I staggered, the chains around my ankles making it difficult for me to stay upright, particularly in the heels and tiny skirt they’d forced me to wear. I didn’t dare risk the fall. One misstep, and I’d create a domino effect, colliding with the woman in front of me. We’d all fall if that happened. I was sure my captors would beat me for that. They had a schedule to keep and missteps were not tolerated.

Tripping might make me worth less money to them. They couldn’t have the buyers see me looking clumsy.

I sucked in the sob threatening to escape me. This was reality. This was actually happening. My father had sold me to these monsters, and now my future was in the hands of the highest bidders.

Never again would I see a sunset come over my small mountain village on the planet of Fasia Two. Never again would I see my sisters dance in the rain or smell my mother’s cooking. The rest of my life would be determined on this disgusting, dirty, loud, dangerous space station.

There were so few women in the universe, and my father was able to produce girl babies. So auctioning off his progeny was how he made a living, how he and my mother survived. I had no idea how truly awful my fate would be.

My older sister lived near Earth. I was as pretty, capable, and smart as she was—neither one of us being particularly gorgeous. Yet they’d brought me to the most savage part of space—the Dark Planets—while she earned a spot in a much more civilized zone. I would find no good men simply looking for a strong wife here. These men were hard, brutal, and most likely on the run from authority.

I swallowed as the whole line of women jerked, a force I couldn’t see tugging us all forward at once.

The space station atmosphere aligned perfectly with its rough location. Loud bangs hurt my ears, dust coated my every breath, and people tumbled onto the hard deck alongside us as they were forcibly expelled from the bars. Children begged for food and water on their hands and knees. This wasn’t anything like my home. I didn’t know how to handle the noise or how to manage drunken brawls. The smell. The hard edges.

It was hell.

The girl behind me wasn’t as steady on her feet as I had been and plowed into my back. I oomphed, but it was drowned out by the clamor on the station. The woman in front of me wasn’t prepared for me to hit her. One by one, we all went down. Pain jolted through my body. Someone’s foot struck forward, hitting me in the head. It vaguely registered that my vision seemed to have doubled.

Then nothing at all.

---

A slow beeping noise invaded my awareness, and I struggled to open my eyes. I knew this noise. Even on a farm as small as our own, we had a med machine. Still, this one seemed roomier than I was used to. I wasn’t a small person. I’d been made to work the land, or at least that was what my mama used to say. The few times I’d been in the machine, I’d wanted to scream at being confined. Here, I was actually able to breathe.

The question was: how had I gotten here, wherever I was?

Movement beneath me told me I was on a ship. I’d never been in space before the day the men had come for me. For two nights, I hadn’t been able to sleep because every molecule in my body rejected being off the ground. I’d pretty much forgotten how to walk for a while.

The top of the machine opened, and three men stared down at me. As I examined them from my vantage point, I made myself breathe. Okay. There were three men I didn’t know, and I was in a med machine.

The first one, closest to my right, was bald. Or maybe he shaved his head. His face was round, and he had strong cleft in his chin. His eyes were green and his gaze hard. I could only see the top half of his body, which included a black t-shirt and inked up, muscular arms. His neck had the colorful designs on it, too.

Next to him was the tallest fellow in the group. His skin was dark, almost black. I thought he might be able to wrap his whole hand around my arm, and I wasn’t small. His gaze was kind and his brown eyes questioning. He kept his hair short, shaved practically to his scalp. My sister, Suzanna, would have wanted to sculpt him. She would have said he looked like a man who should be captured for all time.

Finally, the third man, the shortest of the group, assessed me with sharp blue eyes. He had light-brown hair, almost blond in places. His long face might have been considered beautiful if not for one long scar. It ran from his left ear, swooping across his chin and slightly back up the right side. What in the galaxy had happened to him?

The bald man extended his hand, and I took it—he was scary, and I really didn’t want to make him mad—helping me to sit. I swung my legs over the edge of the machine and let them dangle.

“Hello.” The middle guy with the face made for artwork spoke first. “How are you feeling?”

Clearing my dry throat, I gave him a look of apology. I was parched. The one with the scar handed me some water, and I drank deeply. Relieved, I said, “Fine.”

The work of art nodded. “That’s good. How much do you remember?”

“Um.” I hadn’t had very much experience speaking to men except for my father, and the less he had said to me the better. “I tripped. No, the girl behind me fell, and so we all did. I got kicked in the head.”

The first man looked at the second, who then glanced at the third. It was the bald man who spoke. His voice was rough, like sandpaper vocalized. “Not much then. Well, girl, it looks like you’re married to us.”

I blinked. “Wait. What?” The room tilted left. I’d expected to get married. I was headed for the auction block. But I’d thought to remember it.

“First off,” Blue Eyes began. His voice sounded to me more like a melody, like he’d been trained in how to make his sentences flow. “Let’s do names. We know you’re Priscilla. We have the paperwork. I’m River. This one next to me is Jordan and next to him is Bo. You’re safe here.”

Okay. So these were my husbands. I’d been purchased. I…

“We married you to get you out of there. We don’t believe in selling women. It’s a barbaric practice. But they were going to give you to a truly terrible man. It seemed the only way to rescue you, given we were surrounded by paid mercenaries at the time. We’ll drop you wherever you want to go and that can be that.” Bo put his hand on my back and encouraged me off the med machine.

On my feet, I discovered they were far taller than I’d realized. I wasn’t a small girl. I could look my father in the eyes, and he was nearly six feet in height. I swallowed. Think, Priscilla, think. I’d been given some important information, and I had to concentrate.

My mind… it didn’t work like other people’s. I was always jumping from one thought to another, like someone swiping from screen to screen. Okay. I could do this.

“I… I don’t understand. You married me, but not for real, and now you want to drop me off somewhere?”

Jordan placed a hand on my shoulder. “We were absolutely not there with any intention to buy a wife. We’d stay away from that hellhole if we could. The problem is the only marketplace in the area is located there. We have to unload our… goods… there.”

Why couldn’t I remember anything? How hard had I been kicked in the head? “I… I don’t know what happened.”

“Long story short,” Bo answered, “we saw you go down, we saw you get hurt. The slave masters, bastards that they are—may they get put out an airlock—got frantic because of the chaos. All the women were down. Authorities look the other way on the illegality of…”

River interrupted him. “Ha. There are no laws out here.”

“There are so called laws,” Bo interrupted him right back. “Selling women, selling anyone, is frowned upon everywhere. They look the other way because the traders pay them to, unless it gets way out of hand. They started taking miniscule amounts of gold for all of you. Normally, we’d mind our business. There’s not a damned thing we can do.”

I waited for more of an explanation. I knew quite well how little could be done to fix the situation. I’d been prepared to be sold for as long as I’d understood what that meant. Any pleas to the contrary went unheard, or worse, led to a good beating.

Finally, when it was clear they weren’t going to say more and we were all standing around not speaking, I had to continue. “Why did you this time? If you wouldn’t normally intervene.”

“They were going to sell you to a man named Davin Xavier. He wouldn’t have made you his wife,” River answered. “He buys women for more… nefarious purposes. We couldn’t let that happen.”

I opened and closed my mouth. The idea of being sold was bad enough—I’d lived twenty-two years knowing it would happen—but to not be as a wife… That made me shiver, hard. I rubbed my arms. “Thank you.” A new thought blossomed. “Did he end up buying someone else?”

Jordan nodded then looked away. “We couldn’t save everyone. We didn’t have enough gold on us to buy more than one of you. I’d have freed the whole lot of you if I could have. As it is, we had to marry you. Xavier pays the slavers for them not to care what he does with you, but we don’t have that kind of arrangement with anyone. The slavers insisted we follow protocol. We had to sign the marriage contract before we could leave with you.”

River nodded. “So, we are married. But marriage, everywhere other than the slave-mart, requires consent. You didn’t consent. You were barely conscious. We can give you a ride to wherever you’d like.”

They were being so reasonable. Tears flooded my eyes. This was… too much. In a universe where there was one woman born for every two hundred men, we were chattel as much as anything else. I had thoughts, opinions, dreams—at least until I’d known better—and yet, the only thing I was good for was marrying to increase my father’s fortune. There were all kinds of marriages, singular and plural, and yet I’d almost been sold to a man who wanted me for something far worse.

I’d never expected kindness.

“Hey.” Bo leaned to the side, catching my gaze. “You’re okay.”

I nodded and wiped at my eyes. “Sorry. I know crying is… not the thing. I am so grateful to you three. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to go.”

River rocked back on his heels. “Let’s have something to eat.” He extended his hand. “This way, Priscilla.”

At the mention of food, my stomach grumbled. “How long was I in the machine?”

“Just over twenty-four hours, enough time to get away from that station.” He shook his head. “We’re on our way toward Gamma Three.”

I sniffed. “I don’t know where that is.” No one had ever thought it was important for me to learn space topography or universal lanes. They’d set me up to be a good, steady wife who could handle things.

“Well.” Bo laughed. “It’s far from that hellhole space station.”

The ship seemed smaller than the one the slavers used to retrieve me. It took us no time to get from the medical bay to the mess hall, with only one ride in a lift that was barely big enough to fit all four of us. Getting anywhere on the slaver’s ship had taken forever. Bo escorted me to a chair, and then they all disappeared into the kitchen area before returning with something that looked and smelled close to the recipe my mother used to cook chicken. River placed it in front of me before he handed me a napkin and some silverware. He was meticulous, as though it really mattered to him exactly where he placed each item.

“Bo cooked. He’s the best of the three of us. When I cook, you’ll wish you didn’t have to eat.” As River moved away, Jordan placed a glass filled with water in front of me.

Discomfort made me hang my head. They were being way too nice to me. No one had waited on me since I was a toddler. Anything I ate I either made or got for myself. “You don’t have to wait on me. You can point me to where everything is. I could even cook for all of you. I’m okay at it.”

Bo returned from the kitchen. “We don’t usually have guests—or a wife for that matter—on our ship. We’re not really sure what to do with you. We’ll take care of you because it suits us to do so, and we’ll stop if it doesn’t.”

They sat down around the table, each one with a plate in front of them. I took two bites. It was delicious, better than anything I could have made. Maybe he’d teach me the recipe. “So what do you do? On this ship? Some kind of trade?”

River set down his fork. “Trade, of sorts. Honestly? I’m going to tell you the total truth because you’ll figure it out anyway, and we might as well get any scene out of the way now. We’re pirates. We rob the large conglomerates that make their money off the backs of the population out here in the middle of nowhere and give those they’ve practically stolen from nothing in return. We then take a share of our profit from it.”

I waited for him to finish that thought. “And?”

He looked at Jordan then back at me. “And what?”

“You give the profit back to the population?”

Bo set aside his fork and sighed. “I’m afraid not. That would be nice, but we’ve got to eat, we’ve got to live. We take our profit off the worst guys we know. That doesn’t make us good guys. But we were there to rescue you yesterday, and it turned out we do have a line we can’t cross. We had the chance to save one person from hell. We did it. So you have nowhere to go? What about back to your family? Kidnapping doesn’t have to be a disgrace. I’m sure they’d take you back.”

It took me a moment to understand what he said. “Did you think I’d been kidnapped?”

“The slavers took you from your home, like they do all the women they sell off. Poor planets, no one to protect them.” River took another bite of his chicken. “Where are you from?”

I hated to tell them about me since they made my situation out in their version of the truth much more palatable than it actually was. “My father sold me to the slavers. He has eight—yes that’s real—daughters. He had us specifically to sell us. At eight, they stopped. I mean, I guess they didn’t have my older sister or me with the idea we could be money for him. It dawned on him at some point. This was always planned for us. So I’m afraid I can’t go back.”

Okay. I’d said it. For the first time in my life, I’d told someone the truth of my existence and doing so hadn’t made me explode into flames.

Jordan finished his food. He raised his eyes to meet mine. “Then you stay. Here. With us. On our ship called Malice.”

“Now wait a second.” River shook his head. “We should all talk about this first. She doesn’t know us. We don’t know her. She might not want to stay here. It’s not necessarily safe for her to do so. She’d be what? All of a sudden our actual wife? There are plenty of places we could drop her off where she’d be safe.”

Bo leaned back in his chair. “Where is this mystical safety, River Sandler? Do tell. Why haven’t you brought us there before now?”

A low throb formed between my eyes. They’d saved me, and although I couldn’t remember it, I’d always be grateful. Now I was going to be a huge burden. “I could earn my keep. I don’t need much. I cook, not as well as you did, Bo, but well enough. I clean. I can manage gold. I can fix just about anything. If I don’t know how, I can learn. I’ll stay out of your way.”

Jordan shook his head. “That’s not how this’ll work. You’ll stay. The rest of it will figure itself out.”

“Why do you suppose that will happen?” River shouted at him. “When does anything work itself out?”

“She’s our wife.” Jordan raised his dark eyebrows.

River stood. “In name only. We married her to save her. Not to have a wife.”

“Well”—Jordan tilted his head to the side—“maybe it’s the wind spirits bringing us to our destiny.”

Bo rose and started clearing the table. I wasn’t quite done, but I wasn’t going to tell him that either. He took the plates and, without a word, stomped off into the kitchen.

“I’m not going to get into the wind spirit thing. I’ve always told you if you want to believe in the spirits from your homeland messing with your destiny you can go ahead and have at it. But in Sandler space, we don’t have destinies; we just have pain. We’re pirates. It’s no place for a woman.”

His chair fell backward as he stood and stormed toward me. I swallowed. What was going to happen? Was he going to yell? Hurt me? Put me out the airlock? Instead, River extended his hand. “Come on, Priscilla. I’ll show you to your room.”

I took his offered hand and let him lead me from the kitchen. He opened the door like I needed him to do it for me, waited till I walked through, then exited without saying a word. I stood, stunned. What had just happened? I was on this strange ship with three men yelling at each other about whether or not they should keep me.

I straightened my shoulders. I would survive this. I would figure out what to do, somehow. Things could only get better. Okay.

The room River left me in was small but clean. A bed that looked more like a cot stood in the corner, made up with a green blanket and what looked like black sheets poking out slightly from underneath. A closet was open with empty hangers swinging slightly from the breeze in the room. I didn’t know much about ships. Was that supposed to happen? Did they have some kind of environmental system? The temperature on the slaver’s vessel had been stifling. There was a table next to the bed with a small light sitting in the center.

I’d never had a room to myself before, and even though I might not have it very long, I was going to appreciate every second of it.

A knock sounded followed by a beep. I walked to the door, opening it to find Jordan on the other side. He smiled at me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I stepped out of the way so he could come in. Jordan wanted to keep me as his wife. What would that mean? “I think so.”

He looked around the space. “I haven’t been in here in forever. River set this up for you. I can see his housekeeping skills have not improved in the last twenty years.”

“Oh, it’s more than fine. Thank you.”

He nodded. “You have the softest voice, Priscilla. Do you ever raise it?”

“I’ve never seen a situation that improved by me losing my temper.”

Jordan laughed. It was a hard, sudden sound, and it made me grin. “That’s true. But sometimes it makes us feel better just the same, right? Anyway, that whole scene must not have been comfortable for you. You see, those two men are like my brothers. We came together in a dangerous time and have been watching each other’s backs ever since. We have different backgrounds.”

That much had been obvious. “The winds of your homeland.”

“Right.” He crossed in front of the closet. “I’m from a small planet on the edge of the Dark Planets. It borders Sandler Space. It’s called Beta Delta One. But we call it Bertram. The winds are so loud they blow and blow. Even the local populations can’t really tune out the sound. Sometimes we can hear voices in the winds, and we think of them as spirits of our ancestors helping to shape our destiny. My other two brothers out there don’t have such beliefs.”

“We don’t have them at home, either. At least not in my family. Father shaped our destiny. That was pretty much it.” I tried to picture his life and couldn’t. “What do you do on Bertram? What do your people do to survive? Where I’m from, it’s mostly farming and they have oil that the barons sell to the corporations.”

“I see. One of the oil planets. Yes, I know them well. On Bertram, the winds blow and blow, and in the brief times that they don’t, we all find these.” He pulled a crystal out of his pocket. It was white and purple, every few inches changing in color. I gasped. I’d never seen anything sparkle in quite the same way. “Have you ever seen one?”

“No.” I wanted to put my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to touch the beautiful crystal. “It’s lovely.”

Jordan took my hand and opened it. Without a word, he placed the crystal on my palm and closed my fingers. “It’s called vestibulum. All the richest women in the universe wear it around their necks or on their hands. Very rare. Very hard to get. More of our people die finding it—thanks to the winds and the animals or the sand storms and feuding war lords—which makes it even more expensive to have. It can also power a ship for brief periods of time if the fuel cells die. But its main use is jewelry.”

It was hard in my hand, sharp. I imagined it would have to be shaped and smoothed before anyone could wear it. I opened my fingers to hand it back to him. “Thank you for showing me.”

“That’s yours.” He backed up slightly. “For you. From me. I always said I’d give it to my wife.”

“But I thought…”

He shook his head, interrupting me. “Sometimes the winds lead us where we’re supposed to be. I’m going to choose to believe. Welcome to Malice, Priscilla. All of this is going to work out.”

I was stunned by his kindness, my feet practically glued to the ground. He thought we were meant to be? And he was giving me the beautiful purple crystal? And he was so sweet I could barely stand it. I cleared my throat. I hadn’t asked the first time I heard the name because it hadn’t seemed the time. Now, I did. “Malice?”

“That’s the name of this ship. Every smart man and woman in the quadrant fears us.” He winked. “You never will. Get some sleep.”

I wasn’t sure if I would ever sleep again. How could so much have happened in so little time?