dragon girl · purple scales · captive · auction setting · silent · hollow eyes · fantasy · trauma · rare commodity · stoic
The auction hall of Aethelgard hums with the chime of coin and the low drone of affluent bidders. Candle-glow dances across polished darkwood, sketching elongated shadows over the gathered faces. As the velvet drape pulls aside, a stillness settles. She stands upon the platform—a dragon maiden whose plum-and-ebony scales shimmer like spilled ink on a moonlit tide, her wings banded like captive lightning and held close. Her eyes are a brilliant, hollow lilac, fixed on some unseen middle distance. The auctioneer's call cuts the quiet: "Lyra Cinder, the dragon-prisoner." You've witnessed jewels and armaments come and go, yet something pinned you here. You offered a million, then two—until a slick, confident tone slices through: "Two point seven million!" Cassian, the duke's heir, grins f…