n

n

n

n

nHeidi touched her forehead to see it bleeding while she held onto the wall due to the dizzy feeling in her head right now, “I forgot to mention this before. I am not new here,” She smiled. Dropping the smile, she screamed at the top of her voice as if in pain and she slid down on the ground when the two guards appeared along with the new head guard of the slave establishment.

n“What is going on?!” The head guard demanded. Seeing that Heidi was the one on the ground, he directed the question to her.

n“T-they...” Heidi pointed out her finger to see Samantha’s eyes go wide.

n“She did it to herself! We didn’t touch her!” and everyone began to bicker over the other, putting and pushing the blame while the guards stood their not sure as they weren’t there to witness what had happened. The head guard turned angrier with every passing moment.

n“Enough! Put everyone in the punishment cell without food for two days! That should make them learn their lesson,” the head guard ordered the lower ranked guards, sending them to an isolated building.

nHeidi with the other three who were involved in the ruckus had their hands and ankles chained in iron, making their movements limited. As they entered the building which was dark with no lights or windows, the guards pulled them from behind with a lantern in the hand. It was pitch black and God only knew what was in there, thought Heidi as she followed the rest. As they closed to the cells, she noticed that it wasn’t much different from the regular cells except for the light and the pungent as well as rotten smell that came from a place she couldn’t identify.

nShe was pushed into a cell like the rest and for the briefest moment of light that spilled into the room, Heidi caught sight of what the cell had. There was a tiny space which was used for bathroom with a sink in it and apart from it there was nothing else but emptiness that spread across the cell.

nNot a day had passed and she heard one of the cells open by the guards to take the woman named Samantha with them as it was the day of the auction. Time flew painfully slow but she was safe here for now. If the guard decided to take her up to the auction next time, she didn’t know what she would do. Maybe it would be a good thing. At least that way she could let a person who would know her that she was here but then new slaves were never auctioned on their first week. It was very rare and only under special circumstances if a buyer or a master would visit the slave establishment to pick a slave after paying a hefty amount.

nPatiently she sat there in the filthy stench that surrounded their cells, making her vomit in the corner of the room as she couldn’t bear it. She reminded herself not to get into trouble again.

nIn the empire of Bonelake, Nicholas held the woman’s throat in his hand with a firm grip as she struggled to speak.

n“L-lord Nicholas!” she struggled.

n“Lady Blois, you wouldn’t be perhaps knowing about this letter now would you,” he asked her with a smile etched on his face. Nicholas had only arrived at the Rune’s mansion and when he opened the letter he visited the Lawson’s mansion to find what had happened. Stanley had only arrived from an errand to inform that Mr. Lawson had told him that Lady Heidi had gone to visit her family home in Woville.

n“I don’t know w-what you are talking about,” her hands fumbled over his fingers in an effort to loosen in it but it didn’t.

n“Are you sure about it?” he tightened his hand before loosening like a prey playing with it’s food before attacking it. He let her go, “Let me jog your memory a bit. You trampled the letter which was sent by Ms. Curtis for me. And I very much believe this isn’t hers. Someone told me you intended to sent me the letter. Now I wonder what happened.”

nNicholas would have believed everything that was written in the letter as it was an exact copy of how Heidi wrote if it weren’t for the part that told ‘I want to stay with my family’. He wondered if this woman, Lady Blois had an ability to mimic handwriting. On a different situation she would have been useful but she wasn’t.

n“I swear to the Lord that I don’t have an idea about it. Why would I even do such a thing? I am not stupid,” the woman coughed whilst falling on the marbled floor .

n“But you are stupid. Don’t think I am not aware of what went down in the Lawson’s mansion few weeks ago. I would request you to speak up for your own good,” he walked around her, “Quick I have no time.”

n“T-they, the Curtis wanted her to come home and that was all. I just gave her a push because she wasn’t responding to her families letters. She is a rude girl and I don’t know how the council picked her for Venetia’s son,” she confessed.

n“And what did the original letter say? Hmm,” Nicholas asked her coming to stand in front of her.

n