Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
One Standard Cycle Later.
For the first quarter cycle, the silks burned.
Once my shoulder was healed, Mistress Lunastra moved me into Aimel’s old room.
It was the nicest sleeping quarters I’d ever seen, with a wide bed tucked into one corner covered in fluffy emerald pillows and a rug so thick it felt like walking on moss.
And there, in the center of the room, hung green silks I would learn to climb by wrapping and pulling until it was as natural as it had been to climb the tree I pushed from my mind every moment I was awake.
But eleven cycles on that Maker-forsaken space station had sapped my strength and grace.
It was a small Burenko woman, Kafita, who taught me the skill of making beautiful shapes within the silk, of rolling and creating the illusion of falling.
She taught me to turn something I found mundane into something magical.
I watched Kafita for weeks as she climbed, wrapped, and swung, the pale green of her skin blending with the silks until it was sometimes difficult to see where she ended and they began.
I nursed burns for weeks, grateful for the ice packs and soothing balms the mistress insisted on and ignoring Kafita’s pointed comments that I needed rest. Rest?
I didn’t even know the meaning of the word.
They allowed me hours to sleep and eat; there was even a small cleansing chamber attached to my cell (though the first time I’d called it that in front of them both Lyrace and Kafita had blanched in shock, and I learned to refer to it as my private quarters).
The idea that on top of such luxuries I would also spend time letting the raw marks on my arms and hands heal?
No. I was too afraid Lunastra would discover my idleness and I would be sent back to Ebyd III.
I trained until my body ached, until I could barely lift my legs and arms. After the first quarter cycle my skin toughened and the old strength I’d lost cycles ago returned.
With it came the grace I thought I remembered from my childhood, though the memories were hazy and hurt deeper than any of the aches I felt now.
So the silks became my new resting place, an extension of my limbs and a cocoon in which I could hide from the nightmares that bounced off the four walls of my chamber.
When I was not working, I was learning all I could about our clients, the different planets they came from, and their customs. Lyrace and Lunastra quizzed me constantly, sometimes even taking me into the crowded pleasure rooms and forcing me to spit out facts about one patron or another’s home world until my throat felt raw.
The mistress was pleased enough to allow me to work after that, which in turn allowed me to earn credits for the Daskquah.
Each shift I stood in the small hold above whichever room they ushered their patrons into, climbing into deep red silks until I was lowered slowly into the depths of haunting Haptium music and pipe smoke.
At first, the skintight black bodysuit Lunastra had dressed me in felt too revealing, with its deep vee down to my bellybutton and high-cut hips, and more skin bared than covered.
But my hair grew longer with each quarter cycle, and I learned to use both hair and bodysuit like a shield against the eyes of our patrons, who could look but not touch.
Any time patrons tried, the energy field around my stage shocked them. Not enough to hurt, but enough to send them back into their seats with a huffed laugh and a teasing quip from Lunastra.
“You know better, Councilman Nyx. Look but do not touch, darling.”
“Careful there, Senator Falt, our Juniper is far too precious of a gem to be handled by just anyone.”
And with each rebuff more credits slid into the house’s coffers until patrons from the higher-class planets crowded the barge each night for a chance to watch and hope perhaps this time Lunastra would allow one to purchase me for the night.
However, she never asked me to do more than dance, and with each request from the patrons her slate eyes would sparkle along with her laughter as I curled and spun and twisted on those silks.
For the first season it had been hard to hold back my grimace and wipe the disgust from my face as I caught the lust-filled eyes of those below.
But a half cycle later I had all but forgotten they existed, content within the cocoon of my making.
The Daskquah wasn’t my home, but I didn’t know the meaning of that word either.
No matter how many shifts I worked, how bone-achingly tired I was when I dragged myself back into my quarters, I would wake what felt like moments later to the sounds of my screams. My hands would be reaching and I would be sweating as if flames licked at my skin.
And there, in that fire, stood a male with a blaster slung over his shoulder, pointing to the home tree and ordering his men to burn it to the ground.
Tonight, a full standard cycle since I’d arrived on the ship, was no different.
My throat burned and I ripped the sweat-drenched sheets off my trembling knees.
It didn’t matter how long I was away from the prison, at first waking I always looked for the hash marks of my days, holding my breath against the scent of disinfectant and despair haunting every corner of the space station.
My door slid open with a hiss. Lunastra slipped inside, a fine dressing gown pulled tight around her slim body and her hair piled up onto her head, pierced with a gemstone comb one of her patrons had gifted her a half cycle ago.
Her scent, like the deep purple flowers of my home tree and the sweets my mother used to feed us, curled around me.
But unlike when we first met, it didn’t open a deep ache inside my belly.
Lunastra’s people, the Venyans, were known around the galaxy for their beauty, their scent different for each who smelled it.
Pheromones which, when a Venyan was in heat, induced an intense lust within whoever was closest.
The Venyans were the most popular race for courtesans and Lunastra, like many of her fellows, had been surgically altered so her pheromones flooded a room regardless of her heats.
It was what had first softened her to me—the way I fought the hunger and slickness that had pooled between my thighs in her presence.
In the med bay, I’d been given a dose of her pheromones through an injection site below my jaw, allowing me immunity to the desire that made our patrons literally fall to their knees.
We did not speak often. In fact, silence was my favorite weapon. It was uncomfortable, silence, and I’d found early on in my imprisonment on Ebyd III others would fill the discomfort with babble, allowing important things to slip out without realizing.
It was how I’d learned about the Daskquah docking in the first place.
Though we did not speak often, Lunastra frequently visited my rooms, whether it was to ensure I had everything I needed or merely to sit with me on nights where my screams rattled through the vents they’d found me in.
I didn’t know if she saw something of herself in me or if perhaps she took comfort in the silence as well, but I’d learned to adjust to her presence.
“Bad one, dearest?” she hummed now, flicking a switch on the control panel so cool air filtered through the room.
I nodded, running my hands through my hair, pulling at the tangles.
When I’d arrived on Daskquah my hair had brushed my collarbones with brittle ends.
But after consistent, nutritious meals my hair had grown until it brushed the middle of my back.
Recently I’d even seen some of my mother’s waves appear in it.
Lunastra tilted her head, some of her white hair falling from the messy pile. “I didn’t see you at dinner.”
I nodded, fingers spreading out across the skin of my thighs—the peachiness of my coloring a contrast to the pale green veins spiderwebbing beneath, though I knew some paid extra for an hour with a yeska from my planet.
Not that we had any here; I was the only Selhveniain on the ship.
My stomach twisted at the thought. In fact, it was the reason why I hadn’t been at dinner.
One of the male guests who’d spent most of the night watching me had the same peachy complexion, the same waving red hair. Once I’d noticed him, I’d almost fallen, catching myself at the last moment and burning my wrist.
I hadn’t wanted to face the others or acknowledge the slip I’d made. So instead of going to dinner I’d packed each emotion down, hiding it behind the layers of silks and scar tissue in my mind until I couldn’t find it anymore.
“That male tonight was from your planet,” Lunastra continued.
I froze, knowing better than to think he’d been from my home tree. No, he was merely one of the lucky ones who had not lived in one of the raided villages. But I looked at her all the same, schooling my features into the mask I’d learned to create in the first few cycles on Ebyd III.
Cautiously, she made her way across the room, her body like the waves of the silks hanging from the center of the ceiling. It was quiet for a long time, save for the hum of the cooling unit, and I realized Lunastra was staring at the brand on the inside of my bicep.
The same brand she wore on hers.
“They told me you did not make a sound that day. Most do.”
Frowning, I turned out my arm to look at the pale scar.
It looked a bit like an eye with its perfect circle and starburst center.
The points of the star represented twelve of the thirteen Class One planets that ruled our galaxy and the circle for Seyf V’ah, our galaxy’s capital.
I had a second brand on the nape of my neck with a series of symbols running down my spine delineating my home planet, my date of birth, and who my owner was—the Galactic Federation of Intelligence.
The brand wasn’t pleasant. Then again, the press of a soldering gun to your skin never was.
I’d been a child when the first one had been burned into my flesh and I’d screamed until blood bloomed in the corners of my eyes.
Since that day I’d learned through years of torture and starvation that pain was merely another piece of your mind you could quiet.
I did it every single day.
“He told me there is almost nothing left of your people. That the entire planet was razed and most survivors now live in safehouses or outposts around the galaxy.”
The mistress clicked her tongue, claw-like nails clicking against the ornate steel frame of the bed.
I could only blink at her, this pain, too, stowed away deep in my heart.
The only time I found it again was the moment between dreams and waking.
Even the sight of another being from my home planet could not truly touch the longing and heartache that festered, infected and oozing, just beneath my skin.
“You’ve made back our investment.”
I turned to look at her so fast a slice of pain pulsed through my neck.
Maker knew I’d been waiting for this moment, though I didn’t know what would happen now it had arrived.
Making back the house’s investment didn’t mean I was free, it only meant I would begin to accrue a small amount of credits, though I had no idea what I would ever use them on.
Lunastra herself, though mistress of Daskquah with all her privileges, was a yeska the same as I.
“So…what is it you want, Juniper?”
I could not ask for my freedom. To be honest, I was unsure what I would do with it.
There was no home to return to, no family to reunite with.
But I saw the image of the male from my nightmares again, burned behind my lids.
He was there any time I closed my eyes, his wide shoulders surrounded by flames, pointing to the home tree only feet from where I crouched hidden.
Heat that had nothing to do with desire pulsed through the crooks of my arms, the back of my neck, and I exhaled.
“I want to make them pay.”
Lunastra did not ask who I meant, only nodded before leaning forward and brushing her lips against my cheek while she rose from the bed.
She strode with easy grace toward the door, pressing two fingers to the indent so it hissed open.
The light from the hall illuminated her silhouette as she turned to look back at me.
“Then that is exactly what you will do, dearest.”