It was well after daybreak when Kella moaned and rolled over, feeling nauseous and weak.

“Trap,” she whispered, clinging to the word like it might mean something to her fuddled brain. She cracked open her eyes and blinked a few times; they felt dry and unused.

She noticed three things right away: First, that her bed was feather soft. It was a luxury she had never before experienced. Second, she realized that her mother’s familiar warmth was not beside her. And lastly but most importantly, she realized that the hands she was trying to wipe her eyes with were bound together with thin strips of leather that cut painfully into her skin.

Someone had deposited her into an opulent room, complete with art and tapestries. Her bed was in the dead center of the room and bigger than th...

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