The practice of slavery and human trafficking had existed for centuries, predating King Jasheed’s reign. Despite his attempts to eradicate illegal slavers, the elusive main headquarters remained hidden. Like a hydra, cutting off one branch only led to the emergence of another. Thus, despite the concerted efforts of King Jasheed and his descendants, the slave trade persisted for centuries.

- The Secret History of Slavery

Where was she?

Nia slowly woke up to the soft sound of a conversation just out of earshot. Her body still ached and felt cramped, and it was strangely dark all around her. Disoriented, she fumbled around, trying to feel her surroundings with her hands only to be stopped short by cold metal bars. 

Nia’s heart dropped in fear.

More frantically now, she continued to feel around her tiny space while trying to calm the pounding of her heart. Her body went cold as she realized where she was.

She was locked in a cage.

Why was she in a cage? It couldn’t possibly be because she fell asleep on the streets, right? Do people get arrested for sleeping in the streets? Was she caught by Prince Russek’s soldiers and transported to the dungeon in the royal palace while unconscious?

The feeling of claustrophobia and suffocation was spreading through her now as Nia tried to wriggle into an upright position despite her spinning head. Her limbs ache as she moved them from their awkward resting position.

No, she can’t panic. Roshana is still counting on her. 

With a renewed determination, Nia reexamined her cramped surroundings closely once more. This time, she realized that she was not in a dark room as she had initially thought. The darkness was due to the heavy cloth placed over her cage, obscuring her vision.

However, she could still hear sounds from beyond that cloth. She detected muffled voices from outside her cage, and she strained to hear what they were saying, but to no avail.

As Nia looked more closely at what little light was filtering through the cloth over her cage, she realized that it was no longer daytime. It was already late evening at the earliest. That meant she had been unconscious for at least half a day. 

In a panic, Nia realized that she must have missed Roshana’s speech. That was her one, sure opportunity to see her sister again and she had missed it.

She bit back a curse word that she had picked up from an official the time when she accidentally let loose a rat inside a council meeting. 

As the dizziness finally passed, Nia realized that the enclosure she was in was actually moving. She had initially assumed the motion was just part of her dizziness, but it felt like she was traveling in a cart or wagon pulled by an animal.

What was the last thing she remembered? It was accepting food from a woman with a horse-drawn caravan.

Angrily, Nia grabbed the bars of her cage and shook it as hard as she could, trying to find an opening or weak point, but the cage was too sturdy. Unfortunately, her actions attracted the attention of whoever was outside the caravan.

She heard, rather than saw, someone step onto the caravan. They then yanked off the cloth that was covering her cage.

“Looks like someone’s awake.” The Zahdian woman from earlier gave her a cold sneer as she sat right across Nia. 

Nia was startled to see her again. So she was right. That woman had kidnapped her and put her in a cage while she was unconscious. But why?

“Where am I? Where are you taking me?” Nia demanded.

Another figure joined the Zahdian woman, a man this time. He towered over the elderly woman and wore a black mask over his face, concealing his features.

“Be quiet. You will behave yourself or you’ll face punishment.” He said in a low voice. “Don’t even dream about returning to your family or home.”

“What nonsense are you saying!” Nia cried out in alarm. “Why are you doing this?”

It suddenly dawned on her—the Zahdian woman was trafficking her. That woman must have been working for a slave trader and now, the two of them were transporting her to a black market.

Slavery was illegal in all three kingdoms. The Latarias family had made efforts in trying to stop human trafficking for centuries, but it was never enough. People continued to do it, just more discreetly. It’s not uncommon for children and young teenagers to be kidnapped and go missing. 

Sometimes, greedy aristocrats would also find legal loopholes to trap servants in a life-long contract because it was cheaper than paying legitimate servants an honest wage. Nia even recalled her brother mentioning that a Sarajan noble was caught doing such a thing, and they were stripped of everything they own as punishment.

The poor and homeless were most at risk, according to what she heard. And Nia had fit that description perfectly when the Zahdian woman approached her.

“You’re selling me into slavery.” Nia felt like throwing up, although it may have more to do with the lingering dizziness and less to do with her emotional state of mind. She now realized that her falling asleep earlier had less to do with her exhaustion and more to do with the food that the Zahdian woman gave to her. 

“You!” Nia whipped around to the woman in a rage. “Did you drug the food you gave me?”

“So what if I did?” The woman didn’t even bother denying it.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Nia demanded.

Despite her desperate pleas, Nia knew there was nothing she could do to change their minds because they weren’t the type of humans to have empathy for others. Good people would have never gotten into these types of professions. People like them were only concerned about their own self-interest.

“You killed my family!” The Zahdian woman spat at Nia with venom in her voice, her conviction so strong that even Nia was confused for a moment. “You Sarajans deserve it! Because of you people, my children were poisoned by your filth polluting the river! This is your comeuppance!”

The woman rambled on like a maniac, her eyes gleaming with madness and malice. 

Nia wondered why she didn’t catch onto the woman’s true intention sooner. She should have known something was off by the way the woman eyed her earlier, but she had brushed it off due to the stress and fatigue at that time.

“You’re crazy!” Nia retorted back furiously. “I have nothing to do with your family’s misfortunes!”

The Zahdian woman narrowed her eyes. Without warning, she leaned in and grabbed Nia by her hair and pulled her forward so hard that Nia’s head collided against the metal bars. Nia let out a cry of pain as her scalp burned from the force of the woman’s grip.

“You brat! Don’t you dare call their deaths misfortunes! You will fetch a fine price with your fine skin and silky hair. I’m sure many people will be eager to get their hands on a commodity like you.” The woman practically spat out the last part as if she was disgusted by Nia’s good features.

“That’s enough. You’re going to degrade the product if you damage her any more.” The slave trader with the mask, whom Nia had already identified as the leader, said to the woman flippantly, as he was talking about an object and not a young girl. 

At his words, the Zahdian woman finally let go of Nia’s hair. Nia rubbed her stinging scalp and kept her mouth shut as she glared back at the madwoman. She had never suffered such indignities before, and desperately wished she had retained some of her former authority and power.

“We’re almost at our destination.” He added, and Nia’s heart chilled even further. 

By now, Nia had a definitive guess to where she was heading—a black market within the Underworld. There was no other place in the three kingdoms where humans can be bought or sold, not that Nia knew of.

The Underworld was rumored to be a hidden network of illicit trade thriving in the shadows of the Caverns of Labyrinth. Many items are sold there, including high-value treasures, stolen objects, contraband goods, forbidden commodities, and even living creatures. 

If there is a market for something, the Underworld serviced it, no matter how illegal it was. Nia heard that one can even contract assassins there.

For centuries, desperate people often turned to two options when facing a dead end, with the Underworld being one of them. The Underworld had been a stain in the pride of the three kingdoms for a long time, but it had proven far too difficult and elusive to take down. Nia suspected that if the Underworld does get taken down one day, another black market will simply rise up to take its place.

She could hear more noises from outside the caravan. Judging from the sound, there were more people outside, most likely all human traffickers.

Nia’s throat closed in panic and anxiety. If she actually got sold into slavery, she would have a harder time saving her sister. No—forget saving her sister, Nia herself is now in need of rescuing. 

She thought it had been bad before, when she fled from the palace, but at least she had her freedom—now she was going to lose the most important thing she had left.

Perhaps she was lucky that they didn’t recognize her as the missing princess of Saraja. It must have been too dark in that alleyway for them to discern the color of her eyes. She wasn’t sure what they would do if they were to find out about her identity. Hold her for ransom? Sell her out to Russek’s men so they could finish up what they started?

Nia gritted her teeth. She wanted to fight back and make a run for freedom, but she knew they could overpower her easily, given her weak body. Even so, she won’t surrender to this fate without resisting in some way.

“If you don’t mind, I want to examine the rest of the goods again.” The slaver said.

The woman nodded in agreement.

The slaver reached up and yanked on some ropes, and the next thing Nia knew, the cloth covering the top of the caravan was being drawn open, revealing the night sky beyond it. As the moonlight shone into the inside of the caravan, Nia realized she wasn’t the only captive.