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“Do you want to go back to Laurent? Because you miss the inspector?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve never been outside Laurent since I came here. It makes me nervous.”
“There’s nothing to fear. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”
Afrosa didn’t respond. She didn’t nod. She simply stared out the window in silence. No one could protect her. No one could keep her safe.
Long fingers tilted her chin. Afrosa gazed directly at the man who lowered his head to kiss her. She didn’t close her eyes but kept her gaze locked on him, making him pause in his movement.
She studied his chiseled features, as if carved by a sculptor’s knife. It struck her again—how had this man become her husband? And how had she managed to win him over? She thought back to the very beginning, to the day they first met.
At that time, Alec, displaced by his brothers, had ended up stranded in Laurent like a shipwreck. Afrosa, who had barely been saved by her foster father, had found herself saving someone else for the first time. Back then, they both thought they might be each other’s salvation. But those were fleeting moments of the past.
“Rose.”
His perfectly formed lips whispered her name. While Afrosa, lost in thought, lingered over him, he took the chance to press his lips against hers. Afrosa didn’t push him away; she accepted his kiss.
When Afrosa was a child, her master was a powerful noble who owned vast plantations and mines.
He was a prominent landowner from the south, with immense status and political influence. As much as he owned land and mines, he also owned many slaves to work them.
The noble had a beautiful wife, a strong and brave son, and an intelligent daughter. He seemed to have everything anyone could ever want.
He was merciful, generous, and fair to his servants.
But as with all things related to slavery, the life of the enslaved was one of inherent injustice and unkindness.
The small acts of kindness given to free people—the generosity, fairness, mercy, and humanity—were luxuries never afforded to slaves.
In the lives of slaves, the everyday courtesy a neighbor might offer as a basic human decency never returned to them, even as a matter of principle. All they wished for was to live a single day simply as humans.
Their dreams were not to gather armfuls of glittering gold coins or sparkling jewels. Instead, they hoped to receive harmless, unprejudiced gazes from others. Afrosa was no different—her greatest desire was to experience kindness, free from scornful looks, and to hear her name called with genuine warmth.
However, slaves… those born into lowly status… were denied even the right to long for anything. To desire was deemed beyond their station, an improper act. Slaves were regarded as mere creatures, incapable of being the subject of aspirations.
Not considered human, they were denied the right to want what humans want. In this empire’s system, even the desire to possess something was seen as unnatural. The founding emperor of Empostium proclaimed that slaves were wretched creatures merely wearing human skin.
He decreed that slaves should be governed not through virtue or compassion but with strict laws and rules. Those who strayed from the correct path were to be punished without hesitation to uphold the moral order.
Even the first emperor, who was celebrated for ruling with virtue and wisdom, allowed no leniency for slaves. In a world where maintaining strict boundaries between classes was deemed more vital than giving slaves a moment to breathe, this was unsurprising.
Therefore, what Afrosa wished for was considered pure greed.
Her yearning wasn’t for indulgences like warm soup or soft bread. It was the hope of living in a world where people spoke to her kindly. That hope alone was deemed excessive. And those who harbored such ambitions all met their end.
In Empostium, those who desired more than their station allowed were seen as foolish and faced tragic deaths. Afrosa’s father was one such person. He met a miserable end.
Afrosa’s father was a slave working on a plantation. Their master owned a vast sugarcane estate, the most productive in the continent.
Afrosa’s family spent their days growing sugarcane on the plantation and their evenings serving in the lord’s manor.
Because slaves ranked even below servant maids, while the maids attended to the nobles, the slaves tended to the maids, cleaned their chambers, or handled other menial tasks.
Before being rescued by Inspector Dallas, Aprosa had spent her days scrubbing the maids’ quarters with her small hands. When her parents left early in the morning to work on the plantation, Aprosa went to the manor to clean.
Initially, she worked alongside adults in the fields. However, being frailer than other children her age, she often fainted under the scorching sun and couldn’t complete her tasks. Seeing this, the overseer sent her to work inside the manor instead.
From then on, until her parents returned from the plantation at the end of the day, Afrosa worked wherever extra hands were needed—helping in the kitchen, tending the stables, and performing various small chores.
Even tasks that the maids were reluctant to perform, such as cleaning excrement or scooping ash from the kitchen hearth, fell to her. Anything the maids found distasteful became her responsibility.
She also handled tasks no one else wanted, such as changing and washing the sheets stained with the mistress’s menstrual blood or kneeling to offer her back as a step for the young lady’s first horseback ride. Though she toiled over the most unpleasant and degrading jobs in the manor, no one showed Afrosa even the smallest kindness.
After all, a slave who performed well was simply doing their master’s bidding and could never be more than that. Thus, Afrosa grew accustomed to discrimination and violence as naturally as breathing. Even her pretty face offered little advantage.
The master’s two sons would amuse themselves by cornering Afrosa in hidden spots, their rough hands exploring places they shouldn’t. Their invasive, painful touch made her cry with humiliation, but the boys merely laughed cruelly at her tears.
Every day she lived, she had to endure such things just to survive the next. Screaming wouldn’t bring help, and no one would speak out against the wrongs inflicted upon her. Even if her body was violated until it bled, there was no one to call it unjust.
For Afrosa, these things were a grim inevitability. If her master decided to use her as a plaything for the night, it wouldn’t be considered unusual. If the mistress then whipped her to death, no one would pity her.
So, she endured. She had no other choice. Then one day, everything changed.
“Father!”
It was a day like any other. After working until her hands were raw from morning till night, she waited anxiously for her father. That was when she saw him, stumbling through the gates with his wrists bound and flanked by two soldiers under the overseer’s orders.
His face, unrecognizable from the beatings, was a far cry from the man who had left that morning. As Afrosa lingered in the first-floor corridor, staring out the window in anticipation of her father’s return, she froze in shock and ran toward him.
“Father!”
Her father, head bowed and eyes swollen with bruises, lifted his gaze. When he saw his daughter running toward him, his cracked, bloodied lips trembled.
His face was disfigured—his nose flattened, his cheekbones bruised purple—and his lips, dry and cracked, were split and bleeding. He looked so broken that, if not for their bond, she might not have recognized him.
“Father! Father! Sob… sob…”
As Afrosa rushed toward him, the soldiers kicked her hard in the stomach, sending her sprawling into the dirt. Gasping and coughing, she rolled on the ground but scrambled to her feet to follow as they dragged her father away.
The soldiers pulled him toward the execution grounds, and Afrosa, paralyzed with fear, followed them. By the time they reached the site, she was so terrified she wet herself, the warm liquid soaking her legs.
The so-called “execution grounds” were no more than a slaughterhouse, littered with the entrails of animals hunted by the lord or butchered at the cook’s command. This was where slaves were executed, treated no differently than livestock whose throats were slit to separate hide from flesh.
It didn’t matter what crime he had committed or what misunderstanding led to this. As a slave, he had no right to a trial. Killing a slave was as trivial as striking down a stray dog.
Afrosa sobbed as she watched her father place his neck on the blood-stained block. The blade wasn’t even a sharp axe but a dull carving knife meant for slaughtering pigs. The blunt edge slowly sawed into his neck.
Her father, who had smiled faintly at his daughter one last time, couldn’t endure the pain and began to scream.
Afrosa, shaking with fear and dragging her powerless legs, tried to approach. But one of the nearby servants tripped her, sending her crashing to the ground. When she tried to rise, he grabbed her by the hair and slammed her against the wall.
“Stay back, you wretched girl!”
“But… but he’s my father…”
“I know. And if he’s dying, it’s because he deserves to!”
Afrosa didn’t respond and simply cried. Her father’s execution wasn’t over, as his agonizing screams continued to echo through the air. Overwhelmed by the sharp, piercing sound, Afrosa hyperventilated until she fainted. A servant clicked his tongue disapprovingly as he glanced at her collapsed figure.
Her father’s crime was serving as a foreman on the plantation. He hadn’t pursued personal gain, instigated rebellion, or caused unrest. He hadn’t stirred up chaos on the plantation, shirked his duties, or forced work onto others while being idle.
Had he insulted the overseer or challenged his authority, one might have found some reason to understand his fate, even if grudgingly.
Perhaps in such a case, Afrosa could have rationalized his death, convincing herself that it was inevitable. But even as she grew older, she couldn’t comprehend her father’s execution. It wasn’t that she questioned the unjust manner of his death—such a thought had never even occurred to her.
Having been born into a world where being treated as less than human was the norm, Afrosa had long accepted that her life would never be regarded with dignity.
If her life wasn’t meant to be respected, how could her death be any different? She understood that a creature in human skin, speaking human words but considered subhuman, would naturally meet their end in a slaughterhouse, alongside livestock like cows and pigs.
Had she remained a slave, she knew that such a death could very well have been her fate too.
But still…
“A slave acting as a foreman? Who does he think he is, huh? Hilarious!”
The overseer had laughed heartily, finding it absurd that a mere slave dared to take on the role of a foreman and communicate with him on behalf of the others.
The idea of a slave distributing tasks, checking quotas, or even sharing his own rations and blankets with weaker slaves unable to complete their work was, to the overseer, ridiculous and presumptuous.
A slave acting as the leader of other slaves—a role implying authority among creatures all deemed equally inferior—was an affront to the natural order, as far as the overseer was concerned.
“How presumptuous,” he likely thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
Alec’s smooth, pleasant baritone broke her reverie. Afrosa lifted her head. They were seated at a table in the dining room of a hotel they’d stopped at on their way to Dranberk.
Across the round table draped in a cream-colored cloth, Alec sat opposite her, eating a dish of vegetables sautéed in butter alongside fried chicken prepared in the Constantium style.
Under the soft glow of the chandelier, Alec’s silverware clinked gently against his plate. He looked at Afrosa, who sat with her lips sealed, seemingly lost in thought. Meeting his gaze, Afrosa hesitated briefly before parting her lips to speak.