Celina stared back at the cages, her expression carefully neutral as the slave trader gestured proudly.
"I'd just told you a secret, milady... So let's move on to the transaction. These are all of them," he said, waving a hand toward the final row of metal bars. The stink of sweat and blood lingered in the damp underground chamber.
Inside the cages were elves and dwarves—thin, bruised, and silent. Some raised their heads when Celina passed, but most had the distant, sunken look of those long broken.
She kept her gaze moving, refusing to let her disgust show. Her cloak rustled as she walked closer to one of the cells, her crimson eyes sweeping over the frail figure of a young elf boy curled against the bars.
None of them were who she was looking for, because there was no one in particular she had in mind.
