For as long as Andrea could remember in her short life, she had been miserable. She lived in a single roomed home with her small family. Other than two small mattresses and a painting of a sunrise on one wall, there was a lack of decoration in the grim little hut. Still, her mother and father had done their best to make life pleasant there, providing food, warmth from a small log fire, and shelter, which was more than many could ask for. She was actually one of the lucky ones.

Since before anyone could remember, humans across the world had lived in slavery, serving beings known by the title “vampires”. These beings ruled by violence, killing the disobedient servants and often beating slaves for mistakes. Humans that escaped slavery were normally killed before they had the chance to seek shelter, but they had grown wise to the weaknesses of vampires and so some managed to break free.

In this way, a small but well organised group of free humans had formed a resistance against the vampires. Andrea was the child of two escaped slaves, though she had never experienced such suffering herself in her eight years of life.

However, Andrea’s 8th birthday brought the greatest misery she had ever known. A branch of the army of the vampire King, seeking an end to the random destructive acts of the resistance, had discovered the location of the small settlement of huts nearest the capital city in which Andrea’s family lived. The troops moved in just after sunset, before most of the humans had risen from their beds, and took many of them prisoner. Those that fought, died.

For a long time Andrea watched in silence from the shelter of her home. Her parents, always fighters to the last, took up the sword and set upon the vampires, maiming several before they tried to head back to the house and their daughter to carry her to safety.

To her surprise, and everyone else’s, she made a massive difference. Rushing out of the house, shouting and screaming furiously, she distracted the ring of vampires long enough to create a gap in the ranks through which several humans managed to slip, unnoticed, before the vampires got hold of her and threw her angrily into a cage on the back of the transport lorry.

Andrea woke up crying from her dream. She didn’t bother to wipe the tears from her cheeks, not caring. She had cried herself to sleep often enough over the last weeks, hoping, praying that her parents had escaped and would rescue her.

A commotion from the end of the corridor. A resistance member with a yet unbroken spirit was shouting at the vampires in the corridor. Andrea couldn’t discern words before a snarl silenced the human. He would never speak again; vampiric treatment for such a minor rebellion involved cutting out the human’s tongue.

“Yes sir,” a chorus of weak, broken voices whimpered from the cells all around her. Andrea tried to answer but her dry throat wouldn’t comply. Shaking, she awaited her punishment but the vampire didn’t notice.

Hungrily Andrea rushed to the food, shoving half the bread roll into her mouth at once, barely chewing it before she swallowed it whole. Her so very empty stomach physically hurt as the bread reached it, so starved had she been over the past few weeks, but she ignored that pain and took another mouthful. Too hungry to savour it, she again swallowed it quickly but left the meat untouched, a vile temptation that she knew would break her resolve later, despite her disgust.

“The ungrateful little…” the voice of the vampire suddenly snarled from further down the corridor, having spotted the exchange. “Don’t you need my charity, slave? I could leave you to starve, but out of the kindness of my heart I bring you food, and you dare to turn it away?”

The vampire had reached her cell now, grinning sadistically as he formulated a punishment for such an unusual rebellion.

* * * * *

“What kind of slave are you looking for, your Highness?” the vampire asked, proceeding slowly down the corridor and ignoring the rebellious and foolish humans who shouted and threw themselves at the bars like dogs at the pound.

“Don’t waste my time, old man, it may well be the last thing you ever do,” the royal warned lazily. Andrea immediately decided that she didn’t like him, though she appreciated the slave trader’s whimpering pleas.

“Never, your Highness,” he gasped, stopping as he reached Andrea’s cell. “How about this one? Young, not much older than the prince according to our doctors, fairly obedient already but still, there’s a little leeway for training there…”

“Why is she chained,” he asked warily, “if she is so well trained?”

“I need to see her cleaned up a bit,” the King decided after another while watching. “and fed up a lot. I’ll take her for the week, see how she does. Then my son can decide, but if she isn’t as well trained as you pretend, I’ll have this establishment closed down and the filth in here can go for slaughter like they should have done to begin with."

Suddenly the trader was beside her, unclipping the manacles from her wrists and telling her to get up. Andrea tried to get up but wasn’t fast enough for him and ended up being dragged to her feet by the impatient trader.

Within moments the car pulled away, and Andrea was thrown around the boot as the driver shot around corners at easily one hundred miles per hour. Her head collided with the back of the chairs, which were soft, a small mercy, before the rest of her body was thrown to the right and badly bruised by the side of the car. Towards the end of the trip, her skin, pallid from her stay in the trader’s dungeons, was black and blue and covered with bruises and small cuts.

“Get her out and put her in the slave wing,” the King ordered faintly from outside of the car once they’d pulled up. Andrea couldn’t shake the dizziness and sickness she felt. “Tell some of the others to get her cleaned up. The prince isn’t to see her until tomorrow night.”