Sometimes, I try to remember my mother’s voice.
Not the way she screamed when they came—when the gang stormed our compound, rifles up, masks down—but before that. Soft and warm. Like sunlight through linen.
She used to hum while she worked. I think it was a song from Earth. Something old. Something sad.
I hum it sometimes under my breath, when no one’s around. Just to remind myself I’m not from here. That I came from something better, even if it didn’t last.
They died fast. I think. That’s what I hope. Father went first—shot trying to reach for his sidearm. Mother didn’t run. She held onto me like she could still protect me. She couldn’t.
I was eight. Small. Breakable. Perfect cargo for the black market.
Petru didn’t find me. He bought me.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s worse.
I think about them most before nights like this. Nights where I have to dress up like a doll and smile like my bones aren’t splintered under silk. I imagine my parents watching. I wonder if they’d recognize me.
I hope they wouldn’t.
Because this version of me? She’s not theirs.
She belongs to the Bleached Skull.
The knock isn’t loud. That’s how I know it’s bad.
Soft knocks mean orders. Sharp knocks mean punishment. But this—this half-hearted, ghost-knuckle tap? That’s what they do when they’re about to ruin you and want you calm about it.
Silpha walks in before I answer. Of course.
Her mouth is pinched, like always, like it hurts her to speak to me.
“You’re wanted,” she says flatly, tossing a thin bundle of silver fabric onto the cot.
My fingers twitch at the sight of it.
The silver dress.
I stand slowly. “What for?”
She looks at me, expression carefully blank. “Petru’s got a guest. High-priority.”
I feel my chest tighten. It’s not new, this feeling. That clench of dread right under my ribs. I’ve worn that dress four times. Always for show. Always to be paraded like some kind of alien collectible, never touched, never spoken to except in third-person.
But this time… something’s off.
Silpha shifts like she’s waiting for me to break. I don’t give her the satisfaction.
“Is it a party?”
She pauses. “You’ll be… entertaining him privately.”
The words don’t hit all at once. They slither in. Slow and cold.
I sit down hard on the cot.
Silpha turns to go, maybe to avoid watching whatever my face is doing.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
