POV: Beth
The port was uglier in daylight.
At night the shadows softened the broken edges, hid the rot beneath flickering lanterns, made everything look almost romantic. In the morning, with the sun bright and merciless, there was nowhere for anything to hide—least of all me.
I stood on the docks with nothing but the clothes on my back, a half-torn coat, and a pouch holding three stolen coins that would last… not long. Men shouted as they hauled crates from ship to shore, ropes creaked, gulls screamed overhead. The smell of dried fish, unwashed bodies, and stagnant water hit harder than any slap.
I had never felt so small.
Governor’s daughter Beth would have been accompanied by guards, servants, maybe even a carriage. Today, I was just another girl in a crowded port, boots scuffed, hair wind-tangled, hands empty.
And somehow still too noticeable.
Eyes followed me wherever I went. Not because I was beautiful or noble, but because I was alone. Alone meant vulnerable. Vulnerable meant opportunity. I tugged my sleeve down tighter across my wrist, fingers digging into the fabric, obscuring the pirate mark the prince had exposed like a death sentence.
I hated that mark. Hated how hot it felt, even in the breeze, as if it knew it had cost me everything.
My stomach growled loudly enough that a passing boy glanced over. I ignored it, forcing my feet into motion. Standing still here was like bleeding in shark water.
I drifted into the market streets where the noise somehow grew worse. Vendors shouted prices, arguing with customers about the worth of bruised apples and dry bread. Children darted between legs, hands quick as lightning at coin pouches. Women bargained for scraps of meat, worry etched deep into their faces.
They were poor.
I was poorer.
A stand selling small loaves of bread caught my eye. The loaves were stale and hard, but my mouth watered anyway. I fingered the edge of my coat pocket. Three coins. Bedding, maybe. Food, maybe. Information, if I found the right drunk.
Or I could save them. For what, I didn’t know yet. Bribing a guard at the Bastion one day, maybe. Paying for a boat. Buying a weapon.
I stepped closer to the stand. The vendor—a thick-armed man with gray in his beard and suspicion in his eyes—looked me up and down.
“You buying or drooling?” he demanded.
“Looking,” I said. “How much?”
“Two coppers a loaf.”
My stomach twisted. Two loaves and I’d be nearly broke. I thanked him and moved on, though my gaze lingered on the bread. My hunger felt like claws scraping the inside of my ribs.
You can’t live soft and long, the barkeep would say later. I didn’t know that yet. I only knew that every moral choice suddenly had teeth.
Near the next stall, a small boy bumped into me, nearly knocking me sideways. I instinctively reached for my pocket—still there. His eyes flashed, quick and guilty.
I caught his wrist. “Careful,” I murmured.
He froze, eyes wide.
“I wasn’t—”
“Relax.” I sighed, letting go. “I’ve done worse in my head today.”
He stared like he didn’t know whether to run or laugh. Then he looked past me, at the bread stall, and I understood.
“Hungry?” I asked.
He shrugged one bony shoulder. “Sometimes.”
I thought of my three coins. Thought of my father in a cell, starving. Thought of Alaric’s sneer: You have no power. Thought of Adrian’s cold eyes as he called me tainted in front of the whole church.
Sometimes power isn’t a sword. Sometimes it’s deciding where two coins go.
I pressed one into the boy’s palm, closing his fingers over it before he could protest. “Go buy something before someone kinder than me changes their mind.”
He blinked at me, swallowed hard, then bolted. I watched him hand the coin to the vendor and point to the bread. The vendor sighed, but passed him a loaf.
The boy looked back once and lifted the bread in thanks before disappearing into the crowd.
My heart felt warm and hollow at once.
I walked until the stalls thinned and the buildings grew more crooked. Laundry hung from lines like surrender flags. Stray dogs dug through piles of waste in alleys. A pair of sailors argued over a knife, voices rising, then both laughed as one pulled it away with a grin. Someone shouted; someone else swore.
My feet hurt. My head ached. My stomach growled again.
The next time I saw a stall with food—this one with fruit going soft in the sun—I didn’t ask for prices. I watched. Waited. The woman running it turned to shout at a man over a crate of apples he’d dropped. Her back was to me. No one stood nearby.
The peach closest to the edge was half-bruised, half-golden.
My heart pounded. My fingers tingled.
You don’t steal, the old Beth whispered horrified.
You starve, the new Beth answered.
My hand shot out, grabbed the peach, slipped it into my pocket.
“Hey!” the vendor barked.
Panic exploded in my chest. I swung around, ready to run—but she was yelling at the man with the crate again.
Not me. Not yet.
I walked away fast, not quite running, every step a drumbeat of guilt. My cheeks burned. My palms were sweaty. I could feel the weight of that single stolen piece of fruit like a stone dragging me down.
When I turned a corner into a narrower alley, I finally pulled it out. The skin was warm from my pocket. Tears pricked my eyes, ridiculous and sudden.
I’d eaten roasted lamb and honeyed pastries at my father’s table. I’d tasted cakes as light as air at palace banquets. None of them had ever felt as heavy as this one bruised peach in my palm.
“Sorry,” I whispered—to who, I didn’t know. The vendor. My father. Whatever God still listened to pirate-spawn. “I’ll pay the world back another way.”
Then I bit into it.
Sweetness flooded my mouth, juice running down my chin and wrist. I devoured it in four messy bites, licking every drop from my fingers. Shame tangled with relief, making my chest ache.
When the peach was gone, so was whatever last piece of innocence I thought I had.
I stole more that day. Not much—a roll here, a bruised apple there, a strip of drying fish when a fight broke out and everyone turned to watch. Each theft came with the same twin sensations: the lurch of fear and the thrill of getting away with it.
Every time a hand brushed past me, I flinched, expecting fingers to clamp around my wrist, a shout, “Thief!” followed by guards and stocks and the prince’s mocking face. But somehow, luck or instinct, I slipped through, small and unnoticed.
Adrenaline made the colors of the port sharper. The sky bluer. The sea louder. Every heartbeat a little victory.
Until I pushed too far.
Near dusk, clouds rolled in, turning the light pewter. I drifted back toward the busier part of the harbor, drawn by music and shouts. A group of men had gathered around a small stage where a girl in red danced, coins clinking at her ankles. People cheered, clapped, whistled. No one watched the fringe of the crowd.
Perfect.
A drunk man swayed nearby, his coin purse hanging foolishly loose at his belt. Part of me recoiled; another part whispered just one more. Enough to buy a real meal. Maybe a knife.
I circled closer. The music drowned out everything—fiddle, drum, voices. The man laughed at something someone said, head thrown back. I slipped behind him, heart ramming my ribs, fingers sliding toward the purse.
“Careful,” someone murmured in my ear.
I jolted, yanking my hand away as if burned.
A woman stood beside me, mid-thirties maybe, with dark eyes and hair tied back in a rough knot. She wore a plain dress, a small knife at her hip, and the kind of tired smile that had seen everything twice.
“You’re clumsy,” she said. “They’ll cut your hand off for that.”
“I wasn’t—” I began.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t lie, girl. Makes you slower.”
I swallowed. “Who are you?”
“Someone who doesn’t feel like watching a child get gutted over a handful of dull coins.” She jerked her chin toward the dancing girl. “New in town.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Name?”
My chest tightened. “Mae.”
“Mm.” She didn’t push. “Mae, if you’re going to steal, at least pick better targets. Drunks notice when you touch their money more than sober men do. They’re paranoid. Haunted by all they’ve lost.”
“I don’t… steal,” I said weakly.
She snorted softly. “And I don’t work in a port that eats people alive. Come on.”
Before I could protest, she tugged me away from the crowd and into a narrow lane between two buildings. It felt like stepping into another world—quieter, shadowed, only the distant noise of harbor life leaking in.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Always,” I said honestly.
She studied me for a moment, eyes flicking over my worn coat, the stubborn set of my jaw, the way I hid my wrist. “You have the look of someone who fell from too high and hit every ledge on the way down,” she said. “You got anywhere to sleep?”
“I’ll find somewhere,” I said.
“That means no,” she translated. She sighed. “The Gull sometimes needs extra hands. Owner’s a bastard, but he pays. Mostly. Tell him Lysa sent you. He owes me. Use that.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why help me?”
She shrugged. “Had a daughter your age once. She left.” Her mouth twitched. “Or maybe I just like confusing the sea by saving the ones it wants.”
I hesitated. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “Wait until you survive a week.”
She left without waiting for more words, vanishing into the crowd like tidewater slipping back to the ocean.
I stood there, clutching the ghost of a peach’s taste in my mouth and the weight of a new direction. The Crooked Gull. Work. A room. A way to earn, instead of just take.
I still feared every corner. Every shout. Every time someone’s hand brushed my shoulder, panic flared.
But under the fear, something else had begun to root—the stubborn, desperate belief that I could build a life sharp enough to cut my enemies with.
Even if I had to steal the first bricks for it.