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“My mom had a tattoo just like that,” he murmured.
Pain ripped through her heart.
She glanced up to see Rafe standing above her in his man form, his eyes fixed on her exposed skin.
So be it.
“Do you know what the tattoo means?” she asked Tally, turning her attention back to the boy.
He had lost a lot of blood. Telling him where his mother had been might not be kind, but it would certainly keep him conscious, if anything could.
He shook his head weakly.
“Help me lean you up and elevate your arm,” she told him. “And then I’ll tell you what it means.”
He blinked a few times, then allowed her to pull him up slightly so that he was leaning on the back of the sleigh.
She placed the elbow of his hurt arm in the palm of the other one.
“Hold it up as much as you can,” she told him. “It may help to slow the bleeding.”
He did as he was told, and she shrugged off her cloak and lay it over him like a blanket.
“What does it mean?” he asked her.
So that was it. No turning back now.
“That tattoo is a mark of a person who has served on the pleasure ships,” Jade told him carefully. Her voice was clear and steady, though her heart was pounding as she shared something she had never willingly told anyone. In her heart, she was confessing to Rafe, but focusing on Tally seemed to make it easier.
“No,” he whispered. “That’s not true. She never…”
“Most of us are not there by choice,” she told him. “Some are there to feed their starving families with the sign-on bonus. Some are kidnapped and sold to the ships. And others, like me, are tricked with promises of domestic work and then have our contracts sold. Then we are drugged to make us crave the awful things that happen there - things we would never want if we were allowed to be in our right minds even for a little while.”
It was shocking how easy it was to explain things honestly and without shame when she was talking about another woman who had been a victim of those ships.
“My mom worked on the pleasure ships?” he asked, sounding surprised but no longer disbelieving.
“If she had a tattoo like this, then yes,” she told him. “None are exactly the same. The symbols show which ships you were on, what was allowed to be done to you, and the dates of your service. They say the purpose is to prevent runaways, but I believe the purpose is to shame the poor beings who were tortured on those ships and make it hard for them to live another kind of life when they are released.”
“That’s why she wore gloves,” Tally realized out loud. “Just like you.”
“Yes,” Jade said.
She sensed movement beside her and turned to see Rafe walking away.
Sadness fell over her at the realization that she had been right. He would never want her, now that he knew the truth.
But the hot shame she expected to fall over her never came.
Because it wasn’t her fault, and it never had been.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Tally said, letting go of his hurt arm to touch her arm with his good hand. “And to my mom, too.”
That simple human touch and compassion went a long way toward easing the ache she felt at Rafe walking away.
“Me too,” she told him with a smile. “But I’m here now, and that’s what matters most.”
He nodded and leaned back again.
