She just kept staring at him. Then she gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Relief flooded him.Smart, smart, Doc. God, he loved that intelligence of hers.
As the slavers started moving out, Eos struggled again. “Don’t let them take me. Don’t take me!”
Her performance was a little too good for Dathan. He sucked in a harsh breath. Their echoing footsteps were like drums thumping in his ears. He stared at the cross-hatch pattern on the floor, trying to find some control. Eos yelled some inventive profanities, and the sounds of her struggles made him slam his knuckles into the hard metal.
Then there was only silence.
Except for his father’s voice in his head calling him a useless failure.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Naked and shivering, Eos couldn’t see anything but darkness.
The past few hours had been a nightmare. She’d been blindfolded and stripped of her clothes. When she’d continued to struggle—and after she’d taken a good chunk out of one guard’s arm with her teeth—they’d shackled her.
She shifted and her chains rattled. How long had it been since they’d landed on Lucifa? An hour? Two? Who knew?
She shivered again and rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. A wave of embarrassment washed through her. The women who’d stripped her hadoohedandahhedover her mehndi. Like she was the star of some space fair freak show. They’d put makeup on her, brushed her hair out, and rubbed fragrant oil into her skin.
She rubbed at her mehndi on her wrists. She was in a building in the depths of the city that covered the small planet’s surface. She smelled something that reminded her of incense and music played in the background—a discordant clash of sounds and instruments that was foreign compared to the gentle strumming of the Vedian sitari.
Slave owners must like headache-inducing music.Suva. She pressed a hand to the base of her throat, felt the wild fluttering of her pulse.Think of something else.
Dathan.
Anger was much better than fear. It poured into her in a hot rush. He should have been better prepared for something like this, or at least fought the slavers. Nope. Instead, his half-assed plan was to let her get taken and save himself.
Was he coming for her? She swallowed. Could he even find her? A door opened and Eos stilled. Damn, she wished she could see.
“Hmm, my girls were right. You are unique.”
A cultured feminine voice. Eos had heard many accents over her years of travel. This woman sounded experienced and in control, and there was a hint of the central planets in her voice. What the hell was she doing out here?
Eos sensed the woman circling her. Heat burned her cheeks. She was being studied like prize livestock in the Galactic Trade Guild yards.
“These markings are stunning. Vedian, right?”
Eos remained silent.
“It doesn’t matter.” Amusement was ripe in the woman’s tone. “They’ll increase your price at auction, which is all I’m interested in.”
A hand slipped off Eos’ blindfold.
She blinked at the gentle lamplight. Her gaze focused on the woman in front of her. Hair colored a dark brown was piled artfully on her head. She wore a printed silk gown that clung to generous breasts and fell to the floor like a fluid waterfall of blue. Eos suspected the woman was older than her, and she’d clearly spent a small fortune on treatments to keep the lines from her face, and her figure plump and curvy.
Her faded blue eyes gave away her age. She’d seen far more than any person should have to and it had left scars.
“Who are you?” Eos asked.
The woman lifted one painted brow. “Does it really matter?”
“I want to know who the hell is selling me off.”
The woman pulled a slim metal case from a billowy side pocket of her gown. She slipped a long, thin cigarette from it. A pastime that had gone out of fashion years ago. One of the muscled guards at the door stepped forward to light it. She puffed in silence for a few seconds and blew a cloud of chemically enhanced smoke toward the painted ceiling. “You can call me the Countess.”
“I’m an astro-archeologist with the Institute of Hist?—”
