Frayed Ties (Ties, Book 1) | ✓

Chapter 1

Danya avoided his reflection in the mirror as he stepped into the small room he shared with two other boys. Occasionally he would indulge himself in the torture of examining his form, mentally cataloguing an ever growing list of flaws, but each time he chose that path he found despair drawing him deeper. Today he would resist.

The others were in lessons right now, but he'd learned all they had to teach him here years ago. When the wardens had no need for his assistance in teaching the younger slaves, he was sent back to the dormitory to spend the time alone.

He had turned nineteen a month ago. There had been no celebration, just a grim, tense awareness. With his flaws, and now his age, he would never sell as a Companion. When the time came — and it surely would soon — Milaine House would cut their loses and make what money they could selling him for some other purpose. Perhaps someone would want him as a house slave, or a labourer, or... well. There were many possibilities.

Danya swallowed around the lump that had formed in his throat as he sat down on his bed. He wished so badly to be like the other boys, to be precious and valuable and well bred. But he wasn't. He could never be. With the taint in his blood, he was lucky to be alive. If anyone found out...

If anyone found out, that very taint that put him at risk might be his only chance at survival. Danya held his hand out, palm up, and focussed on heat. They had been taught this skill to warm drinks or soothe a master's aching muscles with a heated touch, but in private Danya had discovered he could push it a little further.

Flame sparked to life in the centre of his palm and slowly grew, energy flooding out of him in its purest form. It felt almost alive in his hand, a simple intelligence fed by his magic. It did not burn him.

Danya was terrified that one day somebody would realise that his hair was too dark and his shoulders were too broad. That his father couldn't possibly have simply been a poorly bred house slave his mother had shared a moment of unsupervised affection with during a party, as she had claimed. That only the genetics of a Soldier could combine with a finely bred Companion to produce something as plain as him.

The matron at the nursery had seen through that lie and chosen to protect him. Nobody else would be so sentimental.

A tickle at the edge of his senses alerted Danya to someone coming up the stairs and he closed his hand over the flame, extinguishing it. There was nobody in this world he trusted well enough to discover his secret.

Though if there had been one person, it would have been Duran, the boy who was approaching now. Danya could distinguish the mental feel of him from the others easily, the gentle confidence of the seventeen year old setting him apart. Danya would never tell him this, however. His ability to feel the energy of others was another aberrant trait he should not have possessed.

Duran opened the door to the room they shared and tilted his head towards the stairs. "Line up."

Danya sighed. Duran was excluded from these. Though he was boarded at Milaine House, he had a master who visited him frequently. Danya envied him. Although Danya lining up to be examined by potential buyers was equally pointless, the wardens insisted he take part.

Duran kept a hand on Danya's back at they headed downstairs, dropping it only when they stepped outside. It helped push back some of the darkness in Danya's mind just a little.

The others were already outside, a straight line of nearly two dozen boys in age order stripped bare and doing their best to stand still and stare straight ahead. Out in the sunshine, their blond hair shone so brightly it looked almost like gold. Danya's own hair was a dull light brown that reminded him of straw. The wardens had done him the small mercy of cutting it short enough that he couldn't see it without a mirror.