POV: Beth
The first thing I bought with my stolen freedom was a name.
Not my own, of course. Beth Hadley, governor’s daughter, rejected bride, pirate-marked disgrace—that girl would get me hanged the moment some drunk decided my face matched a rumor. So when the barkeep squinted at me from behind his counter and asked, “Name?”, I didn’t hesitate.
“Mae,” I said. “Just Mae.”
The lie tasted strange on my tongue, like I’d bitten into unripe fruit. But it held. The barkeep grunted, wiped his hands on a cloth that was more grease than fabric, then slid a tankard toward a waiting sailor without sparing me another look.
Mae. I could live with Mae.
The tavern was called The Crooked Gull, and everything in it lived up to the name. The floor leaned, the ceiling beams sagged, the tables slanted as if they were halfway through giving up. Most of the patrons leaned too—from rum, exhaustion, or lives lived with one foot in the grave and the other on a rotten plank. I clutched the strap of my satchel and felt the weight of every glance crawl over my skin.
“You looking for work or trouble?” the barkeep asked, cutting his eyes back to me. “Because we’re full up on trouble.”
“I’m looking for work,” I said, straightening my shoulders. My simple brown coat itched at the collar—nothing like Alaric’s dramatic black one, but at least it didn’t scream stolen noble. “I can carry. Clean. Serve. I don’t steal.”
He snorted. “Then you’re the only one in this port who doesn’t.” His gaze slid down to my boots and back up. “You any good with a tray, Mae?”
“I’ll learn.”
“Learning gets you broken plates,” he muttered. “And broken plates come out of your pay. You spill on my regulars, you apologize before they stab you. That clear?”
“As seawater,” I said.
He huffed something like a laugh and jerked his head toward the chaos. “Apron’s hanging by the kitchen door. Congratulations. You’re hired.”
It was the closest thing to a contract I’d ever had.
By nightfall, my arms shook from carrying sloshing tankards and heavy platters. Men shouted at me, grabbed for me, cursed when I didn’t move fast enough. I dodged hands, dodged knives, dodged puddles I didn’t want to identify. Fights sparked in the corners and flared into full brawls, but the barkeep barely blinked unless furniture broke. Once, a chair shattered a step from my ankle; I jumped, heart pounding, but no one asked if I was hurt.
Common life, it turned out, didn’t pause for my shock.
On the second night, a drunk sailor hooked an arm around my waist and dragged me into his lap. His breath reeked of sour ale and half-rotten fish. My heart nearly bolted out of my chest. Old Beth would have frozen, eyes welling, waiting for a guard or my father to appear and fix it.
Mae had no one.
I dug my fingers into his shoulder and smiled with every sharp tooth I had.
“If you don’t let go,” I said sweetly, “you’ll wear your drink instead of drinking it.”
He laughed, tightening his grip. “And who’s gonna make me, little gull? You?”
Kaine’s rough voice flashed through my memory. Use what you have. Hit what hurts. For once, I obeyed.
I tilted the tankard I was carrying and dumped the entire thing over his head.
Ale drenched his hair, beard, and shirt in one glorious splash. He sputtered, swore, and lurched to his feet, sending me stumbling back. His fist drew back, knuckles white.
The barkeep slammed a heavy club onto the counter with a crack.
“You break my girl, Darrin,” he growled, “you drink pisswater next time you crawl through that door. Up to you.”
Darrin glared between us, ale dripping off his nose. He spat on the floor, muttered something about “mouthy wenches,” and staggered away.
Only then did my knees start shaking.
“Get used to it,” the barkeep said, shoving another tray into my hands as if nothing had happened. “This isn’t a church, Mae.”
No. It really wasn’t.
Days blurred into each other. Scrub tables until the wood finally showed under centuries of grime. Haul barrels that bit into my palms. Dodge hands that thought my body was part of their payment. At the end of each shift, I counted a few small copper coins into my pocket and climbed the narrow stairs to the tiny room the barkeep rented me: a cot, a cracked basin, a splintered window overlooking an alley that smelled like piss and seawater.
And yet…
There was a quiet, stubborn freedom in it.
No father watching my posture at dinner. No nobles picking apart the quality of my dress. No prince holding my future like a sword over my head. No captain grinning while he set my world on fire. If I failed here, it would be because I failed. If I survived, it would be because I learned how.
In the evenings, when I finished wiping tables, I leaned in the doorway with my own chipped mug of watered ale and watched the tavern spiral. Men laughed with missing teeth and full hearts. Women with rough hands and sharper eyes bargained for higher prices and better nights. Dice clattered. Knives flashed. Someone sang off-key. Someone cried, face in their arms, over a lover never coming back.
A pair of pirates argued loudly about the Kraken.
“A mile away, I tell you,” one insisted, slamming his mug down. “Eyes like lanterns. Tentacles thicker than masts.”
“Closer,” the other argued. “Close enough I could smell its breath. Smelled like old storms and graves.”
I listened.
I soaked it all in.
I learned that the world didn’t divide cleanly into noble and wicked. Some pirates tipped well and treated the serving girls gently. Some “respectable” merchants tried to cheat on every coin. People lied as easily about love as they did about gold. Mercy could get you killed; cruelty chipped pieces from your soul until you didn’t recognize what was left.
More than once, a knot of rough-looking pirates lingered too long at the edge of the bar, eyes sliding over me like knives.
“You’re wasting pretty eyes on broken mugs,” one told me, flipping a coin over his fingers. “Our captain pays triple what this dump does. Come with us.”
“I like my throat uncut,” I said, breezing past.
Another leaned in close enough that his beard scratched my cheek. “Need someone small to slip through windows. You’d come back richer than you ever dreamed, girl.”
“I’d rather come back alive,” I answered, and stepped on his boot as I moved away.
They laughed, but it wasn’t friendly. It sounded like wolves circling a lamb and deciding to wait until she tired.
The port seeped into my bones. Street fights broke out over a single copper. Children darted between legs and hands, slipping pouches from belts with quick little fingers. Women shouted curses at husbands from windows above, hands on their hips. Men bargained over crates of stolen cloth and crates of stolen people with the same casual intensity.
Once, a man crumpled outside the tavern door, clutching his stomach, blood spreading between his fingers. No one screamed. No one ran for a physician. People stepped over him, walked around him, barely even looked.
In my father’s house, that sight would have brought servants, guards, panicked whispers of “fetch the doctor.” Here, the world kept turning.
“First time?” the barkeep asked, noticing how pale I’d gone.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“It won’t be the last,” he said. “You can live soft, or you can live long. Not both.”
That night, lying on the narrow cot, I stared at the cracked ceiling and repeated his words in my head. I thought of Rowan in some reeking cell, tortured because he tried to give me a soft life and hide the teeth of the world. I thought of Adrian, watching my ruin with cold, perfect disdain. I thought of Alaric, blade bright in his hand, choosing survival over mercy without blinking.
Common life was harsh, filthy, loud—and yet liberating in ways the palace never was. Every insult I survived, every bruise that faded, every coin I counted alone taught me something:
The world owed me nothing.
If I wanted justice, I would have to carve it out myself.
And the girl who once dreamed of ballrooms and rose gardens began to dream instead of maps, and ships, and swords—and of one prince’s blood, bright against stone.