Juliette shook her head. “I don’t know. He made it very clear that I wasn’t anything more than a passing amusement.”

“He gave you his mother’s pendent,” Maraveet cut in. “Do you think he gives that kind of stuff away to just anyone?”

Instinctively, her hand went to the bare skin at her throat and her throat muscles tightened even further.

“He said such terrible things,” she whispered.

Maraveet sighed. “Probably to keep you from falling into this sort of situation,” she mumbled. “He knew you wouldn’t leave otherwise.”

He would have been right, Juliette thought miserably. She would have stayed with him forever if he’d asked her to.

Juliette opened her mouth to tell the other woman as much when the door opened with a distinct pop of air pressure being released. The sound never failed to close abusive hands around her throat. Her spine prickled with awareness and she edged even closer to the wall.

In the cage over, Maraveet never moved. She didn’t speak either. Juliette wondered if her eyes were open, but couldn’t bring herself to care as scuffed boots began their descent. Jean clad legs appeared, then the wiry build of the man who brought them food. There was no tray in his grasp, which usually meant he’d been sent to retrieve one of them. Juliette prayed it wouldn’t be Maraveet. They’d only just brought her back.

The man was younger than the others. Clean cut and dressed in jeans and a black sweater, he could have passed for handsome or mildly attractive in that unmemorable sort of way. He wasn’t someone she would offer a second glance, but compared to the other three men, he was practically a model with his shortly cropped cap of sandy brown hair and matching eyes. At his hip, the keyring jingled with every cruel stride forward.

“Boss wants to see you,” he said, stopping at Juliette’s door and idly flipping through the ring. He found the key he was looking for and jammed it into the lock. “Got big plans.”

The bar door swung open and he stepped aside in clear indication. Juliette shuffled to her feet. She cast a nervous glance towards Maraveet, who hadn’t moved a muscle before edging her way towards the man waiting. He said nothing, but he grabbed her arm once she was close enough, even though she wasn’t struggling. Juliette practically had to run to keep up.

The change never failed to disorientate her. It was an entirely different world from the one she’d been held captive in. Topside, everything was bright and beautiful. The colors were vibrant, the textures intense and captivating, a huge difference from the dull steel she was quickly becoming accustomed to. But it was the smell that made Juliette want to cry. It was the crisp scent of winter, the decadent aroma of warm, melted butter and fried meat lathered in spices and clean. God, it smelled so clean. Yet despite all that, she would rather be in the cage with Maraveet—or home—than be upstairs with men who eyed her as though she were a prized cattle for the slaughter. Their attention crawled along her grimy skin, making her want to dive back downstairs and lock herself in. Her captor’s grip on her elbow tightened. Maybe he sensed her desires.

She was propelled across the plush carpet to the sitting area made up just beneath the spiraling stairs. The two sofas and two arm chairs cluttered the space, but no one seemed to mind. Four figures were already there, waiting for her. Juliette had eyes for only one.

“Hello Juliette.”

The voice was as soft and beautiful as its owner. Juliette didn’t recognize him. He barely looked out of his early twenties with skin so white, he could almost be translucent and hair the downy white-gold of corn silk. It framed an elven face with a tapered chin and high cheekbones and lidded eyes the crystal blue of a clear, summer sky. He reminded her of an animation, too perfect to be real, too clean. Way too clean to be sitting surrounded by men who looked like they couldn’t tell a bar of soap from a brick. Every line was flawlessly proportioned. He had the slender build of a pubescent child draped in an expensive suit the exact metallic gray as the sheets bolted around her cage. There was a baby pink dress shirt beneath the blazer and white loafers on his feet. She could just make out a hint of skin between the hem and the expensive bit of leather to notice he wasn’t wearing socks. He sat regally with long legs crossed beneath a gold halo of the light spilling from above. In the surrounding darkness, he could have passed for an angel.

Eyes hooded lazily from a face lax with comfort lifted and fixed on her with that same arrogant, amused glint he’d given her the first time.

“How are you?”

People like him and Arlo liked asking that question when they knew perfectly well that they were the ones inflicting the pain and hearing it made them feel powerful and in control. She also knew that he didn’t really care one way or another how she really was. She opted to say nothing at all.

True to her assumption, he carried on without a response from her.

“I truly feel terrible for putting you through all this. It wasn’t like you asked for it.” His head bent ever so slightly to the side, knocking a wisp of baby-fine hair across his brow. “Or perhaps you did in a roundabout way. How does that saying go? You’re judged by your bedmates?” He waved a pale, dainty hand. Light caught the clear coating on his neatly manicured nails and glinted. “Something like that.”

“I don’t know anything,” Juliette blurted, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “I would tell you if I did.”

He smiled beautifully, all pearly white teeth and a tiny dimple against his left cheek. “I know you would,” he soothed the way one would pacify a small child. “I know you would tell me whatever I wanted to know, because, unlike your friend, you’re not strong, are you, Juliette? You’re not a fighter.”

While perfectly true, Juliette inwardly winced at the verbal slap. The fact that he knew that about her from the single conversation they’d had made her feel beaten and ashamed.

Juliette had always tried to be brave. She had fought to keep Arlo away from Vi, she had struggled to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. She had done so unwaveringly for seven years. Before that, she’d had an entire high school to deal with, which most days felt like the greatest challenge of her life. Yet none of that had prepared her for being kidnapped by human traffickers. There was a unique sort of fear that came with being at the absolute mercy of someone without a conscious.

“Is that why you’re hurting her?” she forced herself to ask. “So she doesn’t fight?”

“More so she doesn’t cause any problems,” he corrected. “Just a little sedation technique. But that isn’t why I asked you here. I need you to make me another video.”

Automatically, Juliette’s gaze jumped to the corner of the ship, the cramped square of space housing a clunky camera on a tripod. It faced a fabric curtain depicting a concrete wall and a metal chair. Behind the camera was a set of construction floodlights and a table harboring a laptop. Her skin prickled just from the mere memory of having their beams burning into her.

“Who are you sending the videos to?” she asked, hoping to prolong having to sit in that chair. “Is it to Killian?”

“Not any of your concern, is it? Just be a good girl and make my video. When you’re finished, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Whatever it was, she didn’t want it. She started to tell him as much when her elbow was captured in a bruising vice and she was forcibly twisted around. Her struggles proved futile when she was shoved into the seat with enough push to send the legs teetering backwards. Juliette flailed as she struggled not to get thrown. The floodlights were snapped on. The bulbs behind the glass hummed as the wires blazed to life. The burn scorched into her skin. She could feel her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. She winced, but could do nothing more than sit there as her guard prepared.