My stomach twisted. Not in fear, but anticipation.
That was Vincent’s raft—I knew it the sa way I knew when soone was lying: it didn’t matter how, I just did. The bastard had made it here before us. Sohow.
"Get ready," I said, snapping out of my trance. "We’re going up."
The rafts bumped against the side of the ship with gentle, awkward thuds, like drunk kisses on expensive doors. The ladder creaked, each rung sagging under our weight as we climbed. I led the charge, because of course I did—because I’m the one who runs toward impossible things with daggers in my belt and too much sass in my bloodstream.
Aria followed, then Leo, then Miko. Willow stayed behind just long enough to command the nobles into forming a loose circle and not dying in embarrassing ways.
My arms burned. The salt bit into my palms. The climb went on forever, like the ship had been built by soone allergic to logic and horny for altitude.
Then, finally—I crested the top.
And was ready for a fight.
What I found instead was madness.
Color, light, sound, and music.
A party.
A fucking party.
The top deck was a riot of chaos and laughter, packed elbow-to-ass with pirates dressed in more layers than taste allowed. They moved like flas—erratic and hungry—with clothes that clashed so violently I felt personally attacked by every scarf, belt, and sash.
The wood beneath their boots thudded with rhythm as a band played furiously from the starboard side: drums, strings, pipes, all led by a bard so small she looked like she’d been cut from a pocket and sprinkled with spice.
She stood on a barrel, hair tied back in a ssy braid, a red scarf around her throat, and a grin that could make angels develop kinks. Her voice carried high into the mist, clear and lodic and too powerful for her size, singing so old sea shanty about rum, revenge, and things you shouldn’t do with a harpoon.
None of them noticed us.
Or maybe they did.
And just didn’t give a shit.
I moved forward slowly, weaving through dancers and drinkers, past one pirate who was juggling knives and another who was deep-throating a banana with the precision of a man who had trained in monasteries of oral devotion.
Aria kept close, eyes wide. Miko muttered sothing about cursed parties always starting with music. Leo was trying his hardest not to deck anyone. I reached out, tapped a woman on the shoulder—tall, scarred, with one gold tooth and an ass you could use for furniture.
She turned.
I opened my mouth.
She shoved a tankard in my face.
"Drink?" she said, eyes glittering with laughter.
"I—uh, no, thank you," I replied, as dignified as I could be while being offered liquor by soone who looked like she could suplex into holy revelation.
She laughed, slapped my chest, and sauntered off to grind against soone wearing six eyepatches.
I turned to my party.
Miko was already being groped. Aria was cornered by two pirates asking if he sang and if so, how high could he get. Leo had vanished. Willow was on deck now, twirling into the crowd like she was ho.
Then I heard the cough.
It was loud. Deliberate. A single, sharp thing cutting through the sea of noise.
I turned.
And stared up at a man who made the word tall seem like an insult.
He was well over six feet, dressed in fine layers of threadbare fashion that might’ve once been noblewear but now scread "I kill things for a living and look good doing it." His shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, revealing a scarred chest and a pendant shaped like a skeletal fish. He had long black hair, streaked with silver, and a smirk carved from moonlight and murder.
"You lookin’ for the Captain?" he said, voice smooth and soaked in rum.
I blinked. "I...think so?"
"Follow ."
He didn’t wait. I regathered by crew and followed behind him, down a narrow stairwell, past more pirates, so sleeping, so fucking, one actively writing poetry while peeing. The ship’s inside was no less strange than its deck. Everything felt too alive—like the walls breathed, like the floor rembered every footstep and judged each one with quiet reverence.
He led us to a door at the very end of a winding hallway. Then opened it. I stepped inside, and stopped.
Because everything changed. There was no rocking. No sound. No wind. No sll.
Just stillness, and overbearing silence.
The room was stone. Solid and windowless. Lit by a single hanging lantern that glowed with soft, white light. Bookshelves lined the walls. A desk sat at the center. And at the desk?
A man. Slumped back, face planted in a book, snoring softly.
The pirate beside stepped forward, picked up the book like it was a dirty rag, then—with no ceremony whatsoever—slapped the sleeping man across the face.
Hard. The crack echoed.
My jaw dropped.
The man jerked upright, blinking wildly, beard tangled, hair a shaggy mop of silver and defiance. One of his eyes was hidden beneath an eyepatch. And where a second eye should have been?
Glass.
How he could see at all was a mystery, but gods help , the man grinned like he saw everything.
"Well, shit," he said, voice like gravel stirred into whiskey. "Guests already? And I didn’t even put pants on."
"You’re wearing pants," I muttered.
"Not emotionally," he replied, reaching beneath the desk to produce a chipped teapot and several mismatched cups. "Tea?"
"No thank you."
He poured himself a cup. Took a long sip. Then exhaled like he’d just swallowed soone’s soul.
"Na’s Captain Kane," he said, not even pausing. "Welco aboard the Blackbane. Ho of pirates, prophets, perverts, and the last checkpoint between you and the next floor of this cursed Tower."
He reached into his coat, pulled out a large sheet of paper, and squinted at it like it had offended him in a past life.
"According to official decree blah blah I am required to inform you that blah blah vessel blah represents passage yadda yadda your survival depends on—fuck, I’m bored."
He dropped the scroll. It fluttered to the floor with all the grace of a wounded pigeon.
.
The tall pirate beside him coughed loudly.
Captain Kane blinked slowly—then not slowly at all—shaking himself like soone snapping out of a very specific kind of nap, the kind that left whiskey stains and soul regrets in its wake. He flung the paper aside with all the grace of a man tossing away his last ounce of patience, the scroll arcing across the room like an afterthought that had outstayed its welco.
"Right, enough with the ceremonial ass-sniffing," he muttered, waving one callused hand through the air. "Let’s cut the bullshit and speak plainly. You lot—Tower Dwellers. Obvious as sin on a bishop."
I raised a brow, imdiately stepping forward. "Tower Dwellers? You says that as if your any different. Hate to break it to you, Captain, but we’re just as trapped in the Tower as you are."
He let out a bellow that shook the room—loud, wet, amused—and sohow, inexplicably, a tear rolled down his glass eye, catching the lamplight with a flash that made doubt every known law of physics, logic, and ocular functionality.
"Oh, child," he laughed, clutching his chest like he’d just been told a joke only the gods could appreciate. "You think this place is part of the Tower? Gods below, your ignorance is adorable."
That stopped cold. The words didn’t hit like an insult. They hit like truth.
But one I wasn’t ready to recognize yet.
I squinted at him, heat rising behind my eyes. "That’s impossible. We ca here directly from the island. The greenhouse. The jungle. The rafts. All of it was Tower-structured. We’re still inside the labyrinth no doubt."
"Are you?" he asked softly, with a knowing grin that made the skin on my back itch. "Think back, Tower boy. When you walked into this room—did the floor sway?"
I opened my mouth. Froze.
No.
No, it hadn’t.
I hadn’t even thought about it until now. The mont I crossed the threshold into the captain’s quarters, everything stilled. The floor beca stone. Not planks. Not creaking. Just.. room. My legs never adjusted. Because they didn’t need to.
He leaned forward on his elbows, voice dropping to a near-whisper. "You’re not in the Tower anymore. Not fully. Haven’t been since you set foot in this space."
My throat tightened. Sothing in the back of my brain scread at to reject it. That I was being played. Lied to. Manipulated by a man with a drunken aura and half a real eye.
But I felt it. The shift. The quiet. The wrongness.
I swallowed hard, heart thudding in my ribs like a warning drum. "Then...where are we?"
Kane’s smile widened just enough to show a chipped molar and sothing gold tucked in the gap beside it.
"This ship," he said, rising slowly from his chair, "was crafted by hands that understood more than the Tower. More than you or . I won her in a duel ages ago. Her na, her heart, her rooms—they all answer to different laws."
His eyes flicked over to Aria. And for the briefest mont—just a flicker—sothing else stirred behind that gold-glinting stare. A tension. A question. A recognition. His mouth parted, as if to say sothing—then he didn’t. He stopped. Shut it down and looked away.
"Right now," he went on, voice brisk, as if erasing the mont, "this particular room is sowhere in the Sea of Hollows. Don’t ask how. I couldn’t map it if I tried. I only know it’s not on any compass worth a damn, and you don’t find it. It finds you. This room just happens to be anchored to the Blackbane. One door on the deck, one door to the void. All of it connected. None of it consistent."
"The Sea of what-now?" I asked, furrowing my brow like it owed an apology.
"Doesn’t matter," he said imdiately, cutting the question off with a wave of his hand. "You won’t need to understand it. You’re just passing through."
.
He downed the rest of his tea, placed the cup on the desk, and clapped his hands together once, loud and final. "Which brings us to business."
The words thudded in my ears like a war drum.
I straightened, sniffed, and took a half-step forward. "Then you can get us to the next floor."
"Of course I can," he said with a smirk. "Saw it myself. Clear as glass. The path to the next elevator exists sowhere only I know of."
I exhaled. Then frowned.
"Have you seen soone else co through recently? A man. Late twenties. Coat like arrogance tailored into fabric. Eyes like winter and a startling lack of fingers."
Kane blinked.
Then—he paled.
The room darkened just a bit around the edges.
"I have," he said, slowly. "Didn’t speak much. Just showed up. Asked questions. Smiled like the devil and bled like a saint. He nearly killed ."
My heart dropped into my stomach like a lead weight.
So it was him.
Vincent had been here. Gotten here first. Already moved on, probably. Already slithered his way into the next arc of this goddamn nightmare before I’d even figured out which direction I was supposed to bleed.
I clenched my fists. Felt the pulse of anger flare just beneath my skin.
Then I straightened, eyes locking to Kane’s.
"Where’s the elevator?"
The Captain’s face brightened imdiately. Like soone had just offered him dessert.
"Oh, I’ll show you," he purred. "I’ll even walk you to it, arm-in-arm, with all the grace of a man escorting his favorite flavor of regret."
I narrowed my eyes. "What’s the price?"
He leaned forward, both hands flat on the desk.
And then.
His eyes raked .
Up and Down, not subtle in the slightest. Not polite, hungry.
Not the kind that ends with dinner and conversation. The kind that ends with sothing far ssier. His lips parted—just slightly. His smile didn’t fade. If anything, it deepened.
My jaw locked. I stumbled backward half a step before covering the movent with a well-practiced cough. "Oh. No. Absolutely not."
Willow let out a low, thrilled giggle.
"I volunteer!" she chirped, raising a hand like we were in class and she wanted extra credit for sluttiness. "You can have for a night. Hell, you can have twice."
Captain Kane turned his head slowly. Smiled at her. Then back at .
And said, "No."
Just that.
"No?"
"I don’t want her. I want you."
Willow made a noise sowhere between a cough and a swoon. Aria clapped excitedly. Miko facepald hard enough to knock a few brain cells loose. I stood there, motionless, my dignity crumpling sowhere behind my knees. The Captain’s assistant pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered sothing like "not again" under his breath.
I tried to speak. Tried to say sothing witty, sothing cutting, sothing that would salvage my pride from the teeth of this lascivious pirate.
Instead, all I managed was:
"You want ?"
"Yes," Kane replied, delight thick in his throat.
My soul left my body and filed for retirent. Aria was squeaking sothing about "he does have nice hips."
And ? I had an identity crisis. Right there, in the middle of the room. Wondering how the hell I got here. Why the gods had decided that progression required prostitution. Why every elevator seed to ask to lower myself in new and exciting ways.
But, progress was progress. And I had a skill.
Divine Femform.
I muttered the activation word, trying not to grit my teeth too loudly.
Light shimred over in a quick flicker, pulling muscle into curve, height into softness, jawline into sothing more poetic. My clothes adjusted themselves like well-trained lovers. My voice hitched into velvet. My fra compacted into sothing beautiful and dangerous, androgynous and annoyingly irresistible.
The transformation finished with a soft breath of glittering air.
I stood there.
Tall-ish, curvy, and sexy in a way that felt like I’d been designed by an artist with ADHD and too many feelings. Captain Kane howled with laughter, one hand clutching his stomach, the other slamming the desk.
"Now that’s what I’m talking about!" he cried. "Oh, I love a versatile offering."
I flushed. Not delicately, full-faced and crimson.
Willow bit her lip and moaned theatrically. "Cecil, please let keep this version of you. Just for a few nights. Or hours. Or minutes. Hell, I’ll take thirty seconds."
Aria covered her face, but I could see her blushing. Miko didn’t even look up and yet I caught a faint smile cresting his lips. Kane beckoned forward, motioning to a door behind him.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and followed him.
Because the price of passage?
Was my pride.
And at this point—I had already mortgaged most of that years ago.
Reviews
All reviews (0)