Taken to Lemora by Elizabeth Stephens

2

Essmira

My fingers are shaky and my heart is slamming against my chest. I’m sweating uncontrollably and a female never sweats.

Females don’t sweat, or shake or slam — bannnng. That’s the sound of my hand connecting with the latch on the window frame. Females don’t slam, but I’m slamming now.

I thought…I thought I could do this. I’ve been training for this my whole life. Igmora showed me pictures of every manner of being over the rotations and my body was prepared to accommodate them. I thought my mind was too, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.

The Egama was so much taller than I thought he’d be. He was terrifying and worse, Igmora let him touch me despite Tyto’s protests and the Egama’s grip was rough, cruelly so. I know that Igmora isn’t my mother and I know that Tyto isn’t my father — they’ve made that exceptionally clear my entire life to this point — but I still mistakenly thought that they’d want to protect me better than this.

Tyto especially. I haven’t forgotten what he whispered in my ear when we disembarked. He told me I shouldn’t worry. That no male here would be able to match the price Igmora wants for me. He told me that soon, I’d be back in the safety of his nest, though I didn’t understand why he used the word back considering that Igmora had never let him take me there before. I asked him and he told me that soon, what Igmora thought wouldn’t matter at all. Then, he touched my back, touched my neck in ways that Igmora discouraged — that they’d fought over…

“Tyto, with your claws and your barbed tail, you’ll ruin the merchandise. She isn’t meant for you.”

This time though, she was too distracted to see it, already working her schemes to give me to the one male she said she’d planned for me all along and, in her absence, Tyto let his forked tongue trace my shoulder up to my ear. He shuddered and let his wandering claws cup my rear through my dress and I let him because I thought that it would be the last time and that my new master would treat me at least decently and that he would take me away from Tyto and his frightening stare and, more importantly, away from a life of captivity.

But then Igmora introduced the potential masters, with their wandering hands and violent eyes.

The only other bidders that offered enough to compete with the Egama were a clan of Oosa and, seeing them in the flesh, I’m revolted by the idea of letting their slippery blue skin enter me in between my legs — perhaps even more revolted than at the thought of spending a lifetime in Tyto’s nest, though I’m not fully sure yet.

The Oosas’ collective touch might not have been hard, but it was no less cruel than the Egama warlord’s. They touched everywhere, caring nothing for communication between us. Between themselves, the bright lights that illuminate their translucent bodies is communication enough. But my physiology doesn’t allow for that. Perhaps if there were some sort of translator…

“Oh! What are you saying?” I whisper out loud to myself in Lemoran, the language I’ve come to speak best over the rotations. “That you’d like to bed an Oosa? Nob, you wouldn’t. They’re slimy and wet and Igmora said…” I wince dramatically, like I’ve been hit. It sort of feels like I have been.

Igmora made promises, showing me pictures of males with warriors’ builds, bulky arms and massive legs, horns shooting up into the sky in defiance of the stars, and rough, gruff faces built to intimidate, more than charm. I’d liked the look of those males, the Lemoran ones in particular. Perhaps, only because I’d been trained to, but I can’t deny the arousal I feel at the sight of their images.

But I was also trained to like the Egama…Niahhorru, too, and so far, my reality was all tentacles and gelatin, eyes as big as my torso, fins in alarming colors…mouths without tongues or teeth or worse, mouths with too many tongues and teeth…

I shudder and beat my hand harder against the window. “This isn’t working.”

I quickly turn around and find a hideous statue on top of a monstrously decorated table. The statue is of a Quadrant One prince and was cast in a most unusual and, um, flattering way. The little prince’s cock is as long as his two legs.

“Even this prince would have been better than the males who came to view me,” I snort — an unattractive sound Igmora didn’t manage to train out of me. All she did manage to instill in me was, at the involuntary sound, an immediate sense of shame to follow it.

I wince again and try to refocus. I lift the gold statue of the boy with limbs like mine and the same amount of eyes and teeth and ears, but skin that’s colored in gold and hair that’s every color found under this planet’s three suns. I’d have been fine with a golden rainbow for a mate so long as his voice was a little kind and his touch was a little gentle.

“Essmira, you don’t have time for this!” I can hear footsteps in the hall — either real or imagined, they’re terrifying. The latch on the golden window won’t come loose, so I focus on the glass and crack the prince’s golden head against it. A splinter appears in the bright pink glass and then shivers outward, like a spiderweb. I thump the statue against it again. My arm is shaking. The back of my neck is covered in sweat. What will Tyto do when he finds me? Tyto with his reptilian skin and barbed tail. He’s used that tail on me more than once, against Igmora’s wishes even, and it hurt badly every time. He wants me to run, just so Igmora will give me up to him and so that he can spend his lifetime punishing me…

“No. Don’t think like that. If…if he finds you. And he won’t. You can’t be found if you escape. I mean, when…when…” I snort again as my panic builds. My arm gets jerky but, as I bring the statue against the window pane a fourth time, it shatters.

I return the statue to its proper place on the hideous table, then grab the ottoman beside it and drag it below the window. I lift my heavy skirt and step up onto the thing, which is a little alarming because it’s green and very furry and possibly alive. It rolls beneath me and I squeal, my hands reaching out to catch hold of something to keep myself upright. The first thing in my vicinity? The jagged window. I grab onto it and pain lances my palm immediately.

Nob. Nob nob nobnobnobnobnobnob. What have I done?

I stare down at the blood on my hands and the cuts slashing horizontally across them. “Essmira, you have to escape now. You don’t have any other choice. If Igmora sees you like this…if Tyto sees you…” And just as the first breath of fresh air caresses my face and neck, the doorknob behind me twists and the door swings inward and open.

I turn, jaw working, eyes growing wide and round in my face. Nob. Nobnobnobnobnobnobnobnob. “Essmira, this is it,” I snort in terror.

But when my gaze swings around and connects with the being who just stepped into the room, my breath gathers in my stomach like a series of knots I can’t free for an entirely new reason. This being isn’t Igmora or Tyto, but one whose picture Igmora showed me often. This is the Lemoran she said would buy me.

I exhale shakily, suddenly so relieved I could cry, and then I remember that I’m supposed to be making a good impression so that he does actually buy me. If he doesn’t, there’s a possibility I might still be sold to the Egama or the Oosa or maybe a surprise species Igmora’s prepared for me in secret and that’s even more gruesome than the ones who’ve spent the solar pawing at me.

“Calm down, Essmira,” I whisper quietly under my breath. I pray he can’t hear it. I don’t want him to think I do this often, though I do, or that I’m crazy, which…after a lifetime in captivity, I might be.

I stiffen and straighten and carefully fold my fingers over the fresh cuts in my hands and offer him a bow, rather than the Lemoran greeting, which would require me to show him my injured hand. He might not want me if he sees the cut on my hand. Tyto always hated the few times I got scrapes. He liked licking them clean, though.

Hinging at the waist, I bow deeply, but when I try to step one foot in front of the other, the furry thing under my feet decides to keep rolling, this time, straight out from under me. …

I go flying across the furry carpet, landing hard on my right shoulder. My head hits the floor, springing painlessly off of the plush blue and yellow carpet. A strangled grunt hits my ears and I groan instead of reassuring it. A female must always reassure the male, even when he is wrong. It’s very important for his pride and this fragile beast should be protected above all things. It is your duty as his pleasurer to bolster it, even at the expense of your own.

I wonder distantly if this is what Tyto taught Igmora, what Igmora taught Tyto, or what they taught one another. She always seemed like the Alpha between the two of them and if Tyto ever frightened her, she did not let it show.

“I’m fine, truly,” I say, but the breath has been knocked out of me and my heart is hammering in my lungs now, making my words unintelligible. Tears come to my eyes as I fight for my next breath and then gulp it in greedily, making unattractive sounds in the back of my throat.

“Ohr! Stay where you are,” an angry voice grumbles before hands that are just as rough, just as angry as the voice they belong to, fit to my shoulders and pick me up like a grain sack.

Dooth. That’s the sound my feet make when he sets me down and, though the room spins, I force myself to remain upright. A female must always be graceful. It helps reassure the male, providing him with essential comfort. I force a smile. A female must always smile, it…

I open my eyes and have a tough time keeping my smile in place. This male, he is much bigger than he appeared in the holo images Igmora showed me though I doubt, looking at him now, that an image would have ever done him justice.

He carries a history with him written in the rings of his eyes. There are so many of them. White on the outside, like mine, but then black and blue and purple and grey and orange and yellow and pink and in the very center, an iridescent green that flashes blue when the light strikes it.

His eyes are, in a word, beautiful. Even if the rest of him is too rough to use such a descriptor.

He has the same rough skin the Egama have, only his shoulders are blockier, almost stone-like in their roughness. His cheeks are high and his lips are full and a pale brown against his medium-brown skin. He doesn’t seem to have hair anywhere because his pate gleams bald between twin horns that loop so huge past his cheeks and then up above the top of his head that it’s a wonder he can see out of his peripheries.

His chest is even deeper than my shoulders are wide and appears to be completely solid…as solid as stone. I have a hard time processing whether this being before me is truly made out of the same blood and bone I am or if he’s just rock all the way through. I have to fight the urge to lift a hand and touch his arm to see for myself, but then I recognize that the temperature around me has increased with his presence, so I must assume that, if he is stone, it’s at least got a pulse.

I stay my touch and remind myself that even though males like to be touched by females, it should be on the male’s command at the time of their choosing. This is what females do. Females who don’t want to end up on their backs in pleasure houses. If I play my tokens correctly, this male could be the only male I have to pleasure.

And it would not be a tragedy.

So far, he has not touched me inappropriately or done me any harm. He hasn’t even shot me a lascivious leer. He’s just watching me like I’m a…like I’m any other member of the delegation outside, even though these are the Quadrants’ most esteemed leaders and traders and I’m but a thing to be traded.

He looks at me like I’m real.

My cheeks warm at the thought and a sudden burst of nerves wash over me. I could mess this up. He could decide not to bid and I could go home with the Egama, at best, and that’s only if he wants me now that I’ve been so foolish as to cut myself. Males like unblemished females. Your skin should and will be perfect for me. That’s what Tyto always used to tell me though, in Igmora’s presence he’d amend himself to say that I’d need to be perfect for when they sell me.

Pushing thankfully away from thoughts of Tyto, I lift my gaze from his chest, past the worn out collar of his cream-colored tunic with the frayed olive stitching around the neck, up over his chin which is hard and smooth, his mouth, wide-set nose, back up to his eyes. My heart beats faster. His eyes are so pretty. I could pleasure this male, I think quite suddenly. My mouth opens and I realize with horror that my next words are going to be to tell him just that.

I clamp my mouth shut and am aghast when he’s the one to speak first. It is the female’s job to speak first and smooth out the conversation. The male does not need to trouble himself with this.

“Are you hurt?” He speaks to me in Meero, but I can tell it is not his native language. Nob, his native tongue is the same one that was bred into me from the start.

I offer him another deferential bow before making the quick switch into Lemoran. “I am perfectly fine, thank you so much for asking. You’re very kind.”

I stand and meet his gaze and attempt a smile. It’s strange how much more difficult this is out from in front of a mirror. I’ve practiced this smile with a thousand different subtleties — perfected it, even — but faced with his scowl, it’s a little hard to remain confident in it. I’ve practiced that smile, sure, but this is the first time it’s been tested. And I cannot afford to fail now.

He narrows his gaze and takes a half step back. His own gaze wanders over my face, offering no critique or assessment. The other bidders were quite vocal in what they liked about me, but he is…silent. His flinty gaze passes to the window and then drops to the floor, like he’s searching for something.

Evidently unable to find it, his mouth puckers and his forehead wrinkles and his prominent yet hairless brows scrunch together over his nose. “What did you smash the window with?”

He cannot know that I tried to run. A female does not run. Not from Tyto. Not if she fears punishment. “I…” I swallow. A female is always elegant. “Pardon me?”

His scowl becomes more severe — so severe, it’s like he’s trying to squish all of the features of his face into as small an area as possible. It would be funny if his ire weren’t targeted at me because I know that if he chooses to act on it, it is my duty to accept his anger in any and all of its forms.

“What did you use to break the window?” He says again and, when I don’t do anything but stutter foolishly, he prompts, “Was it your hand?”

“Nob, it was the statue.” I indicate with my chin.

He doesn’t look away from my face. “What statue?”

“The one on the lovely little side table just to your right.”

“I don’t see it.”

“But you…” Never contradict the male. He is always correct. I have to fight a frown because Igmora didn’t prepare me for this. My instinct is to disagree with him, because I know he did not look, but I also know that I need to help him along and make the answer to his question quite clear.

I swallow. “Of course. It’s just over here.”

I walk sideways to stand beside the statue so I don’t have to remove my wrists from behind my back where they’re safely hidden away.

His shoulders slump forward. He rubs his face and sighs, as if he’s exasperated with me. Panic surges in my lungs. I almost snort, but manage to disguise it beneath a delicate sneeze. When I look up he grunts, “We both know I don’t give an ohr about the statue. Let me see your hands, female.”

The female must obey the male’s commands. His every command. She must be gracious and do whatever he says. But if I show him my hands, then I’ll…

“Pagh! I don’t have all lunar!” His voice is so loud it booms through the room and through me, like I’m nothing but air.

I jump and quickly hold my fists out in front of me, cautious to only show him the backs of my hands. It has the desired effect because his own fingers halt as they circle my wrists and I hear him suck in a very subtle, yet reverent breath.

“Your markings…” he says softly, his thumb rubbing over the bright red pattern that curls across my dark brown skin. “Tevbarannos didn’t mention markings. You’re not the female he’s looking for.”

“Nob, I’m not,” I say, confirming his words. The kind pirate male had looked so sullen when Igmora had given him a glimpse of me from the door. He hadn’t been allowed to touch, like the others. “He said so himself.”

“Good,” the male grumbles to himself. He makes the word sound like a curse, distracted as he is by the colors clashing over my arms. “That’s good.”

The red skin-toned markings extend over the backs of my palms, circling both arms. On the right side, they slide past my shoulder and unfold over my neck before curling around my right ear. On the left, the markings extend up my arm and spread over my shoulder blade to form one enormous swirl on my back. Though he cannot see them, my breasts are also red and so is my stomach, abdomen and groin. There are also red swirls on both my feet and ankles and my left leg, but strangely none at all on the right one.

Abruptly, he clears his throat and when he speaks again, his interest seemingly evaporates. He’s dispassionate surliness once more. “I haven’t seen your markings before. Are you from Quadrant One?”

My heart summersaults. My stomach dives. My lungs float. He doesn’t know who I am. He isn’t here to buy me at all. I gasp and rip my wrists out of his overwhelming and rough fingers. “Stars!” I stumble back, running into the moving chair and causing it to scurry away from me again.

Because if he isn’t going to be my master, then all of my talk of having one master has flown out of that broken window. Because no one will want me if I’ve been tainted by another male and maintaining my purity is the most important commandment I’ve been given. A female must be untouched, except by her master. If she is, then she will end up on her back with not just one master, but hundreds of them. If I’m tainted, Igmora might just give me to Tyto freely then for him to torture with his pronged tail and his cutting claws before voiding me into space, like trash, as it’s rumored he’s done to other pleasurers before.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” I shout again when he says nothing.

His shoulders jolt, as if stunned. He glances around like he’s confused, then reaches up and touches the base of his left horn in what appears to be an absent gesture. “I thought this was the way out.”

“Nob…nob nob nob…” I’m suddenly furious. So furious that I do the unthinkable. I rush to the small side table, grab the statue and turn… Before I know what’s come over me, I chuck the statue at his head and, in a split instance of pure horror, I realize my aim was true. The gold connects.

The little alien prince’s penis clunks against the center of this mighty male’s forehead before bouncing off and onto the carpet. The huge male canters back a step, like I just blasted him with a cannon instead of a dinky little thing, barely a trinket in his oversized paws.

“Off!” He scoffs, moving the hand on his horn to the space between his eyes, so large and lovely. “What was that for?”

Honestly, it’s a good question. I should be angry that he came in and touched me or that he saw me and that no one is supposed to see me except for the bidders. I should even be angry that he came in and stole precious moments from me that I should have been using to escape. But I’m mostly, irrationally, overwhelmingly angry because in those precious seconds when I thought he was here to purchase me, I felt something I haven’t felt in a very long time. Maybe, even…ever.

I felt hope.

And now, just as quickly, he’s stolen away this shriveled, desiccated dream that he never knew he gave me at all.

“You are not supposed to be here!” I point at him and a droplet of blood slashes from the end of my finger and onto his tunic, making my hand feel like a blade.

“Your ohring hand,” he growls, touching his horn again — nob, grabbing onto it like he’s worried it’ll fly away. Then he reaches up with his other hand and grabs both horns at once. He looks rather…ridiculous like this, but I don’t have the adequate time to appreciate it as I scramble once again for the window. “I told you, you were injured.”

“You didn’t tell me I was injured, I was injured and right now you’re in my way,” I snap. I’ve never snapped at anybody before and my momentary thrill at how good it feels is quickly doused by shame.

I open my mouth to apologize until he grunts, “Your way?”

“Yeffa,” I huff, annoyed all over again. “You’re Lemoran. You’re supposed to be one of the clever ones, but right now you sound about as dense as an Egama.” Wait. Essmira, did you just insult the male?

“I…you…an Egama!” He shouts and suddenly he’s right up against me. I know I should be panicked, but my need to escape is too large and unwieldy to fear being alone in a room with a male who has no intention of purchasing me and, evidently, too great to stop me from insulting him.

“I’m clearly trying to escape, now would you hand me that fuzzy chair over there so I can reach the window?” I reach for the shattered frame again, not caring about the jagged edges, but he snatches my wrist from the air.

“You cut your hands the first time and now you’re trying again and you have the gall to call me an Egama?”

I try to yank my arm away from him, but the point is futile. He could have broken every bone in my body with likely very little effort on his part, but I couldn’t really care less at the moment. I shove his chest with my other hand, smearing my own bright red blood across his no longer pristine tunic. How many zaps of electricity would this have won me from Tyto’s eager claws? Many. Hundreds, spaced out over solars.

I nearly scream, “Don’t you see I’m trying to escape?”

His lips mouth the word escape as his eyes dart from my hands to the window back to my hands back to the window before finally dropping to my face. He gasps — gasps — and suddenly staggers away from me, dropping my arm like it’s a rotten log teeming with flesh-burrowing insects.

“Ohr!” He hisses. He grabs onto his left horn again, only this time, when my gaze follows, his hand twitches and his face does this horrible twisting thing, like he’s in a world of pain.

I jolt, startled by such a sight and the training beaten into me from birth kicks in. “Are you alright?” I reach for him, intending to soothe, only to be arrested by the soft clearing of a throat on the other side of the room.

I glance up and all the blood drains out of my body. My soul abandons my bones and floats up and out through that jagged patch of window. Bye bye. The dark hole where I’m going, I won’t need it anyway. Standing in the open doorway is Igmora.

She steps forward and I know her black eyes well enough by now to sense that she’s neither surprised nor horrified though she appears to be both. On the contrary, the false breathiness to her voice is well rehearsed and the outrage she levels towards me is something completely contrived. No one else can see it though. And my concern isn’t for Igmora anyway, but for Tyto, an Egama giant, and the Oosa delegation crowding the space behind her.

Tyto’s tail slashes behind him furiously, but I can see the bright excitement in his yellow gaze when our eyes lock. He licks his lips and my stomach clenches. I know what’s in store for me now. Pleasure houses would be a gift at this stage.

Tyto’s slitted yellow gaze drops to my hands and he sees the blood and he looks up and over my head and he sees the window and he knows. And in his eyes I conjure my own afterlife because I’m sure it will be preferable to his punishment. And he knows it. He smiles to show all of his fanged teeth. He brushes his clawed hand back through his black, waist-length hair. He knows he’ll get to exact punishment. And he knows how I fear him and revels in it.

Immediately, I move to the center of the room and drop to my knees, palms upturned on the tops of my thighs. I bow my head and steady my breath and wait…

The Oosa are the first to start trilling wildly, but closely on their tails, the Egama bellows out a battle cry. Tyto says nothing while Igmora whistles her outrage in a voice that’s as fake as it is falsetto. She charges into the room and points at the male who’d ruined all my plans and chased all my dreams out of that window into the starlight.

“Raingar, you have no right to be in here. And look what you’ve done. You’ve damaged her hands. I assure you,” she says to the Egama and the Oosa behind her, “that this is a superficial wound easily healed. It will not in any way affect her purchase price. We will continue the bidding at nine tuns of kintarr for the female…

“Centare, centare, of course she was not taken by the Lemoran chieftan here. He told me expressly he had no desire to peddle in flesh.” Peddle in flesh. Is that what we’re doing? Is that what I am? Not a being? Just flesh? A soulless thing?

“He is not a part of the bidding. The bidding remains to you, Ooran. Will you outbid the Egama’s nine tuns or will you yield to him?”

“Whatever he bids, I will outbid!” The sturdy voice of the Egama rattles into the room filling it like a gas. One with a low temperature of combustion. Energy sizzles through the space, crackling and popping dangerously. My bloody hands are wetting the fabric of my dark purple dress. Igmora says that indigo brings out unearthly hues in my brown skin and makes my curly raven hair shine like water.

The Oosa trill as they counter, but the Egama is paying them no attention. Instead, he points somewhere to my right, towards the gaping window and the Lemoran who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“But first…” The Egama ducks low in order to enter the room and I pity the Lemoran male, fear for him even, as the Egama takes a step towards him and threatens menacingly , “I cannot let this slight go unpunished.”

Every cell in my body tenses. Every nerve dies. I feel like running out of the room screaming my head off as if I were on fire.

And then two fingers tap down on my shoulder stiffly. I jolt and look up, but the Lemoran — what did she call him? Rain…something — isn’t looking at me. His jaw is clenched and when he brushes his hand over his horn once again, a little bit of black flakes off onto me. I wonder what color is underneath…

Distracted, I’m boneless when he lifts me underneath the arms so high that my feet clear the floor up until he sets me back down again on the far side of the room between the wall colored in crude murals of princes and princesses fornicating and the frightening green chair that may or may not be a sentient being.

He positions himself directly in front of me, blocking my view of the Egama and Igmora but not of Tyto whose reptilian face remains stoic and stony and terrifying as he watches me. And I’m so distracted by the slight and unexpected twitch of Tyto’s upper lip that I don’t fully register the war brewing mere paces away until the Egama releases a battlecry that I’m certain can be heard from three stars away.

The giant drops his shoulders and charges across the floor straight towards me.

I don’t scream. A female does not scream. A female hardly ever makes a sound. I just cover my head and brace for impact…but the impact is not with me. The impact is with the Lemoran male charging across the furry carpet to meet the Egama. The scowling, irritable and frankly goofy male that just told me he was looking for the exit charges for the Egama, looking every inch, deadly.

The two beings collide in the center of the room and the impact literally makes the entire room shake. The painted walls reach up to a high ceiling where chandeliers made of crystal crack and break. Falling stone hits the carpet in beautiful explosions of pink and yellow powders. A huge statue of a princess standing upright against the wall behind Igmora topples over. Igmora screams wildly and pretends to faint.

Tyto blocks the entrance, preventing the Oosa from entering. I’m grateful for it. Without his intervention, this fight might have become a dozen times more deadly. Meanwhile, the Egama is relying on brute strength. He hits the Lemoran in the stomach and the Lemoran flies into the wall beside the broken window. I clap both hands over my mouth to cage my terrified cry.

The Lemoran growls as he hits the floor, landing in a crouch before barreling forward with his chin tucked. The Egama reaches to grab him but the Lemoran grabs the Egama first. Wrenching down on his arms, bringing the Egama even closer to him, the Lemoran scores his opponent’s chest with one upward strike of his horns.

The Egama’s olive blood sprays over the Lemoran, turning his once pristine-turned-red tunic forest green now. The Lemoran fires another punch, hitting the Egama in the jaw, which the Egama returns with even more power. Luckily, the Lemoran does, indeed, appear to be made of rock because if he hadn’t been, his face would have shattered on impact, I’m sure of it.

The two are more evenly matched than I thought they would be…until the Egama manages to wrestle the Lemoran down to the awful carpet. I start to panic, my breath coming in shallow bursts. I know that a female should stay out of the affairs of males, but I can’t watch one being kill another one in front of my eyes because of me — not without at least trying to do something.

I try to stand, but my legs don’t work, so I shout where I’m seated, “Please stop!”

They can’t hear me, but across the room Igmora can. She’s smiling ear-to-ear. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so pleased about anything.

“Please.” I’m begging her now.

The Egama has the Lemoran in a headlock — an unfortunate place for the Egama because the Lemoran jerks his head back, spearing the Egama across the forehead and nearly taking out his left eye. The Egama is forced to release him and both males scramble to their feet, nursing their wounds, but still determined to square off against one another — at least, until Igmora finally steps between them and holds up both hands. Her expression has shifted again. She looks petrified. Her long eyelashes are fluttering. Her hand is even shaking in what should be an involuntary reaction.

“Please…please stop this senseless violence. This is enough. We will need to conclude these negotiations immediately. I say that my prized daughter — ” daughter? Daughter! Ha! “ — will go to the Egama for the sum of nine tuns of kintar…”

“WAIT!” The force of the roar is so loud more chandeliers take flight and explode around his feet in a symphony of color. The Lemoran is, remarkably, on his feet and the goofy expression he once wore is gone. His teeth are clenched and he’s seething.

He chokes, “Wait.” His heavy breathing and the Egama’s heavy breathing are the only sounds in the room for the next moment. The next ten moments. The next eternity.

The Egama puffs out his chest, pounding on it with one fist to finally break the excruciating silence that weighs more than stormy waters right before the inundation. “There is no reason to wait. I’ve won her. I will claim my…”

“Pagh!” The Lemoran shifts when the Egama takes a half step towards me, the movement so subtle it would have been easy to miss. To me, it’s clear. He’s moving to intercept the Egama. A small, daring hope swells in my chest, in place of that shriveled, desiccated thing, because if I didn’t know any better, I might think that the Lemoran is still trying to protect me.

The Lemoran holds up one hand towards the Egama. With his other, he points at Igmora. “You are clever,” is all he says to her.

Her expression softens, becoming more true. That truth is a lie in itself though. There is nothing to her beneath the exterior. Her heart is locked away in a box buried beneath layers of greed so deep, she no longer remembers that she ever had one. All that’s left is a cobweb-covered shovel and a useless key that now pertains to nothing.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says, knowing exactly what he means. She always knows what others mean. Always.

“I don’t negotiate,” the Lemoran tells her, and his voice sounds strained.

She tilts her head forward and, as the Egama starts to speak, she makes a sound, a little tsst, and then she waves him away. With no great ceremony, she dismisses him. “What does this mean?” The Egama shouts, taking a step towards her.

Her gaze moves to his and she says nothing. She doesn’t need to say anything.

The Egama roars, “You tell me that she is mine and now you take it back? Centare! I want to negotiate!”

She gives him a look that’s as cool as death and whispers, “This Lemoran does not negotiate. So negotiations are over.”

“Augh!” The Egama rages, smashing everything in his path on his way to the door before smashing that, too.

Meanwhile, the Lemoran says, “Go get the other clan chiefs. I need to speak with them.”

Igmora nods at the Lemoran and I feel understanding flit away from my thoughts, like dust in a storm. Igmora doesn’t take orders. Despite what she tells me, Igmora does not bend to the wills of any male. Not even Tyto. But now, she looks to Tyto and a tense, yet wordless communication passes between them very briefly before he turns, dismisses the Oosa and makes his way down the hall away from us.

The Lemoran looks over his shoulder at me. Well, he turns so that I can see his profile, but he only looks at me quickly before diverting his gaze back to the floor. “Are you okay?”

Nob. Absolutely not. Essmira is not freaking oh… “Yeffa, of course. You fought…admirably?”

He scowls again, face twisting up before he stomps towards Igmora and points at the door. “Hall,” he orders her. Nobody ever orders Igmora, but he does and she obeys and she smiles as she does. He follows her and they keep the door open. Still, through the stone wall, it’s difficult to hear what they say, especially when so little is said between them.

Maybe nothing at all.

Sometime later, new voices pop up. They sound…authoritative. They also sound…worried. I hear gasps — likely at the sight of the Lemoran, if I had to guess — and shouts — likely at Igmora, if I had to hope — before soft murmuring picks up and then Igmora’s voice generously coos, “Excellent doing business with you.”

I hear the cold click of her shoes on the stone floor, not coming closer but receding. Instead, the footsteps that come closer are heavy. With each one, I give a little jolt, remembering the Lemoran and trying to hold onto the somewhat goofy expressions he made, and not onto the very recent knowledge of his capacity for violence.

“You’re alright, Essmira. You’re alright. Still in one piece. Still alive to fight another solar…” Only the words die on my lips when I catch sight of the body in the doorway. It isn’t the Lemoran, but a Lemoran — a female. And she’s huge, almost as big as the male. She comes into the room and looks around, not seeing me at first.

Then, when she does see me, she gives me a bright smile and a tight little Lemoran wave — reaching up and catching the air with all five fingers before lowering her hand. I’m shaking but, with my bloody hand, I still manage to return the greeting.

She arrives directly in front of the green chair I’m hidden behind, glancing between me and it several times. “So um…” She scratches her head. Like the male, she also has no hair, but her lips are larger and so are her eyes, giving her a more feminine appearance, to me. Over her shoulder, she shouts, “You said the green furry thing, Raingar?”

Raingar. His name is Raingar. I mustn’t forget. The thought makes me snort. Forget? How could I ever forget a moment of this? I’ve never seen violence before. Against me at Tyto’s bloody hands, yeffa, but never between two males carved of stone. Never at this scale.

“Yeffa,” comes the male’s — Raingar’s — grunted response from the hallway.

She scratches her head for another moment, then shrugs, gives me another little wave and bends down to scoop up the chair just as it starts rolling away from her. Tossing it over her shoulder, she walks back the way she came and out into the hall.

“Well, here you…” I hear her say, but she’s cut off when Raingar’s burning, booming rage explodes through the world, the blast radius significant enough to shake me and make bumps break out over my skin everywhere. On the far side of the room, another smaller chandelier falls.

“I said behind the green chair! Not the green chair!” Another block of crystal falls from the ceiling and explodes in green magnificence. Like the center of Raingar’s eyes, they’re just that color. But perhaps those eyes were a deception. Perhaps, he cannot be trusted. Perhaps, my instincts made a mistake. I glance again to the window, dreaming of escape, but my limbs are locked in place and I’m shaking. When did I start shaking and why can’t I stop? Why can’t I move?

“You said the green chair…”

“YOU THINK I PAID FOURTEEN TUNS FOR A GREEN CHAIR!”

“Hey, you didn’t pay anything, so quit your yapping,” comes another voice, a softer one. Then laughter. More of it. It ripples through everything.

The female returns and sets the green chair down, giving it a soft pat that it seems to like because instead of scuttling away from her, it follows her towards me. I shudder, completely creeped out by it and because I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, I close my eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay. Are you hurt…”

“Hurt? She’s hurt?” Raingar’s voice is tinted with a touch of madness. He sounds farther away from the female directly in front of me, but not by much. And then by nothing.

I look up as he pushes her aside quite roughly and takes off his tunic. He crouches in front of me and hands me the balled up fabric. “For your hands,” he says, though he looks like he needs it much more than I do. He’s got blood all over him but…nothing swollen, nothing broken. And most of the blood doesn’t appear to be his, unless he bleeds green, too.

“Raingar,” comes the female’s droll, “you want her to use a bib you wiped Egama blood up with to clean her open wounds? Give me a break.”

“Pagh!” He grunts, snatching the shirt away from me and tossing it onto the floor. “Give me your shirt, Reyna.”

The female called Reyna opens her mouth like she’ll protest, but instead, sighs and rolls her eyes. She reaches for her tunic’s hem and whips it over her head before my mind catches up to my mouth. “Oh nob, please don’t. You don’t need to trouble yourself…”

She just smiles down at me and rubs her hand over her bare stomach. It’s ribbed, like the male’s, full of muscles that make me feel much softer than I did before looking at her. Her breasts are also high and firm and lack nipples. Unusual, but…I have no but, really. She’s just different from me. No less interesting. No less wonderful.

“We just paid two rotations’ worth of kintarr for you, heelee,” she says with a smile so I know she means heelee as a term of affection and not as the bug that it is in reality. “We’ve got a vested interest in getting you back to Lemora in one piece.” She winks and tosses her shirt down to me. “Staunch those cuts and we’ll get them cleaned up on the ship.”

Disbelief rolls into pure excitement dashed with a heavy dose of fear and an even weightier dose of exhaustion. “I…” My voice cracks and I flush, ashamed. A female is always eloquent, even when she’s in pain. “I’m going with you all?

“You,” I say, directing my stare to the male crouched at my feet scowling around at everything. Only…he isn’t scowling right now. Right now he’s looking at me like he’s a little unsure. Maybe even terrified. Oh nob. Perhaps he’s regretting his purchase. Can he return me? I pray to the suns that he can’t return me…

“You paid for me?” I ask him. I lick my lips and his gaze drops to my mouth before he grunts noncommittally.

It’s the female, however, who says, “Nob. Raingar didn’t pay for you. We did.”

I don’t understand. “We?”

She gestures over her shoulder where three other Lemoran females stand in the center of the room. I hadn’t heard them enter. They all wear smiles, ranging from stoic to excited to incredulous.

“We,” the stoic female answers. I notice that, unlike all the other Lemoran in the room who sport grey horns, the color of charcoal, her horns are ivory. “We all contributed. All of us except for Raingar.”

I don’t understand. “But…” Eloquence! Eloquence! I clear my throat as daintily as I can. “If you all contributed, then who will be my master? Who will I serve?”

Raingar visibly winces at that. I didn’t see him flinch half so hard when he had the full weight of an Egama giant barreling towards him.

It’s the one who gave me her shirt, Reyna, who says, “You won’t have a master. You won’t serve anyone.”

I won’t serve anybody… “But if I don’t serve anyone, then who will I be?” I meant to say what, not who, but the word just slips out and, judging by the look that the females share at my expense, it embarrasses all of us equally. A female who brings shame onto herself is meant for the pleasure houses. A female who brings shame onto her master is not even meant for that.

“Forgive me. What I meant to say was…”

“Who? Did you just say who?” Raingar growls, pulling my attention back to him.

My jaw snaps shut, teeth clacking together. I shake my head. He looks furious at my question, so I quickly open my mouth to retract it further but the female who gave me her tunic lowers her hand to my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll find you a role in the clans you’ll be happy with. In the meantime, just focus on serving yourself and being you.”

“Oh. Oh yeffa. Thank you,” I say aloud though I don’t really mean it. The thought of this thing — this unknown role — I’m meant to be stepping into, or perhaps letting go of, is daunting. I don’t even really understand what she’s asking of me, but I don’t resist — a female never resists — and let the female help me to my feet and guide me out into the hall and eventually, onto a ship.

It’s translucent, the Lemoran ship, tinted purple and blue, green in some places, pink in others. That’s all I notice. I’m in a daze, not thinking about anything but the order I’ve been given. The only one I was never trained for.

As I step to the back of the ship and watch the females take their places at the controls, a strong and sudden fear shoots through my toes, making me wonder why they purchased me at all if they don’t intend to use me as I was trained my entire life to be used.

Is there something worse than being a pleasure female to an Oosa colony or an Egama horde? These Lemoran seem nice, kind…well, except for the male. He doesn’t seem to like me at all, which is at odds with the vision I keep close to my heart of him stepping in between me and the Egama warlord. Maybe he isn’t cordial, but that act was a kindness in itself. He also seemed to have brokered the deal with Igmora — stars, if I understand how when all he told her was that he did not negotiate — but then he didn’t make the purchase himself.

They must want me for something truly nefarious. I shudder as I glance around. Unwilling to take one of the empty seats in the center of the transporter, I sit down on the floor against the far wall and take deep breaths, trying to cool and calm my mind.

It doesn’t help because all my thoughts scatter when the doors close and we take off of this planet — only the second place I’ve ever been outside of the fort Igmora and Tyto hold on Eshmir, the reavers’ trading planet. We rise up into the stars and I would ordinarily look up and out of the window, focusing on them and the beauty they bring, but I can’t. Because the male who likes me enough to defend me, or maybe doesn’t like me at all, takes up position to my left and proceeds to stare at me with such intensity it makes my stomach churn and every word I thought to say to break this awful tension dies in my stomach before ever even reaching my lips.

I can do this. I have not forgotten Tyto so quickly. I know how to respond during punishment, and that must be what this is because that’s what it feels like — his gaze cutting into me harder than any whip.

The idea that this is punishment makes me feel…better. I almost relax. I might have…if one of the females hadn’t chosen that moment to get up from the controls and approach me. “Hi, I’m Bebette.” She moves the bulky item in her grip up and down. A healing torch. That’s what it is. I’ve seen one before just like it many times. “Now why don’t you let me take a look at those hands.”

I glance down and see red that I don’t understand.

I look up and see a smile that I understand even less.

I glance to the grumpy brute, glaring at me and only me and entirely ignoring Bebette and I realize that I am quite close to losing my grip on the shores of reality and these kind, or perhaps very frightening creatures, are going to watch me drown. I was taught to swim, but without the anchor of being a pleasure female, I’ve entirely forgotten how.