Chapter 3 "Luné Devain,"
࿐ྂ༻꒦꒷𓇊꒷꒦༺࿐ྂ
“Chapter 2: Luné Devain,”
────── ꕥ ⋅ IVORY ⋅ ꕥ ──────
I almost didn't go.
I stood outside 28 Blackwood Lane at 8:57 PM, in my only dress without paint on it, which was a black dress that was basically just a black dress, nothing special, and stared at a door that had no sign, no nameplate, and no logical reason to exist in this part of the city.
The warehouse district at night looked exactly like every movie that killed someone in a warehouse.
Broken streetlights. Empty roads. The kind of silence that made you hyperaware of your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the sound of your shoes on cracked pavement.
I'd almost turned around four times on the way here.
Once on the subway when I realized I was actually doing this.
Once outside the building when I saw how dark it was.
Once in the building's entryway when I realized there was no directory, no indication that anything was happening here at all.
And once more at the door, hand raised, thinking about how easy it would be to just go home.
Except "home" had no electricity. And my landlord had three thousand dollars worth of opinions about my future living situation.
So… I knocked.
The door opened before my knuckles even finished the second knock.
A man in all black, suit, shirt, probably his socks too, looked me up and down with the kind of assessment usually reserved for objects. He checked something on a small card, nodded once without smiling, and stepped aside.
No greeting. No "welcome." Just space created for me to enter.
I walked in.
And immediately forgot how to function like a normal person.
The inside of that building had absolutely no business existing inside that building.
It was vast. Cathedral-high ceilings that were dripping, actually dripping, with chandeliers that turned everything into liquid gold.
Dark red fabric draped the walls like blood pooling.
The floor was polished obsidian, so black and mirror-bright that the chandeliers reflected in it like a second sky above and below.
And the people.
God, the people.
Everyone in that room looked expensive in a way that went beyond clothes and jewelry. They looked expensive like time was expensive. Like they'd had centuries to get good at standing perfectly still, at wearing perfectly tailored suits, at making everyone around them feel like they'd accidentally walked into the wrong room and should apologize for existing.
Which, fair. I probably should have.
A woman in a white suit appeared at my elbow with a champagne flute and a smile that was perfectly executed and completely empty.
"First time?" she asked.
Her voice was the kind of calm that suggested she'd never been rushed in her entire life.
"That obvious?" I took the champagne because my hands needed something to do besides shake.
"You're the only one looking at the ceiling." She tilted her head toward the room. "It's considered rude to look impressed."
"Right." I looked down. The champagne was so cold it hurt my teeth. It tasted like money and absolutely nothing I could afford. "So what exactly is Luné Devain?"
The woman's smile didn't change. Didn't flicker. Didn't do anything a normal human smile would do.
"An auction house," she said.
"What do they sell?"
A pause. Just long enough that I noticed it. Just long enough that my spine registered something was off.
"Experiences," she said. Then she walked away, disappearing into the crowd like she'd never been there at all.
I stood there holding a champagne flute I didn't want, wearing a dress I'd worn twice, trying not to look impressed at a ceiling that was objectively impressive.
The room filled up around me. More dark suits. More glittering jewelry, actual jewelry, the kind that caught light like it had never seen a discount. More people who moved through space like they owned it in ways that went beyond money. These people moved like ownership was built into their actual DNA.
And something about the room felt off.
Not wrong, exactly. Just, different. The air had a weight to it I couldn't name. Like the pressure before a thunderstorm, sitting right behind your eyes, making everything feel slightly too loud and too quiet at the same time.
I noticed other things too, if I was being honest. The way no one touched the food on the tables, and there was food, beautiful food, the kind that looked expensive and carefully arranged. But everyone was drinking and talking and moving and absolutely nobody was eating. Which was weird.
The way conversations stopped just slightly too fast when someone new walked by. Like they were all tuned to the same frequency and could sense the approach of a stranger.
The way eyes moved through the room in patterns. Tracking. Assessing. Missing nothing.
Like they were all very, very good at watching.
I was busy convincing myself I was being paranoid when the energy in the room shifted.
Not loudly. Not with any kind of announcement. Just, a change. A drop in temperature that had nothing to do with air conditioning. The sound level lowered. Conversations slowed. Heads turned, just slightly, toward the entrance on the left.
A man walked in.
And this entire room full of people who'd been acting like nothing could impress them, who'd been moving through this space like they were the most dangerous things in it, went just a little bit quieter.
He was tall. That was the first thing I noticed. Not just tall, the kind of tall that made everything else in the room seem to rearrange itself around him. Dark suit, perfectly fitted. The kind of suit that probably cost more than my rent. Dark hair, slicked back, the kind of grooming that looked effortless but absolutely wasn't.
His face stopped you mid-thought.
Not handsome exactly. Handsome was too small a word.
He looked like someone had taken the concept of attractiveness and executed it without compromise.
Sharp cheekbones. A jaw that looked like it was carved from stone. Eyes that were blue, ice blue, cold blue, the kind of blue that made you think of winter and drowning.
He moved through the room like the crowd was water and he was something that water moved around instead of the other way.
People stepped back without seeming to realize they were doing it. There was this unconscious dance where everyone just... created space. Gave him room. Bowed out without bowing.
He didn't look around the room the way everyone else did.
He didn't scan.
Didn't assess.
He didn't perform. He just moved, walking through the space like he already knew everything he needed to know about this room and the only thing of any interest in it was something he hadn't found yet.
He was looking for something.
Or someone.
And then,
His eyes found mine.
Across the entire room. Across fifty people and chandeliers and golden light. His eyes found mine and locked on like a missile guidance system.
I couldn't look away.
I tried. I genuinely tried. I looked down at my champagne, looked at the floor, looked at literally anything else in the room. My eyes came back to him like I was magnetized.
He was still looking at me.
Not like he was interested. Not like he was curious. He was looking at me like he was recognizing something. Like I was a piece of a puzzle that had finally arrived and he was surprised I'd taken so long to show up.
His mouth curved up just slightly at the corner. Not quite a smile. Almost a smile. The kind of almost-smile that suggested he knew exactly what was happening to my heart rate right now and thought it was interesting.
And then,
I saw it happen.
His eyes changed.
From blue to something else. From cold to something burning. The color shifted like someone had turned a dial and suddenly they were amber.
Not gold.
Not brown.
Amber.
The color of fire at its hottest point.
The color of something ancient and wild and completely at odds with the tailored suit and the chandelier light and the two hundred wealthy people surrounding him.
It lasted maybe half a second. Less than a second. Barely long enough to be sure I'd actually seen it.
Then it was gone. The blue returned. The almost-smile stayed.
I couldn't breathe.
Like, genuinely couldn't breathe. My lungs had forgotten the mechanics. My brain had gone offline. Everything in my body was screaming that I'd just witnessed something that wasn't supposed to exist.
The amber eyes. The way they shifted. The way that shift made something in my chest respond like I was prey and he was the predator and neither of us could pretend otherwise anymore.
He was still looking at me.
Someone bumped into me, an actual person moving through the space, and the moment broke. I turned away because I needed to look at literally anything else, and when I turned back maybe five seconds later, he'd moved. He was across the room now, talking to someone, but his head was angled just slightly toward where I was standing.
Like he knew exactly where I was without looking.
My champagne was shaking in my hand.
"Lot 24, you're on deck."
A woman with a clipboard appeared out of nowhere, the same kind of woman who'd been running logistics that had no heart. She said it without looking at me, like I was another item to check off on her list. There was something heavy about it. Something final.
"I - what does that mean-" I started, but she was already walking away.
Lot 24.
That was me now.
I'd signed something when I arrived. Some kind of paperwork. I hadn't read it. Hadn't thought to read it. I'd been too distracted by the fact that I was actually inside this place, actually participating in whatever this was.
Through the gap in a heavy velvet curtain, I could see the auction hall. People in seats. Paddles at tables. The setup was absurdly normal for something that felt absolutely insane.
They were deciding something. I thought I knew what it was.
But I wasn't ready to go out there yet. I needed to steady my breathing. Needed to figure out what I'd actually seen and whether I was losing my mind or whether something genuinely impossible had just looked at me like it had found what it was searching for.
A hand appeared on my shoulder. Gentle. But with the kind of certainty underneath that suggested it wasn't asking permission.
"You're on," the woman said.
And before I could argue or ask questions or do literally anything else, she pushed me toward the stage.
Toward the lights.
Toward him.
The gavel came down on the offer before I'd even gotten my full breath back: five million dollars.
That's all I heard as the light blinded me and the room tilted and the blue-eyed man in the front row, who wasn't raising his paddle, who didn't need to raise his paddle, looked at me like he'd just bought something that belonged to him all along.
And the terrifying part?
Some part of me - some deep, stupid, animal part of me - didn't entirely disagree.
────── ꕥ ⋅ ꕥ ──────
