CHAPTER 106: DINNER TIME

If I had expected the Lady of Fangs to maintain her regal poise, to nod curtly and whisk us away with the elegance of a queen leading her court, then I was grievously mistaken. Because the moment I agreed, the very second the words "you have yourself a deal" left my lips, she flipped.

Absolutely flipped.

Her hands clasped together like a giddy child at a harvest festival, her golden eyes glittered like lanterns, and she let out a delighted squeal that was so painfully unbefitting her grandeur that I nearly choked on my own tongue.

She spun on her heel with a whirl of crimson silk and motioned for us to follow her as though she had just been told the bakery was giving out free samples.

I stared for a moment, slack-jawed, caught between terror and second-hand embarrassment. Was this... was this what a Queen-Class mage looked like behind the curtain? A fang-toothed tyrant masking the heart of a gleeful schoolgirl?

And yet, when she strolled toward the exit of the auction hall, not a single soul dared stop her. The crowd parted like water before her crimson prow. Not one noble or competitor lifted a finger.

It wasn’t just her rank. It was the atmosphere that clung to her, an invisible curtain of authority that wrapped her in untouchable silk. Even Fitch, trailing behind with his armful of winnings, looked more like a court jester than a child.

So we followed.

The knight at my side walked with his usual unnerving calm, carrying Salem with more reverence now. Rodrick and Dunny shuffled behind us, both looking as though they expected the marble floor to open up and swallow them whole. And me? My mind spiraled.

Those fangs.

Gods, those fangs.

They gleamed in my memory, sharper than any sword, curling with a promise I had long tried to dismiss as impossible. Vampires were stories told by drunkards in Graywatch alleys, tales meant to scare children into drinking their broth.

I had always thought the Lady of Fangs had chosen her moniker as an intimidation tactic, a little piece of theater to set herself apart from the other competitors. But the image of her lips parting, the gleam beneath, it needled at me like a splinter in the brain.

No. Impossible. It couldn’t be.

So I pushed it aside. I filed it under "too horrifying to contemplate right now" and moved on to the next great torment of my mind: Lysaria.

Gods above, Lysaria.

I wondered if he was all right. If the Northern Cathedral had treated him like a relic to be locked away, or a weapon to be polished until it gleamed, or if—gods forbid—they had already broken him apart.

My mind chewed on those thoughts, gnawed them raw, until they became a steady drumbeat of dread beneath my ribs. Every time my heart faltered, I pressed it back to that rhythm, that reminder that I was still moving forward for him. For us.

Resolve returned, stubborn as ever.

And then, inevitably, as all my most harrowing journeys do, we ended up at a bakery.

"Here," Rodrick said suddenly, his voice cracking the night air. He pointed with a trembling hand. "This is it. The bakery where that stitched brute came from."

I shuddered. Hard. The memory of that hulking figure walking past us, the grotesque seams across its flesh, the silent tread of its boots—it was enough to sour every bone in my body. Still, the Lady swept through the door without hesitation, as though bakeries staffed by stitched horrors were her idea of a pleasant evening stroll.

The warmth hit me first.

Saints above, the warmth. After the auction house’s chill and the night’s creeping cold, it was like stepping into an oven of comfort. The air smelled of fresh bread and sugared buns, of yeast and honey, and—because fate enjoys mocking me—just faintly of blood. My stomach clenched in confusion, torn between hunger and horror.

Inside, the place was already alive.

Not with bakers and sweet old ladies dusted in flour, no. Instead, beastfolk lounged across benches, horns, tails, and fur catching the light of swinging lanterns.

A half-dozen human competitors slumped at tables, their laughter too forced, their eyes too bright. And woven between them all were signs, little things I caught between movements. A bite mark at the curve of a throat. Another on a wrist. One on a shoulder, half-hidden beneath cloth.

My skin crawled.

We were offered drinks the moment we stepped through—cups brimming with dark, spiced wine, glasses filled with frothing ale. I raised a hand quickly, forcing a polite smile.

"No, thank you. I prefer my beverages without teeth marks."

The Lady swept to the center of the room and sat with all the authority of a queen at court. She beckoned me with a flick of her gloved fingers, the pen still balanced in her other hand like a prize she couldn’t wait to dangle. I followed, because what else could I do?

We sat.

And for a long while, nothing happened. Nothing except the sound of my own pulse hammering behind my ears, the muffled chatter of the room folding in on itself, and the faint creak of the chair beneath me as though it too was waiting for some cue.

The silence stretched out like a wire strung too tight, humming with a pressure I couldn’t shake. I wanted to look away, I wanted to fidget, to say something—anything—to crack through the suffocating stillness, but I couldn’t.

Because she was looking at me.

Not glancing. Not idly surveying. Piercing. Her golden eyes didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. They traced me like a sculptor studying clay, memorizing every angle, every twitch, every pathetic detail of me. There was no hunger in them, not yet, only a strange... admiration.

And that, somehow, was worse.

It was ridiculous, obscene even, how much power she held just by looking. Then, like a specter summoned by the tension itself, Fitch materialized again.

He didn’t walk so much as sprout from the shadow of her chair, like some mischievous imp conjured purely to disrupt my already fragile sanity.

He leaned close to her, lips brushing the rim of her ear, and began to whisper again. His words were too low to hear, but I could see the way his shoulders shook with mirth, the way his small hands punctuated each phrase like a child embellishing a story they knew was too scandalous to tell aloud.

And she—gods help me—she laughed.

High, pompous, and utterly delighted, it spilled from her mouth like wine pouring too fast, splattering everything in reach. Her shoulders quivered with it, her chest rose and fell with it, until the sound drilled itself into my skull.

By the time she lifted her gloved hand and waved lazily toward the far wall, my head was already spinning.

That was when the man was dragged in.

At first, I thought he was just another competitor, maybe a drunk too belligerent to mind his manners. But no. His clothes were plain, unmarked by blood or sweat, the garb of someone who had never lifted a blade in their life.

He was older, grey streaking through his hair, his body gaunt but not yet skeletal. And his eyes—gods, his eyes—were wide and wild with animalistic fear. They darted across the room, pleading silently, grasping at any flicker of mercy.

He screamed.

Not a wordless wail, not the cry of someone fighting, but the broken, desperate screams of a man who knew exactly what was about to happen and couldn’t stop it. His voice cracked with each note, hoarse from strain, shattering against the walls like glass hurled against stone.

He twisted, he bucked, he fought like a fish caught in a net, but the man holding him was stronger. Much stronger.

"Shut up," his captor snarled, pressing a blade tight against the side of his throat. The words carried no emotion, no investment, just irritation. Like a butcher annoyed at a pig squealing too loud.

The man screamed louder. And then—

He slit his throat.

The sound—gods above, the sound—was something I’ll never be rid of. Not the clean slice of steel through flesh, but the wet, bubbling tear that followed. The air filled with the spray of blood, the metallic tang instantly coating my tongue, my nose, my lungs. He choked. He gurgled. A cough rattled out of him, weak, pitiful, and wet.

Blood poured down his chest in sheets, soaking his plain shirt, dripping onto the wooden floor where it pooled in sluggish rivulets. His legs spasmed, his hands clawed at the air as though trying to grasp something, anything, to anchor him.

Then his thrashing slowed. His cries dimmed, softening into shallow gasps that never quite finished. His body sagged in the arms of his captor, limp and heavy.

And then—horror of horrors—he was not discarded, not tossed aside like refuse. He was passed forward.

The Lady’s hands clapped together once, sharp as a child’s giddy cheer. Her smile widened, unabashed, unashamed, gleaming in the lantern light like something carved from ivory.

She leaned forward eagerly, her gown shifting in a shimmer of crimson silk, her gloved hands fluttering as though welcoming a long-expected guest.

The corpse was laid across her lap with the same reverence one might give a king. His head lolled to the side, eyes still half-open, blood still seeping sluggishly from the wound.

She reached down and stroked his hair once, tenderly, almost lovingly. The intimacy of it turned my stomach.

But then she bent down.

And with a grace so fluid it made my stomach churn in horror, she sank her teeth straight into his neck.