had no preference for me at all. In fact, I could feel his attention being constantly pulled toward Serel, one of Esmaris’s handsomer bodyguards, who lingered in the far corner of the room.

That was fine. He didn’t have to want to screw me to serve my purposes. If anything, it made things easier for me — he would be overly eager to prove his virile interest in a scantily-clad dancer like myself, rather than a scantily-clad guard like Serel. And he wouldn’t try to get me alone once the dance ended.

The strings of the harp plinked on, but there might as well have been no music at all. My dance was memorized. My feet didn’t stop moving as I coiled my arms around the merchant’s neck. “I left something over here,” I purred, pulling my fingers from behind the edge of his jaw and revealing one of my twinkling butterflies. “She likes you. Would you like to keep her?”

The young merchant smiled at me. He was handsome, with curly brown hair and big amber eyes framed by lashes so long that they made me jealous.

He and Serel would make a beautiful couple, really.

“I would,” he said, staring at me too-intently, even though his thoughts told me that he had no interest in keeping her at all. What hedidhave an interest in was showing that he could hold his own in this room of wildly rich and wildly successful people — even against Esmaris himself. He lifted a hand as if to take the glowing butterfly from me, but I twirled backwards, smirking at him coyly.

“What will you give me for her?”

I caught a glimpse of Esmaris over the young man’s shoulder. He was clad in a shock of color — bright red — which stood out in a sea of white. He didn’t need to prove his wealth or status, after all, with his choice of clothing. But even beyond the shade of his shirt, there was still something about him that separated him from the crowd. A certain cool, authoritative air, like he strode through the world expecting it to bend to him. It usually did.

He was engaged in a conversation with one of his guests, looking vaguely bored. His hair — black but streaked with grey — was bound back in a low ponytail, with one unruly strand that he kept sweeping behind his ear. Mid-movement, he glanced up to meet my eyes. Our eye contact lasted for a fraction of a second before he looked back to his guest, unconcerned.

Good. He wasn’t usually possessive, but better to be careful.

“You already have my admiration,” the young merchant said, and it physically pained me not to roll my eyes.

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