A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)

Krista's insides clenched as she looked up through the tangles of her hair and saw the fat corpulent form of Esmeralda standing before her, who had only grown uglier with age.

"You've only gotten prettier with age honey. You brought me big money once and I'll bet you'll bring me even bigger money this time! Throw her in the wagon boys, but be gentle! She's a high priced sex slave if you ever saw one."

One of the men near Krista groped one cheek of her bottom cruelly, but let go at Esmeralda's shriek.

"Let go! Look is all you can do, you bunch of mangy cutthroats. She's arriving at the slave market in Capeacal unspoiled!"

Krista was led to a wagon with a cage on the back of it and pushed inside it. The door slammed shut behind her.

"Pack up boys! The gods of fortune have been kind to us today!" Esmerelda said gleefully.

Krista fell to the straw floor of the cage and quivered as her body was wracked with sobs that didn't seem to end. An older woman, who was already in the cage leaned down and pulled Krista's head up into her lap and brushed her fingers through the wild tangle of curls trying to comfort as best as she could a prisoner of the same fate as her own.

Krista leaned up against the side of the small room she was locked in. She was the only one in the room, for which she was grateful. They had reached the city in the late afternoon and it wasn't long after that she had been separated from the rest of the women in the wagon and sent up to this upper room of the slave market building.

All her tears gone she sat in complete apathy of emotion. What did it matter anymore anyway? No matter what she did nor how hard she tried she couldn't escape the curse of her birth. She was a slave and no matter what she did to wipe the ugly stain of her life's history out it just came back to plague her again and again.

The illusive dream of gaining her freedom had been crushed once again. There really was no point in searching after freedom anymore, in fact what was the point to even living? Her hand closed over the little piece of broken pottery that she had found earlier in her cell and she brought the little piece of pottery up to her face and contemplated it more closely.

The shard of pottery had one sharp edge. It was sharp enough to do the job. She bit her lip as she brought it up and held it to her wrist. Scared by the decision she had made, but seeing no other way out, she glanced up.