He was the kind of man all the girls at Twyleth Tigg had hoped would buy their contracts—tall and muscular and handsome and strong. Lan’ara had hoped so herself, but at the Ball of Beauty she had been singled out by a much different kind of man.
Of course, Senator Pouncenblast was a very important man—and an extremely rich one. There were rumors that he owned his own private island on Genu Six—the planet he represented in the Galactic Senate. He had even promised to make Lan’ara his Primary Bride.
“For the one I have now doesn’t suit me anymore,” he’d told her in an offhand manner, as they danced around the ballroom. “She’s getting too old, don’t you know, and hasn’t born me an heir, though we’ve been married three whole cycles. No…” He had shaken his head. “She won’t do anymore. You, my lovely Lan’ara, will be my Primary Bride and if you bear me an heir right away, I’ll promote you even higher—to First Wife! Won’t that be exciting?”
Lan’ara had smiled and tried to act excited, though inside her heart was sinking. She didn’t know how old Senator Pouncenblast’s current Primary Bride was, but he himself could not be less than eighty-five cycles and he had the sagging jowls and liver-spotted hands to prove it.
Though she found his touch on her as they danced repulsive, Lan’ara had been trained too well in the Twyleth Tigg way to let the emotion show in her eyes or to flinch away when he reached for her. Instead she smiled brightly and made light banter, flirting delicately in a way that was designed to flatter a man’s ego and make him think she found him the most fascinating person in the room.
A girl could do a lot worse than a Galactic Senator, she told herself. And anyone who didn’t walk away from the Beauty Ball without an avowed patron to buy their contract would automatically be sold to the Flower House—a high class brothel run by the same Board of Directors that managed Twyleth Tigg Academy. There, a girl was forced to please many men, not just one, so it was better—far better—to find a patron at the ball.
Lan’ara had spent the night playing up to the elderly Senator and her ruse had worked. By the end of the ball, her contract was spoken for and she was assured a spot as Pouncenblast’s new Primary Bride at the end of her schooling—which was only six solar months away.
Of course that was before the pirates came, Lan’ara thought with a shiver.
It was the very night before they were all to be delivered to the men who had bought their contracts. Everyone had packed their things and each of them had been given their shots—to give immunity for the new worlds they were going to, the Nurse at the academy told them. Lan’ara had gone to sleep in a strange mixture of relief and regret—she didn’t love the Senator or relish the thought of giving him her virginity—but at least he’d promised her a safe and easy life which was much better than the Flower House.
But she’d been woken not by the sound of the Morning Chimes, but the shattering of glass and the screams of other girls.
Pirates from the Je’gaba system had come for them. They had blasted through Twyleth Tigg’s security bubble, shredding it as though it was made of paper, and taken every last girl.
Well, the ones that hadn’t tried to run, anyway.
One girl—Tawnie—had tried to go out the window and a pirate with a mechanical eye had shot her—splattering her brains all over the tasteful pink curtains that fluttered in the mild night breeze.
The rest of them had come quietly after that—what choice did they have, Lan’ara wondered? She had spent the next several nights shivering with her friends and classmates in the freezing hold of the pirates’ ship until many of them had been transferred to the slaver, who had sold her on the auction block.
Lan’ara closed her eyes, trying not to think of that—trying not to remember the way she’d been humiliated and hurt—forced to show her body to the jeering crowd. And the way that awful stick with the cruel, knobbly end had jammed itself inside her…
No! No, I won’t think of it. I won’t think of it ever again! she told herself fiercely.
But though her mind was willing to bury the trauma, her body wouldn’t let her forget quite that easily. Her shoulders still ached miserably—feeling strained and stretched, as though the rough way she’d been handled by the slaver’s assistant on the auction block had pulled some vital ligaments in her upper joints. Her arms felt limp and weak and almost useless, which worried her deeply.
But it wasn’t her shoulders that hurt the worst, Lan’ara reluctantly admitted to herself. It was the place between her legs where the knob of the stick had pressed inside her. The delicate flesh stung like fire there—as though she’d been torn. And she ached inside too—a deep pain like a rotten tooth that wouldn’t go away.