It was in the heart of the night when the girl woke up, her eyes blinking back and forth at the unfamiliarity around her.
"Where am I?" She asked, eyes pointed at the girl–who couldn't have been more than a few years older than her–seated before a table. There was a slight frown between her brows as she scribbled words down on a scroll under the light of one of the brightly burning candles in the room.
She looked divine: blonde hair scattered over a petite and lovely face. Rosy cheeks that glowed under the lights befitting of her pink, heart–shaped lips. And when she looked up at the girl who'd just awakened, her eyes shone with a dazzling blue so intense that it rendered one both speechless and captivated.
"I see you've finally come through," she said.
The girl shook herself out of the trance, "where am I?" She repeated, sitting up on the bed.
The room, she now noticed, was filled with the heavy scent of perfume. Lilac to be specific. Bright sheets over yellow painted walls covered in designs of wild flowers at each end. There was a cage bearing a pair of love birds by the window.
Moonlight spilled in.
"Am not certain I should be the one to tell you that," she answered, rising from her chair, "but I think you should start with a thank you first. You know you could have been dead if I'd left you were you'd blanked out."
Her words brought a storm of memories to the girl who suddenly great sharp eyed. She tumbled from the bed. "My father... I need to get him." She stuttered.
"Do you believe they would have left him like that?" The blonde haired asked, hope rekindled in the girls eyes, hope which she was quick in dousing out.
"They should have fed him to the magistrate wolves by now," she continued, "those creatures are experts in tearing up a human's flesh from his bones. It's what they do to every criminal they despise... not that a noble daughter –a former noble daughter like you would be aware of such an atrocity happening in her fantasy world."
The girl doubled down, heaving, like she was on the edge of a panic attack. She was alive, she told herself, she was alive: and her precious father had been killed. In the worst way possible.
"The proper question, I believe, should be, 'what is your name?'" the blonde asked, "or should I keep referring to you as miss Rutherford? Should I call you that in public where you may get a backlash for the sake of your father's name?"
Her words, the girl concluded, were as bitter as she was beautiful. "Mira," she mouthed, "did you know my father?"
"Who didn't?" The blonde chuckled while walking over to the door, "he wasn't a very private person, most especially around here." The moment she swung the door open, the sound of a dozen cackling laughter's of men and women sauntered into the room. A man peeked his head by the door.
"Miss Rescheef?" He inquired.
"Go tell the madam that she's awake and with a thousand questions... and that her name is Mira."
Then she shut the door once more, sealing of the noise. She turned to the girl's quizzical look and a naughty smile seized her face.
"Some like it in silence," she voiced, "and some need a leash to keep their madness from others... surely there was a need for the pads." She tapped the walls with slender, delicate fingers.
"Miss Rescheef?" Mira said with a growing realization, "I've heard that name before, from the lips of my father's guards."
"I knew they must have spoken about the wench your father loved to fuck right in their faces... he loved being seen on very bad days. Privacy only came on good days."
"You're a whore," she exclaimed, "one of miss Amelia's home wrecking broods."
The Blondie let out a laugh, an amused one, "Ah, don't look so flabbergasted, I am, and that is why I knew your father was a man with many desires, but none as severe as with Lucinda."
"Shut the hell up!" The girl screeched, good mood flung out of the window. She wasn't feeling so comfy lying on the soft bed and silken sheets anymore. "Am getting out of here, miss Rescheef, and not even you can stop me."
"Hmmm," the Blondie hummed, "it's Anna to you, and where would you be going off to?" She posed a question, "to be raped and killed on the street like your father did to poor Lucinda... Eldard bless her soul in the afterlife."
The girl paused for a moment, letting Anna's words sink. Where would she be going to? But what would become her fate in a brothel? "Am still leaving this place, miss Rescheef, no matter what you say."
The door swung open at that second and a woman followed by another girl walked in. They were both dressed in shiny lace patterned dresses, the woman with sea blue and the dark haired girl with a skin revealing red.
The girl in red made sure to give an elbow pinch to the blonde in white before she passed by.
"Are you speaking of leaving?" The woman, no other than miss Amelia herself, asked, "am sure Wanna has been a most unpleasant companion given all the horrid things that have befallen you today... It isn't her fault though. She hasn't been one capable of emotions."
The blonde blinked at them, thinking if she should leave a comment or not. She ended up with a tightly squeezed lip.
"I am grateful for your hospitality, madam," the girl, Mira began to speak, "but I think I'll be leaving by the first light of dawn."
Her doe eyes shone with wary under the candle light. Her skin, miss Amelia presumed, if scrubbed of all the dirt, would be a dazzling, beautiful pale.
She was a natural beauty in the making. A black haired beauty whose Innocence would be her weapon.
"Have you got somewhere to earn a living?" The madam asked, "if not you're welcomed to perform other services around here. This may be a brothel but we've got a load of servants too."
"Really?" Mira leaned in, "but why would you be helping me?"
"Your father was a great benefactor to us," the lady confessed, "surely there should be a place in this world where men reap the rewards of their doings?"
"For how long would that be... I mean my working here?" She inquired.
The lady felt delighted at finally reeling her in. "The least of our contracts span a total of five years... How old are you, Mira?"
"Eighteen," she responded.
"By then you would have gathered enough to start a life of your own," she added, "dear Anna signed a ten year contract and she's just four years in... Don't give her that look, she came here when she was not a day older than sixteen, begging to be taken in."
The girl knelt on the bed, her eyes darting back and forth, mind spinning like a moving cart wheel.
After a while, she spoke, "when can I start?" She whispered, "I mean with the rendering of other services? How would my payment be? Monthly or yearly?"
A full smile bloomed across the woman's face then. A smile which although seemingly filled with warmth stole the breathe from the lungs of the other two girls in the room.
"Now my dear," Miss Amelia began, "that's where the need for a contract comes in."
And the rest... Well, it happened so fast. As it always did, Anna would recall, before anyone could have the chance to think it through.