This auction—The Companion Exchange, they call it, like we're books being traded at a library—maintains a veneer of sophistication.
Of class, as if you can put class on slavery.
The fabric is expensive.
I can tell by the weight of it, the way it drapes.
Silk, probably.
Real silk, not the synthetic kind.
At the Sanctuary, we wore cotton.
Plain, modest cotton in grays and browns.
Anything else was vanity, and vanity was sin.
But this?
This dress that costs more than most families spend on groceries in a year, worn specifically to make me appealing to men with enough money to buy human beings?
This isn't vanity. This is packaging.
"Perfect." Margaret circles me like I'm livestock at a county fair. Which, I suppose, I am. "The buyers will love you."
My stomach turns.
The buyers.
As in plural.
As in multiple men who will stand in a room tonight and shout numbers at each other, bidding on the right to own me for a year.
Maybe longer.
The contract they made me sign—the one I had to agree to or go back to the warehouse where Sarah's men would put me to work in ways that make this seem merciful—was vague about duration.
Employment contract,it said.Exclusive companion services. Room and board provided. Termination clause subject to financial penalty.
Legal terms for a transaction that shouldn't be legal at all.
The financial penalty, I learned when I actually read the fine print Margaret assumed I couldn't understand, was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The cost of breaking the contract.
The cost of freedom.
I don't have two hundred and fifty dollars, let alone two hundred and fifty thousand.
"Come," Margaret says, gesturing toward the door. "It's almost time."
I don't move. I can't.
My feet have grown roots into the plush carpet of this windowless room in this mansion on an island I can't escape from.
Outside this door are seven other girls—women—who've been prepared just like me.
I met them briefly this morning.
