Hours crawled by in that festering darkness. My throat burned with thirst, tongue swollen and dry. The old woman had fallen silent, though her ragged breathing told me she still lived. Others weren't so fortunate—I'd heard at least two death rattles echo through the bay, followed by the sound of bodies being dragged away.
The door's pneumatic seal broke with a sharp hiss. Light speared through the darkness, and I squinted against the sudden brightness. The merchant's silhouette filled the doorway, his bulk blocking most of the corridor's illumination.
"You incompetent shit-brained waste of oxygen!" His voice boomed through the bay, causing several prisoners to whimper. "I gave you one simple instruction—ONE!"
The scarred man stumbled backward as the merchant's meaty fist connected with his jaw. "Sir, you said bay seven—"
"I said prepare bay seven for the regulars, and keep the Ashworth girl in holding room three!" Spittle flew from the merchant's lips. "Do you have any idea what she's worth? What the Crown Prince will do to us if she arrives damaged or diseased from being kept with this filth?"
Crown Prince. The title sent ice through my veins. Not just any buyer from the Golden Tribe—their heir apparent.
The merchant's eyes found mine through the bars, small and piggish in his bloated face. "Get her out. Now. And if I find so much as a flea on her from this cesspool, I'll space you myself."
Two men rushed forward, lifting my cage between them. As we passed, the merchant grabbed the scarred man's throat. "She's worth more than your life a thousand times over. The Crown Prince specifically requested crimson hair. Natural crimson. Do you know how rare that is?"
My cage swayed as the men carried me back through the narrow corridors. Behind us, the merchant's voice faded but didn't soften. "Check the others for disease. If any are infected, space them. We can't risk contamination spreading to the valuable merchandise."
The old woman's crackling laughter followed me into the corridor. "Crown Prince wants himself a pet phoenix. Careful he doesn't get burned, princess."
The door sealed again, cutting off her words and plunging those souls back into darkness. My carriers hurried through the ship's bowels, their fear of the merchant's wrath making them careless. My cage banged against doorframes and pipes, each impact jarring my already bruised body.
After a long walk we reached a small bay where they deposited me and sealed the door, leaving me alone. The space was so cramped I couldn't even stretch my hand outside my cage.
Some hours had passed since I was left alone in this suffocating chamber, the silence broken only by the distant hum of the ship's engines and the occasional clang of metal against metal somewhere in the depths of the vessel. My stomach had long since moved past the sharp pangs of hunger into a hollow, gnawing ache that seemed to consume me from within.
"I'm so hungry," I whispered into the darkness, my voice barely audible even to myself as I pressed my trembling hand against my belly. The cramped confines of the cage had left me unable to do anything but curl into myself, knees drawn up, trying to find some position that didn't send shooting pains through my battered body. My stomach rumbled loudly in the quiet space, the sound echoing off the metal walls like an accusation.
The merchants had given me nothing—not even water—since dragging me from that hellish holding pen. My lips felt cracked and dry, my throat raw from the recycled air that tasted of metal and desperation. I tried to remember the last real meal I'd eaten, back when I still had a name that mattered, when I still believed my father might save me from my stepmother's machinations.
But then, cutting through my misery like a blade, a deafening alarm suddenly erupted throughout the carrier. The sound was sharp, urgent, and filled with a panic that made my blood run cold. Red emergency lights began flashing in sequence along the corridor outside my prison, casting everything in hellish, intermittent crimson.
"It can't be..." a voice crackled through the intercom system, the speaker's words thick with disbelief and barely controlled terror. The transmission was fuzzy, broken by static, but I could hear the fear bleeding through every syllable. "All units to battle stations! This is not a drill! Repeat—this is not a drill!"
As I sat huddled in my cramped cage, my heart hammering against my ribs, I pressed myself against the bars and strained to hear more. The alarm continued its relentless wailing, and I could hear the thunder of running feet in the corridors beyond my cell, shouting voices that grew more frantic by the moment. Whatever was happening outside these walls, it had the entire ship in chaos—and that terrified me more than any beating or threat the merchants had delivered.
"You idiotic buffoons, do absolutely nothing—stand down immediately and do not even think about activating any weapons systems!" The merchant's voice crackled through the carrier's intercom, his usual composure completely shattered. I could hear the raw terror bleeding through his words, a fear so profound it made my own blood freeze. "It's The Solar Sovereign that's warping into our sector. If we so much as power up a single defensive array, we're all dead—vaporized before we can even scream."
The transmission cut to static for a moment before another voice burst through—rougher, more defiant, clearly belonging to someone who hadn't yet grasped the magnitude of what they were facing. "Are you completely out of your mind? I'm the captain of this vessel, and I won't let some golden-hulled behemoth intimidate us into submission. I won't let them board us and take everything without a fight."
Their argument continued to rage over the intercom, voices overlapping in heated dispute, but I could feel the shift in the atmosphere around me. The very air seemed to vibrate with panic as the crew members outside my cell ran past in increasing desperation. Their footsteps had changed from organized urgency to pure, animalistic terror. Through the bars, I caught glimpses of faces pale with horror, eyes wide with the kind of fear that comes from knowing death is approaching and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.