Page 2 of Purchased

I can’t stop her. I wish I could. I don’t have her bravery, or her paranoia.

“You can be a pig, Emma, or you can be a wolf,” she says. “I choose wolf.”

She always talks in these animal terms. Really, you’d think she’d grow out of it.

“We’re young women,” I remind her. “And we are to meet eligible bachelors looking for wives of good moral character.’

“I am not of good moral character.” She smiles for the first time. “Why do you think we’re behind stone walls?”

“I have no idea.”

“Best way to keep wolves out. Until the pig keepers let them in.”

The girls open the door and look out for me.

“Stop talking to her. She’s crazy. You know she’s crazy. We will be well rid of her.”

Bea has a history of some mental health problems. When we were thirteen, she became convinced we weren’t in an orphanage, but a prison. They put her on pills then. I think she’s stopped taking them.

“She’s off her meds,” Sasha says, echoing my thoughts, but much more cruelly than I would have expressed them. “Plus, let’s be real, she’s not pretty enough to get a husband. Even if she comes to the ceremony, she will be left over.”

“Don’t be cruel, Sasha. Bea is very pretty in her own way.”

Bea is actually gorgeous. I’m not sure why the others don’t see it. Her features are unconventional, but striking. She has big, dark eyes, and Slavic bone structure. If she’d just clean up and put a little makeup on, I think she would put us all to shame.

“I hope you are taken by someone nice,” Bea says to me. “But I’m sorry. I’m not staying.”

She opens the fire escape, and she goes into the night.

“Ladies! Come!” Matron comes bustling up not a minute later. “The gentlemen are waiting to meet you all. Down to the hall at once. Come along. Don’t you all look lovely!”

We forget about Bea instantly in our rush for the ball. Our excitement is at a peak as we are filed down to the hall. Matron takes us around the back, where the stage entrance is. The hall has a large open area for assembly seating, and a stage for productions and such. We have been told that we will go on stage, one at a time, and be introduced to the gentlemen that way. We are all practicing the little speeches we’ve concocted, some of us in our heads, others of us out loud. We will not get a second chance to have a first impression.

“Let me fucking go!”

Bea is dragged in by the security guards. Her clothes are torn in a vulgar way, and she is bloodied around her mouth. They have her caught with a dog catcher’s pole, a silver chain around her neck pulled tight against her throat. She scrabbles at it with her fingers, attempting to escape.

“Enough. The auction is beginning. Shut her up.”

They whip a napkin around in circles until it turns into more of a rope and they shove it in her mouth, tying it behind her head. We are all staring, shocked at the sight of her, at the roughness of her handling, and at the word that just came out of the matron’s mouth.

Auction.

She was right.

We are to be sold.

* * *

Armand

The room stinks of lust. There must be over a hundred men here, and those who are more than men, all waiting for the auction to begin. Being here, standing shoulder to shoulder with these base creatures fills me with disgust.

There is another scent, a lighter one, but more troubling than the base need of the males. Females in distress, afraid for what is about to happen to them. I can hear gasps from the rear of the stage, as if panic just began running through them.

I turn to my companion. “We should not be here. This is no better than a slave auction. It’s immoral.”

Antoine, my advisor, responds calmly.

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