I patted her hand, not commenting on her Almighty. She knew I did not share her beliefs, but she never attempted to change my mind, just as I never attempted to change hers. She believed in a higher being, and if that faith gave her some courage, some happiness, then for as long as I lived, I would never speak a word against it.
“Mama,” I murmured. “He will never harm me. You know he wishes to sell me for the best price he can get. Credits are all he cares about. He won’t risk damaging me when a price tag is involved.”
Terror cast itself in my mother’s lustrous eyes. Her left eye was a soft brown, and her right, a lustrous blue with a smidge of that same brown surrounding the pupil. I may not have inherited skin as beautifully dark as my mother’s, but I did inherit eyes identical to hers as well as her plump lips and prominent nose.
Everything else that made up my looks came from him.
I always figured I hated my smile because it looked just like Master’s, even down to his dimpled right cheek. Mama often told me just because I looked so much like him did not mean I was like him. It comforted me, but it did little to make me like the person I saw staring back at me when I looked into a viewing glass.
My skin was light brown. It was a perfect mix of my parents’ genes. My mother’s stunningly dark skin was not the darkest I had seen. Her father was black, but her mother had been a white slave who died during childbirth. She didn’t have as many similarities to her white parent, though, not like I did. Her hair, though long, looked short as it coiled tightly to her head.
My hair’s texture was one of the things I inherited from my father.
It was nothing like my mother’s. I hated noticing things about my appearance that separated me from her. My hair was dark brown and curly—really curly, long, and thick—but it didn’t feel the same as my mother’s. It was silkier and easier to maintain. It didn’t defy gravity like hers did. She always told me that just because it wasn’t like hers didn’t mean it was any less beautiful. I believed her, but I was desperate to look like her, to separate myself from the white blood that flowed through my veins.
I constantly had to remind myself that the colour of a person’s skin meant nothing about their character. Many of my sister slaves were white, and I deeply cared for each of them. Master was the problem. He wasn’t just a different breed of white, though; he was a different breed of human. I wanted to separate myself from anything that had to do with him, especially his genes, but I could not.
“Mud!”
I jumped at the sound of Master’s bellow.
I got to my feet, spun around, and placed myself in front of my mother. He exited his withering, crooked house, the door slamming against the damaged frame as he stomped towards me. He had a bottle in his mechanical hand, and from what I could see, it was nearly empty. I tensed out of fear that he would strike me when he came to a stop mere inches away.
Master was an augmented human. He lost his arm during a trade deal gone wrong when he was just twelve years old, and his father paid to have him fitted with a mechanical limb. He had the credits to have a natural, flesh-like upgrade, but Master wanted originals—people without augmentations—to fear him with one glance.
He was one of those evil augs who took pride in his involvement in the Great World War eleven years ago. Even though he was mindless and had no control over what he was doing during it, he was still proud of it. He had been away when the war started. Had he been home, he would have killed each one of his slaves. I thought we were unlucky to be spared during the war … death would have been a sweet gift.
“Are ye deaf, girl? Answer me when yer spoken to.”
The smell of his breath was repulsive, and I had to use every bit of willpower I possessed not to vomit on his shoes because I knew that would mean a severe beating for my trouble. Instead, I focused on his face and wondered how a man as handsome as him could be so cruel.
His looks did not reflect how evil he was, and I hated that. He was so tall that when he stood close to me, I had to tilt my head back to look up at his face. He had bright blue eyes, unblemished fair skin, blond hair that had a twinge of redness to it, and a smile that would have been heart-stopping if it wasn’t so sinister.