Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
The sea-ogre demands a bride. It's the perfect opportunity for her to escape.
Valessa volunteers. She tells everyone she's very experienced with sea-ogres and knows just how to please them. She's very descriptive about it, too.
Thing is...Valessa's a liar.
She's never met a sea-ogre in her life. But it can't be that hard to keep one man-slash-monster happy, can it?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter
One
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VALESSA
It’s funny how the Lords of Fate work. One day, I’m in a slave pen, chained up with seven others and waiting to be sold the next morning. The next day, the woman that was going to sell me is chained up next to me on our captor’s ship.
And she is loud.
“This is an outrage!” Lady Dywan screeches as the slave chained to her left pukes on her gown. “I demand that I be treated as a lady!” She rattles her chains, determined to get to her feet, but one look at the slavemaster and Lady Dywan sits back down, a pout on her spoiled face. “I am a noblewoman. My husband is the Lord Ruler of Parness.”
One of the soldiers on the ship just laughs. “You were a noblewoman,” he says. “But Parness has fallen to Aventine, praise be to the Butcher God.” He makes a gesture on his chest, his fists closing over his heart as if he holds Aron the Battle God’s axe. “And now you’re just a slave. And since you’re an ugly slave past her prime, you’re chained up with that lot.”
He gestures at our group, and Lady Dywan sputters in outrage. He’s not wrong, though. Lady Dywan is bony and gray-haired. When the Aventine soldiers broke through the walls of Parness and sacked the city, they stole every woman and child that could walk and that might fetch a price in the Sunswallow slave markets. We’ve fared better than the men—those that were left were put to the sword. The Aventine soldiers looted and burned all of fair Parness, and loaded the newfound slaves onto their heavily laden ships. As they did, they sorted us into two groups—the pretty slaves and then the rest of us.
I’ve been through this before, and I know I don’t want to be with the pretty slaves. Even now, the men are touching them and flicking up their skirts, enjoying the women’s screams of outrage. Nope. In this particular instance, it’s far better to be ugly. So I’ve knotted up my thick curls and fixed a stupid look on my face. I’ve rubbed dirt on every bit of my exposed skin, and it looks terrible next to the bruises on my arms and legs. I hitch up my ill-fitting Parnessian tunic, which belts right under my very large breasts and makes me look as if I’m carrying even though I’m not. And I’m tall. Tall, dull, and pregnant? I’m not going to be bothered, not when there’s prettier girls nearby.
I should probably be more upset that I’ve been enslaved (again), but there’s a spiteful sort of pleasure in being chained up with the haughty Lady Dywan. She ruined my life. I guess it’s only fair that I get to watch hers be ruined, too.
Six years ago, my father’s farm on the outskirts of Parness was “claimed” by Lord Dywan. He needed my father’s funds to support his emptied coffers, and the war with Aventine was right at the city’s doorstep. My father refused…so Lord Dywan had my father killed and his only child—me—sold into slavery. Luckily, I was sold to an elderly man who wanted a kitchen wench, and I was happy to bake and cook for him. One of the other slaves—a kind man named Luseth— had purchased his freedom and offered to purchase mine so I could marry him. I wasn’t in love with Luseth, but a respectable wife instead of a slave is a much better living. I was hand-fasted to Luseth, only for him to be put on the front lines to defend Parness in the ongoing war.
Luseth didn’t last long.
Now, here I am, still a slave, but glad, at least, to see Lady Dywan suffering next to me. She and her husband have brought this awful war down on Parness, and now the city is destroyed, all its inhabitants decimated. I don’t even know what the war was about. Some sort of land dispute, but I’ve heard over and over that Lady Dywan is the one responsible. She wouldn’t let her husband call off the war, because she didn’t want to lose face. It was Lady Dywan’s greed that caused my father’s farm to be snatched, and Lady Dywan’s arrogance that made the war continue on and on and on.
So am I smug that she’s sitting next to me? A little.
It doesn’t change the fact that my status is still in danger. I’m still a slave. And I’ve got to figure out how to save my own hide so I don’t end up in the Sunswallow brothels for the rest of my days.
If an opportunity arises, I have to take it, no matter how terrified I am. This is a time to be brave and bold, because I might not get another chance. The last thing I want is to spend the next several years next to Lady Dywan in a whorehouse. So I edge closer to the water as the ship slices through the waves, and I twist my hands in the cuffs. If I can get free close to shore, I’m going to swim for it, I decide.