100x Rebate Sharing System: Retired Incubus Wants to Marry & Have Kids Chapter 496 - 495- The Breaking of Mental Fortitude

Young. That was the thing that hit hardest — ’young,’ the twenty-sothing version of the face Sofia knew, the version before the small lines at the eyes and the silver threading the black of her hair. The face before everything that had co after.

She was blinking.

Her mother was blinking in the torchlight, her eyes adjusting — those , pale, silver-blue rmaid eyes that Sofia had inherited in diluted form, wide now with the startled, overwheld focus of soone who has been brought into a space that their body and mind are both refusing to accept as real.

Her hand ca up.

Found the glass.

Palm flat against it.

From the inside, looking out at the masked rows of n who were looking back.

The bidding started before the platform had fully settled.

"Five hundred!"

"Six hundred!"

"Eight!"

The voices coming from everywhere simultaneously — the , overlapping, competitive chaos of money talking at volu, every bid slightly more urgent than the last, the room running on the , ugly energy of n who have been waiting and are now expressing that wait with numbers.

Sofia stood in the middle of it.

A ghost. Untouchable. The imrsion spell keeping her present without making her real to any of them.

She watched her mother’s face.

Watched those pale eyes moving across the room — from masked face to masked face to masked face, the , desperate inventory of a woman looking for sothing recognizable, sothing human, sothing that would tell her how this ends.

Finding nothing.

Her hand still on the glass.

Her lips moving.

Sofia could read them.

’Please.’

Just that. Over and over. The silent, terrible word of soone speaking to a room that cannot hear them.

"One thousand!"

"Fifteen hundred!"

"Two thousand!"

Sofia’s hands were fists at her sides.

She could feel them — the physical reality of her own clenched fingers, her nails in her palms, the grounding sensation of pain when everything else had gone unreal.

’This is the past,’ she told herself. ’This already happened. This already ended. She’s fine. She married Father. She’s ho. She’s—’

"Three thousand!"

A pause.

The room breathing.

That mont in an auction when the bidding has thinned and the remaining competitors are looking at each other across the crowd, taking stock.

Sofia looked at her mother’s face.

She was shaking.

Small, visible tremors in the hands pressed against the glass — the involuntary, full-body trembling of soone standing in cold water in a room full of strangers being priced.

’She’s fine,’ Sofia thought. ’Father cos. Father buys her. He was gentle, she always said. Unlike the others. He was the only decent one in the room. He saw her and he—’

"Five thousand gold coins."

The voice.

Sofia turned.

The man in the fifth row, left side.

Standing now. The , statent-making posture of soone who has decided they’re ending this.

She knew the silhouette.

She had grown up in proximity to that silhouette — had seen it at the head of the dinner table, at the window of his study, coming up the front path after a long ride, the broad, straight-shouldered shape of a man who had built his body with the deliberate intent of a person who knows that a body is an instrunt of authority.

Her father.

Count Ravenon.

Older in the present than this mory — the gray at his temples was less here, the lines at his face fewer, the body carrying less of the weight that decades of governing put on a person. But it was him. Unmistakably, completely, ’him.’

The room went quiet.

That , recognition-loaded quiet that falls when soone important has spoken.

"The Count," soone said.

Sofia exhaled.

The long, shaking, ’finally’ exhale of a body that has been holding its breath.

’There.’

’There he was.’

’Father. Coming to save her. Just like she always said. He saw her and he knew and he paid five thousand gold coins because that was what he understood she was worth and he brought her ho and—’

She turned toward Elena.

Opened her mouth.

’Enough,’ she was going to say. ’I’ve seen enough. I understand the point. This is where he rescues her and you’ve made your point about the circumstances of their eting and I’d like to go now—’

Elena was smiling.

Not the warm, manufactured smile from the garden.

The other one.

The one beneath that one — the cold, , ’I have been waiting for this mont’ smile of a woman who has set a trap and is watching the thing she set it for walk into it.

"Do you know," Elena said,

Her voice coming through the imrsion spell with the , slightly-adjacent quality of sound arriving from outside the mory while Sofia stood inside it —

"Count Ravenon."

A pause.

"At the ti."

Another pause.

"Was renowned."

The smile widening.

"As one of the kingdom’s most accomplished sex slave trainers."

The words arrived in Sofia’s chest like sothing physical.

Not a blow. The , worse thing — the slow, comprehensive, ’cellular’ arrival of information that the body knows is true before the mind has finished receiving it.

She turned back to the auction floor.

Her father was walking.

The crowd parting for him — the , deferential body-language of a room that recognizes authority — the masked n on either side leaning back slightly as he passed, the murmurs following him.

And she heard them now.

The murmurs she hadn’t registered before, too busy watching her mother, too busy building the story she’d been told.

"Ravenon’s here."

"Haven’t seen him at one of these since the northern haul two years ago."

"He takes his ti with them. Months, apparently."

"The rmaid Queen. He’ll have his work cut out—"

"He likes that."

Laughter.

Low, private, ’knowing’ laughter running through the rows like sothing spreading.

Sofia’s fists were shaking.

’No.’

’No, that’s not—’

’He was gentle. She said he was gentle. She said unlike the others, he was—’

Her father reached the platform.

He stood in front of the glass.

In front of her mother, who was looking at him with the , searching expression of a woman looking at a face for information — ’what are you, what do you want, what happens now’ — her pale eyes running over his features with the desperate inventory of soone who needs to know if this is rescue or continuation.

The auctioneer: "Congratulations to Count Ravenon. The rmaid Queen—"

Her father picked up the auction hamr from the side table.

The heavy, ceremonial thing — the brass head of it, the long handle.

He held it.

Looked at the glass.

At her mother inside it.

At her mother’s hand still pressed against it.

At her mother’s face, which was doing the , terrible thing that faces do when they’re trying to decide whether to hope.

And he swung.

The glass ca apart.

Not a clean break. The full, cascading, ’spectacular’ destruction of the container — the shards spraying outward with the water, the cascade of it hitting the platform floor, the massive, imdiate, ’violent’ sound of the impact echoing in the chamber.

Her mother scread.

The short, high, startled scream of soone who did not expect this — who had maybe expected the container to be opened, a door, a latch, not ’this’ — and fell forward with the water, her hands catching the platform edge, her knees finding the wet wood, the glass around her.

She looked up.

Blood on her hand. A cut from a shard, small but imdiate, the red running thin through the water still dripping from her dress.

She looked at the Count above her.

"Father—"

Sofia’s voice.

Barely audible.

"What are you—"

The Count reached down.

Grabbed her mother by the hair.

"Kyaaaahh~~!!!?!"