We're silent for a long time. Like me, Lucy collapses to the ground against the opposite wall and keeps her eyes trained on the floor, eyes unblinking. I think she's trying not to cry. Eustace, for once, is speechless. He shifts nervously on jittery legs by the bars, looking out to the empty stone room free of any decoration bar from a window we can't see out of and a broken chair, its disconnected forth leg left on the seat. There's a weight on my chest, so heavy that I might as well have been crushed underneath the Dawn Treader, as I properly process this situation.

"She can go to market." He had said. Call me crazy, but I doubt I'll be hand-picking fresh fruit tomorrow morning. Normal markets can't buy the fabrics they wore, or the jewels. I huddle my knees against my chest and bury my head between them, trying to stay as calm as possible. If I cry or scream, I don't know if these people will try to help me or they'll end up doing the same, turning us into a cage of distressed monkeys at a zoo. It doesn't help knowing we'll probably be paraded as such tomorrow.

"What do we do now?" Eustace splutters. I guess I should have appreciated the quiet while it lasted, but it's good to hear someone, even him, voice one of the many questions rolling through my head. Lucy looks up, dejected.

"I don't think there's anything we can do."

"That's ridiculous! There's an entire ship cre– " Lucy leaps up and clamps a hand over his mouth before he can finish. Eustace squirms away, apparently enough of a germaphobe to avoid contact even with his cousin.

"What if they're listening? Drinian and Reepicheep will be organizing a search party any minute now, look!" She whispers, removing her hand and pointing at the window in our cell, too high up for any of us to peer through and the wall below it worn so smooth that we can tell countless others have already scrabbled for the chance. What we can see however, is the barest tip of the sun rapidly setting, leaving a deep blue sky in its wake. Dusk.

"How long do we wait?" Lucy pauses, staring at the window. She turns to Eustace, but glances at me too.

"As long as it takes for them to get us." She stands straighter, spine rigid with faith and a warning to not doubt her, or by extension, the crew. I nod and look down again, cheek tipped against my legs as my eyes scrape over the stone beyond our bars. Once again, I mentally list the positives.

1: I'm with Lucy, who has experience in Narnia.

2: A group of merchants must be inexperienced with sword fighting compared to the Dawn Treader's crew.

3: The crew are a family who wouldn't leave anyone behind.

4: This would make an interesting book if I live through it.

Everything else I file behind a heavy door in my mind, chained so the innumerous worries won't break through and bury my measly optimism.

Lucy sits beside me. "Were you alone?" She whispers.

"Yes. I snuck off." She nods, satisfied.

"Where did they take Caspian and Edmund?" I ask through a lump in my throat. The worst possibilities sneak into view, teasing me as if they were a brash puppet show.

"The dungeons." My shoulders slump in relief. Nothing too bad can happen if they're locked away, unless that cage also contains a feral lion, which I heavily doubt. "They're going to sell us as slaves." She adds. Her eyes are drowned in fear, any previous hope diminished by the unspeakable possibilities that wait for us come morning.

I manoeuvre my hands the best I can around her shoulders. Before they threw me in the cell, they reshackled my arms in front, most likely so that I wouldn't dislocate my shoulder with the way they were stretched backwards. I wouldn't be a very good slave in that state. Lucy rests her head on my shoulder. "They're not going to sell us. We've got Drinian coming for us. And Reepicheep, and Marco, and Tavros. Who's going to stop Tavros from getting us, eh?" She laughs briefly. Their names bring an unexpected level of comfort. I hold them close to my heart as I turn to the window and watch the sky darken, eventually drifting into a dreamless sleep.

Bang!

I jump, thrown forcefully from sleep and slide ungracefully onto my side on the filthy floor. Thankfully, my chained hands are no longer hanging around Lucy's neck. She must have moved them to curl into a ball in the corner. A second later, two men with copper skin and jet-black hair stride into the room carrying five bowls between them. They unlock a hatch set in the bars and slide them through before locking it again and leaving. They don't say a single word but fix their deep, bottomless eyes on each of us in turn; I imagine a price stamped to our foreheads – we're not even people anymore.

The food they bring us is a questionable grey-brown mush. I gag with each spoonful, and by the fifth I give up and slide it far away from me. One of the women who had been brought here before we were snatches it up immediately, finishing it in seconds. I hope that when we get out of here, as I know we will, we can free them too.

A while later, four merchants enter the room. Two of them are holding long, thick chains that clink as they walk, another unlocks the bars with a busy ring of keys and the forth stands by the exit holding two swords. No opportunity for an ambush, then. "UP!" The one who unlocked the bars and has now dragged them open enough to fit through one person orders. When I stand, I take a small measure of comfort in the fact that the floor is finally steady beneath my feet and my head clear of any lingering dizziness.

The merchant reaches through and grabs one of the women by her sleeve. She yelps, shaking as he pushes her to the men with the chains, linking her shackles to them. One by one, we're removed from the cell and attached to the weighted metal, all strung together in a line. I'm the last to leave, and the hand that pushes me through is low on my back. Very low and dares to go lower in the second before I scrabble from his reach. My entire body tenses and it takes every ounce of self-restraint I have not to turn around and throttle him with my shackles. Instead I dig my nails into my palms so hard they bleed and take grim pleasure in the pricks of pain, which currently feels like the only thing I own. The only thing I can call mine.

We shuffle out of the room and through a bleak maze of stone corridors, occasionally having the metal scrape against our skin as we're tugged to hurry up. Down a route that's as complicated and twisted as the way we arrived, we eventually arrive in an open square.

The sun is high and bright, unkindly mocking our situation with its inappropriate shine. This place should be grey. Cold and unforgiving with a sky of dense rainclouds and rumbling thunder. Instead it looks closer to the charming ideas I dreamt of before, buildings soaking in the warm golden glow that miraculously lessens the impression of an unloved and abandoned home the space radiated yesterday. Men walk around in flowing robes of every colour, flaunting their wealth that is undoubtedly paved with bloodshed. They assemble platforms and tables, but soon we're whisked off again across a downward slope, at the end of which I can see the sea.

It appears to be the same port we arrived at. I now recognize that the path we travel down is the same way Caspian, Lucy, Edmund and Eustace chose yesterday – but our boats are gone. The four longboats we had tied to the posts have been replaced with ones of a lower, thicker build and the horizon is empty of the familiar purple mast. Dread trickles in slow at first, carving an ice-cold path down my spine. I shiver and the bonds around my wrists seem to weigh heavier than before.

We approach a slanted wall, a row of prisoners already chained to it by their wrists and soon we're forced to the ground and given the same treatment. My heart beat quickens, and I try to look around as casually as I can, searching desperately for a sign that we haven't been abandoned. It wouldn't happen. It couldn't. Caspian and Edmund were taken too, and it's impossible to believe for a second that if they had been rescued Edmund would dare to leave without Lucy. It's unimaginable. I hope, foolishly (but fuelled by his frantic yelling yesterday), that Caspian thinks similarly with me.

The island sparks with uneasy life, an undeniable expectancy threading everyone together as they move through the streets in groups, watching those around them in suspicion. In the distance I hear wheels crunching over gravel and an anguished scream. A cart rolls around the far end of the island, filled with villagers frozen in fear, forcing everyone on the street to cling to the walls or run clear off. Sprinting behind it is a man, his desperation so clear it's painful. "ELAINE!" He screams, throat hoarse. A nearby merchant punches him in the jaw and sends him careening to the hard ground. "I'LL FIND YOU!" He calls after the cart as it travels through an archway and past us, stopping at the port.

I watch in fretful anticipation as each passenger is hauled onto one of the longboats, counted by a broad man cloaked in red. He waits until the cart is empty and marches over to us, each step seemingly magnified with dark purpose. I hope I'm imagining the floor quaking with each step he takes. My body instinctively shrinks in on itself, shaking as I push my knees into my chest and curve my back to enclose them, desperately trying to look as insignificant as possible.

His head is decorated with a thick stripe of midnight hair down the centre of his skull, each half patterned with elaborate red and black imagery of weapons woven through vines. On his shoulders are golden pads carved into the heads of serpents, forked tongues of chainmail rolling down to his wrists where they link to gauntlets embedded with silver coins. With his red robes, alarmingly more vibrant than those of the other merchants, and obsidian eyes, he reminds me of the Devil.

The blood pounding in my ears drowns out the surrounding sounds as the Devil scans the line of prisoners. He takes a deliberately measured step forward and I, along with several others, flinch. Within the depths of his thick beard, I see his mouth twitch with a smile. The next time his eyes pass languidly across us, he stops on the woman next to me; she immediately begins to shake, chains rattling as she holds her hands up in a prayer. He strolls over to her, relishing her fear, before hoisting her up by her wrists. She cries out, feet barely grazing the floor and tears streaming down her face leaving clean trails through the layer of dirt while another merchant, weedy and only as high as the Devil's chest, scuttles over and unlocks her. I stare at him and feel the ice cold dread that licked my spine spread like spiderwebbed glass over my body, seeing the way he looks at her as if she were merely an ant destined to die under his boot. The Devil drags her to the longboat, dropping her in the centre and nodding at the man beside the boat before stepping away.

Nobody speaks as the boats are untied from the posts and pushed out to sea. The locals stop in their paths, horrified but unable to look away, as the previously blue sky darkens. Charcoal clouds descend over the sea bathing the area in shadow, the boats turned to inky smudges. Dancing across the water beneath the clouds is mist. Acid green with an ominous inner glow, curling and rolling as if it were a living being performing for its frozen audience. It bounds to the boats with a disturbing speed and wraps itself around them like a hug.

Then, it's gone. The mist. The clouds. The boats. Vanished like they had never existed. With a resignation that appears routine, the crowd disperses. Through a crack in my defences, all my worries crash through like an unforgiving storm churning every optimism I had to wayward splinters, choking the air from my lungs and replacing the blood in my veins with pure, visceral dread.

They're dead. These people are murderers and they're going to kill us too. Did the same already happen to the Dawn Treader? Are they all dead? Caspian, Edmund - are they gone too? What if we're stuck here as slaves? I'll be trapped. I'll lose my humanity. Lucy and Eustace are kids, they can't go through this.

What do I do?

I choke. The air is gone from my lungs, morphing itself into frozen hands that clutch my heart and circle my throat, getting tighter and tighter and tighter –

"Amber! Amber look at me. We're okay. Amber, please. Please he's going to notice!" I hear Lucy plead, her voice muffled from its place above the sea I'm drowning in. I struggle for breath, each inhale a measly wisp, buffering like a stuck vinyl. From my right, Lucy awkwardly takes my hands in hers and squeezes. The pressure is grounding. I look to her and watch as she breathes deep, encouraging me to do the same. My chest heaves in protest, determined to starve my lungs of oxygen, but I force myself through. I check in with my senses to further solidify my current reality. I'm on land. I'm sat on the floor. The stone is cold but it is not the ocean. I'm not drowning. The air is dusty and dry. It's not wet. I'm not drowning. I'm not drowning. I'm not drowning.

My eyes flick to Eustace who snaps his head to the port in panic. I follow his sight to the Devil – the man who's currently on his way back to us. I stop breathing completely, looking to the floor and wiping my eyes of the stray tears as quickly as I can. I force a long, slow breath out, driven back to sanity by the fear I feel when I look at the Devil. Be unnoticeable. Be insignificant. Be calm, I tell myself.

He walks by without another glance. This time when I exhale, I'm joined by the remaining prisoners who all stare at his retreating form with the same horror I know is echoed across my own face.

A glint catches my eye. A man in a simple navy cloak, a peasant's attire, strides by with a reserved confidence. Concealed beneath his robe is a sword, the handle of which is gold and crafted to resemble the fragile structure of a bird's nest.

A design we had on the Dawn Treader.

A design that was made for the Dawn Treader, a unique pattern courtesy of Mr Diesmich.

I don't want to get my hopes up. Well, I do, but I shouldn't. I do not doubt that the depth to which evil has claimed this island for its own is far deeper than what it would take to wipe out a ship's crew and claim their weapons and resources for their own, though I'm unwilling to explore just how firmly corruption has sunk its teeth into this place by finding out what else they're prepared to do beyond that.

Unfortunately, I'm about to get a taste of it. Merchants descend from the open square and deliberate over which of us to take with them. After a few minutes, I'm being hauled up on unsteady legs along with Lucy, Eustace, a woman dressed in a lilac dress and a faun. I try to ignore the watchful eyes we pass on the way there and how their gazes seem to burrow underneath my skin like an unmitigable itch.

When we reach the square, I can't help but feel faint, as if the devastatingly heavy reality of the situation is only just nestling itself into my brain now I'm in the position to see it stretch out like a play. An ornately gold chair rests behind a raised platform, decorated with a plush cream cushion currently occupied by the emerald man from the day before. "She can go to market." I wouldn't consider myself a violent person. Having been unfortunately stuck with some for my younger years, and later wanting to avoid having my mental wellbeing plagued by war fatigue, I've strayed from that path. However… I wouldn't mind using some of my newfound sword skills to bring that vile creature to his knees.

A crowd of men mill around the space, muttering in groups as they assess us. It's curious how eyes seemingly of the same colour can have wildly different impressions on a person. The slave traders, for example, have devious blots of black set deep into weathered faces; the idea of me reaching out and smudging them like ink, having them spread across their socket and transforming their faces into those of demons doesn't seem impossible. If anything, it would suit the canine grins and gravelly voices. Then there's Caspian. His eyes, though the same deep, brown-black as the men here, offer an inexplicable comfort that I can only relate to the feeling of having an indulgent hot chocolate at the end of a long day. I hope I can survive long enough to see them again.

I'm hoisted up by my shoulders and onto the platform by a man in burnished gold. I try to manoeuvre my legs the best I can and succeed in landing a swift kick to his shin, making him swear in a language I'm unfamiliar with. My reward is the briefest rush of satisfaction and a burning pain across my wrist, so sudden that it makes me jump back and hiss at the pain. The crowd laughs. I look down to my forearm and see an ugly red welt develop on the skin below my shackles, the now red-faced slave trader brandishing a cane. He turns to the crowd and smiles wide. "Do I hear 50?" He gives the silence only a second to fester. "Come on now, she's not dangerous. A bit of training and she'll be as good as anything!"

"80!" Somebody yells. The crowd thickens, mostly men in cloaks but wary families fold themselves against the far walls, watching on. I can't tell if they're watching out of pity, relief that it's not them up here, or fascination. I'm not sure which is best.

"100!"

"140!"

"Sold, 140!" A slab of chalk is dropped over my neck as I'm removed from the platform and put beside a long table behind it. I didn't even see who called out. As I scan the crowd, hope taps me on the shoulder.

Is that… Is that Fiedan?

It is!

Wait. Kiers? Talos?

Marco?

It's them. They're here!

I concentrate all my energy into not grinning like a lunatic. I highly doubt that's the typical response to being sold like a cheap ornament and I'm certainly not about to ruin their plan when lives are on the line. We only have one shot at this. I can see that much. At the front of the crowd is the figure in the navy robe and from my position I can see the bottom half of his face – rigidly square and tight-lipped. Oh Drinian, how I've missed you in these past 16 hours.

Lucy is dropped beside me. I try to subtly draw her attention to the crowd, which I can now see is half full of our men. She scans them as I did, eyebrows raising in a moments surprise before she schools her expression, though her shoulders tense as she stands straighter. How we're going to help fight our way out of this while chained, I have no idea. But we will.

Up high, I hear a door bang open. I turn instinctively and repress a sigh of relief when I see Caspian and Edmund being escorted across a wooden balcony that overlooks the market square with no apparent injuries. I would have thought they would try to fight their way to freedom using as much force as necessary and suffer the consequences, but we're lucky. Their presence is fuel for the fire of hope burning to life in my chest, growing steadily as I watch the crowd shift. Eustace is on the stand, drawing no bids, when Drinian steps forward.

"I'll take them off your hands. I'll take them all off your hands!" He throws his hood back, Reepicheep immediately launching from his shoulder and onto the auctioneer which sends the man spinning like a dog chasing its tail. A Narnian cry crests the crowd like a thundering wave as the crew of the Dawn Treader shed their disguises and toss them over confused merchants, launching into battle.

I run right, no destination in mind but merely unwilling to be a statuesque sideliner and get immediately cut off by the man who hauled me out of the cell this morning. Without thinking, I twist behind him and throw my hands over his head, yanking the chains against his neck until he splutters and flails. When I see him reaching for the cutlass holstered at his hip, I kick the back of his knee and detach myself, spinning ungracefully across the stone as he stumbles forward. When I steady myself, my shoulder hits something hard. A hand shoots out and grabs my elbow, adding pressure I already know will bloom bruises in the shape of fingertips. He bares his yellow teeth and leans in, head snapping back harshly when I launch my free arm into his nose, awkwardly trying to angle it so that the shackle does the damage. I stomp onto his foot for good measure, but his clutch on my arm is like a vice and together we fall backwards into one of the tables, collapsing it under our combined weight.

My shoulder throbs and my lungs are empty of air, shards of wood poking into me from all angles. The man holding me tries to free his arm from the rubble, the other still clutching mine, so I bring my leg up and attempt to kick him in the stomach. My foot barely nudges him but gives him more incentive to shuffle his left arm free and bring it to my neck. This time I bring both my legs up, knees as far into my stomach as they'll go, before pushing with all the strength I can muster. The grip on my throat loosens enough for me to yank my head backwards and free completely. Then, I bite him. He screams as I sink my teeth into his palm, trying not to breath in in case I retch, and tries to pull away. I fight instinct and bite harder until he lets go of my arm and tries pulling at his wrist to free his mangled hand. I let go, spitting blood, and roll out of his reach so I can crawl to relative safety. There's a stinging in my side where I think the splinted table pierced my skin, but I can't focus on that right now.

"Amber, here!" Reepicheep jumps over a fallen, groaning body to me to unlock my chains with his sword. I barely have time to say thank you before he's off again, stabbing ankles with impressive speed.

I stand up and watch Lucy use a giant book to take down two attackers, mentally noting to never cross her. Nearby another merchant is taken down, knocked unconscious with his sword hanging from limp fingers. It's an invitation if I ever saw one. Ducking underneath a wildly swung sword, I reach out and claim the fallen blade, immediately feeling more confident now I'm armed with something other than my flailing limbs. Out of the corner of my eye I see something swooping down from above – no. Not something.

Someone.

Caspian lands spryly on solid ground, releasing the rope he used to swing across like Tarzan and deflects a hit from an attacker. With another hit the man is clutching his nose on the floor, but I'm already running in his direction. I hope this blade is sharp enough. "Caspian!" I call. He turns and notes my sword, immediately holding out his arms and pulling the chain taut. I have to swing three times before the links break enough to be fully wrenched apart and when they do, he refuses to take the sword I offer.

"Keep it, I can find another." He insists before chasing after a merchant attempting to flee. I look towards the fight and spend a few seconds appreciating the sheer power of the Dawn Treader crew. Maybe it's the pent-up energy from weeks at sea where the fights have no real stakes, or the depth of the truth in Caspian's early declaration. "I accept only the best men in my crew." We're overpowering the slave traders more with every second, cutting off their escape routes and rendering them immobile.

For a while, I simply watch. I soak in their skill and their bravery and use it to find my own.

Then, I leave the square.

A/N: I really wanted to get this chapter out on International Women's Day, but I've hit a bit of a slump so it took longer than expected. Nevertheless, I hope you spent the day appreciating the incredible women in your lives (including yourself, if you identify as such). Also, if you're reading this within the first couple of months of when I publish it, go see Captain Marvel in cinemas if you can! It's a wonderful film with a wonderful cast that's being unfairly rallied against by certain groups but deserves all the love and support in the world. Believe me, you won't regret it.