CHAPTER SEVEN
Miles and miles ago, Lord Blaku had unchained Ceres and had thrown her into an enclosed slave cart, and now she sat in the light of the moon, numb, beside dozens of girls in a cage wagon, bumping forward on the main road out of Delos.
The night had been freezing—it was freezing still—and with little protection from the rain, Ceres hadn’t been able to sleep, shivering all the time. Cold hands gripping the bars, she huddled at the end of the moving prison on soggy straw that reeked of urine and rotting flesh. It had stopped raining about an hour ago, and now the moon and stars were out.
She had listened in on the guards’ conversations, seated up above, and a few of them had mentioned something about Holheim, the capital of Northland, which, she knew, was several months’ jour
