Chapter 6: The Cargo Hold
Exhausted and bleeding, I stumbled out of the servants' stairwell into a disused corridor—only to find Lyra waiting, leaning against a marble bust of some forgotten king. Lyra's smile is sharp as a blade. "I felt you break the rules, little sister."
After that, there was nothing.
Black. Like sleep but fake. A void without dreams, a total cessation. Not peaceful. An erased section of tape.
When I woke up, my hands were tied behind my back. The coarse rope bit into my wrists, already slick with what I hoped was sweat. A thick, sour-tasting cloth was jammed in my mouth, secured by a tighter knot at the back of my head. My tongue pushed against it, useless.
And I was stuck in some sort of box.
Panic arrived first, a chemical flood that made my heart stutter against my ribs. I thrashed, a blind, writhing rebellion. My shoulders jammed against wooden sides. My head cracked against a lid mere inches above my face. The space was a narrow coffin, just wide enough to contain me. Splinters caught in my hair and the wool of my cloak.
The movement stopped something else. A deep, nauseating roll. A lurch that had nothing to do with me.
The sound registered next. A long, low groan of protesting timber. A rhythmic, liquid slap. Water against wood.
I was on a ship.
The panic crystallized into a cold, singular point of terror. I forced myself to be still. To breathe through my nose, though the air was thin and stale, tasting of old salt, wet rope, and the earthy reek of my own fear. A faint, diagonal line of cooler air brushed my cheek. A crack. An air slit.
I twisted my neck, pressing my face against the rough wood. The slit was maybe a quarter-inch wide and a few inches long. My field of view was a thin slice of hell.
I saw a hanging lantern, swaying with the ship’s motion, casting drunken shadows across a low, curved ceiling braced with heavy beams. Barrels and other crates were stacked nearby. A hold. I was cargo.
Footsteps sounded on a wooden ladder. Boots thumped onto the planking nearby.
“This one secured?” a man’s voice grunted. Rough, accent clipped and foreign.
“Lid’s nailed shut. Wrists and ankles bound. Gagged. She ain’t singing any songs,” a second man replied, his tone bored. “Princess or not, she’s just freight now.”
“The red-haired one paid half up front. Other half on delivery to the Sylveran docks. To the gentleman with the silver-tipped cane.”
Ilias Drevik. The butterfly collector. Lyra had sold me. Not just thwarted me. Packaged me and shipped me to the Shadow Court. My breath hitched, a ragged suck of air through my nose. The cold terror boiled over, transforming into something else. A fury so pure it felt clean. It burned up the helplessness, left behind a scalding clarity.
Lyra hadn’t just won. She’d cheated. She’d felt me use magic—felt me “break the rules”—and she’d been waiting. Because she knew the rules too. Better than I did. She was playing a different game entirely, one with a walkthrough I’d never read.
Think. You are not dead yet. You are a package. Packages get delivered. That’s a timeline.
I tested the ropes again, not with panic, but with calculation. They were tight. Professionally so. My shoulders ached from the awkward angle. I tried to recall the inventory, the conceptual space where my bundled supplies existed. Could I access it? I focused, imagining my bound hands reaching for the linen wrap inside that non-space, fumbling for one of the steel hairpins.
Nothing happened. My mind brushed against the idea of the kit, but my physical hands remained empty. Maybe I needed a free hand to materialize an item. Maybe I was too drained. The throbbing void where my magic had been was a dull, persistent ache behind my eyes. The cost had left me hollow, and now I was trussed up like a pig.
The footsteps moved away. I heard the clink of a bottle, a wet swallow.
“How long to Sylvera?”
“With this wind? Three days. Maybe four if the mist near the Kraelian shelf is thick.”
Three days. In this box.
Claustrophobia threatened to rise again, a black tide. I fought it down by focusing on the slit of light. On the details. The wood of my crate was thick, but old. Near the air slit, it was slightly warped. I could see a rough grain, a small, dark knot. I focused on that knot, pretending it was a target.
A new sound. Light, precise footsteps. Not the sailors.
“You are to check the package once per watch. Ensure it is breathing. Ensure it is quiet.” The voice was lyrical, familiar. Seraphine’s maid? One of her elegant shadows. “Your payment depends on the condition of the contents. The client prefers them… intact and aware.”
“Aye,” the bored sailor answered. “We’re not animals. She’ll get there.”
“See that she does.”
The light footsteps receded up the ladder. So Seraphine was in on it too. Or at least her network was. A collaborative effort. The princesses of Veridia, uniting to ship me off to a collector. The irony was so dark it was almost funny.
Hours passed. The lantern’s sway was a torturous metronome. The ship groaned and creaked. I drifted in and out of a shallow, uneasy state, thirst clawing at my throat, every muscle cramping. The rope burns on my wrists felt wetter. I didn’t know if it was sweat or blood.
I must have slept, because the sound of the lid being pried open was a sudden, shocking violence.
Wood screamed as nails were wrenched free. The lid was flung back, and the swinging lantern light flooded my prison, blinding me. I squeezed my eyes shut, turning my head.
A large, calloused hand grabbed my hair and yanked me up into a sitting position. I gasped against the gag, my spine screaming in protest. A sailor’s face filled my vision—weathered skin, broken veins across his nose, eyes the colour of dirty seawater. He reeked of fish and cheap spirits.
“See? Breathing.” He shoved a flask of water against my lips. I drank greedily, the warm, stale water the best thing I’d ever tasted. He pulled it away too soon, letting some of it dribble down my chin and neck. “And quiet.”
He wasn’t gentle. He checked the bonds at my wrists and ankles, his fingers prodding the swollen flesh. He grunted, apparently satisfied, then leaned in closer. His breath was foul. “Pretty thing, for a piece of freight. Pity about the destination.” There was no real pity in his voice. Just a casual cruelty.
He let me slump back down. Before he replaced the lid, he looked at me, and for a second, his bored expression shifted into something more contemplative. “Don’t get any ideas. We’re two days out from anywhere. You scream, nobody hears but the gulls. You try anything, I put you over the side in a sack with rocks. The redhead didn’t specify living on delivery. Just delivery.”
He nailed the lid back down with a few hard, practiced blows of a hammer. Each strike was a thunderclap in the tiny space.
Darkness again. But the encounter had given me something.
Information. Two days out. And he’d shown me his face. He’d made it personal.
The fury returned, a quiet furnace in my chest. I focused on it, stoked it. I was not cargo. I was a player. And my inventory, my magic, they were my controller. I just had to figure out how to press the buttons with my mind tied behind my back.
I thought of the command prompts. The system voice. It had responded to intent, to desperate will. I didn’t have my hands. But I had my voice.
The gag was a problem. A thick, physical one.
I worked my jaw, my tongue pushing relentlessly at the cloth. It was soaked with saliva and disgusting, but it shifted a millimeter. I sucked in a huge breath through my nose, then forced it out through my mouth, trying to push the fabric like a plug. I did it again. And again. A frantic, silent exertion.
My throat burned. My head swam. But the gag felt looser. The knot at the back of my head was still tight, but the cloth itself was balled up, not sealing my mouth as completely.
This was it. My only shot. If I used magic, Lyra might feel it again. But we were on moving water, far from shore. What could she do now?
I concentrated, pushing past the hollow ache in my skull. I focused on the ropes at my wrists. I visualized the fibers parting, the tension snapping. I didn’t have a word for “untie.” My mind supplied the most basic, game-logic command for this situation.
“Inventory.”
The word was muffled, choked, barely a sound past the sodden cloth. But the heat flickered behind my teeth. A spark, not an inferno.
The world didn’t warp. But in the darkness, a line of soft, green text appeared in my vision, superimposed on the black.
[Status: Bound (Secure). Gagged (Impaired). Location: Maritime Transport. ]
[Available Action: Access Stored Item? Y/N]
It was a menu. A real, fucking menu in my head. The sob that built in my chest was half-hysteria, half triumph. I focused with every shred of my will on the “Y”.
The conceptual space of my makeshift survival kit unfolded in my mind’s eye. I saw the water flask, the bread, the cheese, the bundled linen containing the steel hairpins. I focused on a single pin. I imagined it not in my hand, but its point pressed against the rope at my wrist.
> Retrieve Item: Steel Hairpin (1).
> Error: Physical manipulation required for precise application.
Damn it. So I couldn’t just magic the rope apart. But I could get the tool.
I changed my focus. I imagined the hairpin materializing not in my bound hands, but in my mouth. A stupid, dangerous idea. The point would be right there, against my tongue, my palate.
I selected it anyway. > Confirm Retrieval to Oral Cavity?
I confirmed.
There was a brief, dizzying pressure, a taste of ozone and cold steel. Then the sharp, unmistakable touch of a metal point pressed against the roof of my mouth. I flinched, careful not to jerk my head. I had a hairpin in my mouth.
Now came the awkward, terrifying part. I maneuvered my tongue, pushing the pin down, orienting it so the pointed end was facing backward, toward my throat. I tilted my head forward, letting the pin slide out between my lips, my teeth clamping carefully on the rounded, decorative head. The sharp end now protruded from my mouth, pointing down towards my collarbone.
I angled my body, twisting my bound wrists up as high as I could. I strained, my muscles shaking. I could just feel the ropes brush against the tip of the pin. I couldn’t see. I could only feel, and imagine, and hope.
I started to saw. A tiny, grinding motion. The rope was thick. The pin was slender. It slipped. The point skidded and stabbed the meat of my own palm. I swallowed a scream, a muted groan vibrating against the gag. The coppery taste of my own blood joined the taste of salt and old cloth.
I repositioned. Tried again.
Back and forth. A minuscule, agonizing abrasion. A single fiber at a time.
The ship groaned. The lantern swayed. The world shrank to the burning ache in my shoulders, the raw friction at my wrists, the sharp point in my teeth, and the faint, green glow of a status menu in the dark behind my eyes, counting down the seconds until someone decided to check the package again.
The world shrank to the burning ache in my shoulders, the raw friction at my wrists, the sharp point in my teeth. Time dissolved into the rhythmic sawing motion, each tiny pull a monumental effort. A muscle in my jaw spasmed, a sharp electric jolt that almost made me drop the pin.
I didn’t drop it.
Finally, a deeper snap echoed in the cramped space, more felt than heard. A sudden loosening, a release of pressure so profound it was dizzying. My hands were free. I jerked them forward, hissing at the flare of pain as blood rushed back into numb, abraded flesh. I ripped the sodden gag from my mouth, spitting out the hairpin and the taste of blood and cloth.
I flexed my fingers, wincing. The green status text in my vision updated. [Status: Bound (Ankles). Gagged (Removed). Location: Maritime Transport.]
Ankles next. I fumbled in the dark, finding the hairpin on the crate floor. My fingers were clumsy, half-dead, but they worked. Sawing through the ankle rope was faster, easier. Within minutes, I was completely untied, a fugitive curled in a wooden cell.
The immediate panic was gone. Now came the cold, precise calculus of escape. I had my magic back, but the hollow ache behind my eyes was a banked warning. I was running on fumes. I accessed the mental inventory again, retrieving the water flask. I took a small, careful sip, letting the liquid ease my parched throat. I needed a plan better than ‘burst out and hope.’
The sailor’s bored voice echoed in my memory. “We’re two days out from anywhere.” I couldn’t swim to shore. I needed the ship to turn around. I needed them to take me back.
An idea, reckless and formed from pure game-logic desperation, took shape. I still had the “Peripheral Blindness” skill. And I had a stronger, more invasive command: “Compel Aversion.” What if I combined them? What if I didn’t just make them look away, but made one of them come here, open the crate, and then… forget?
The cost would be enormous. But the alternative was Sylvera and a silver-tipped cane.
I waited for the next check. The footsteps came eventually, heavy and unhurried. Through the air slit, I saw it was the bored sailor, the one who’d given me water. Perfect.
As his shadow fell over the crate, I gathered every shred of will. I focused on him, on the space around me. I didn’t just want him to open the lid. I needed him to get inside. The command formed, a twisted, ugly thing that scraped the inside of my skull.
“Compel: Enter.”
It wasn’t a shout. It was a psychic shove, a hook in his mind. The heat that erupted behind my teeth was instant and agonizing, a white-hot wire drawn from my spine to my forehead. A fresh, hot trickle of blood ran from my nose, dripping onto my chest.
Outside the crate, the sailor froze. His hand, which had been reaching for the lid, stopped. He stood perfectly still for three long seconds. Then, moving with a strange, marionette-like stiffness, he picked up the claw hammer from a nearby barrel.
He began prying the nails. Each screech of metal on wood was deafening. He worked methodically, blank-faced. The lid came free. He stared down at me, curled in the box. His eyes were glazed, distant.
“Get in,” I whispered, the words slurry with effort. I pushed the command at him, visualizing the swap. “You are the package. You need to sleep.”
A violent tremor ran through him. His jaw clenched. Resistance. The magic strained, a fraying cable. I poured more focus into it, feeling something vital inside me stretch thin and threaten to snap. “Get. In.”
With a final, jerky motion, he stepped one boot into the crate, then the other. He crouched, then folded his large body into the impossibly small space alongside me, his smell of sweat and salt overwhelming. There was no room. I was pressed against the wood, crushed by his bulk.
“Now,” I gasped, my voice raw. “Sleep. And forget.”
I placed my hand on his sweaty temple. The final command wasn’t a ripple. It was a tsunami, and I was standing in its path. “Obliviate.”
The word was a guttural ruin. The world went white, then black at the edges. A ringing filled my ears, high-pitched and endless. I felt the sailor go utterly limp, a dead weight. And I felt the command unwind from me, a backlash that felt like glass shards in my brain.
But it had worked. I knew it had.
Somehow, I shoved his unconscious form, arranging him in the crate. I placed the damp gag loosely around his own neck. I scrambled out, my limbs shaking violently. I grabbed the lid. With the last of my physical strength, I nailed it shut again, three shaky blows to secure it. To anyone, it would look undisturbed.
Then I turned. I focused on the “Peripheral Blindness” skill, the simpler, lesser drain. The chilling blanket settled over me again, blurring my edges, swallowing my sound. I was a ghost in the hold.
I moved to the shadow of a large water barrel, curling into a ball. The magical exhaustion was total. I was a hollow shell, trembling, bleeding from the nose, my mind a silent, scorched field. I just had to wait. And not die.
The next watch came. The other sailor, the one with the grunt, clumped down the ladder. He glanced at the crate. He didn’t check it. Why would he? His partner had just checked it, presumably. Everything was normal.
Two days. I survived on sips of water and bits of cheese from my inventory, slipping them into my mouth only in the darkest moments when no one was below. I listened to the men. They started to get concerned on the second day.
“Where’s Joric? Sick in his bunk?”
“Haven’t seen him since last night. Lazy bastard.”
They didn’t open the crate. The client’s instructions had been clear: don’t open it unless necessary. Joric was just shirking. They shrugged and carried on.
On the morning of the third day, a new sound joined the groaning timbers. The shriek of gulls. The shout of distant voices from a dock. The smell changed from pure salt to the stench of fish, tar, and city rot. We were in port. Sylvera.
Through my air slit, I saw the grunting sailor approach with another man, someone dressed in finer, darker clothes. The agent. I held my breath.
“The package,” the agent said, his voice cultivated, cold. I could see the bottom of a silver-tipped cane tap on the planking.
“Sealed as requested. Your man Joric will help you load it; he’s been guarding it like a mother hen.”
They called for Joric. They didn’t find him. Annoyed, the two sailors muscled the crate containing their unconscious companion onto a dock trolley themselves, grunting with the effort. “Feels heavier,” one muttered.
“Just your imagination. Get paid.”
I watched from the shadows as my crate was wheeled away into the bustling, fog-draped port. The agent never looked inside. He took delivery of a sleeping sailor.
The moment the ship was quiet, I moved. Still under the fading blur of Peripheral Blindness, I crept up the ladder, through the deserted galley, and onto the main deck. The early morning mist of Sylvera’s port clung to everything, a grey, wet veil. The crew was busy securing lines, distracted.
I walked down the gangplank, my steps silent, my form a faint smudge in the mist. I melted into the crowd of dockworkers, fishwives, and merchants. The skill sputtered and died as I reached the first narrow, cobbled street, the last of my magic spent.
I was ashore. I was free. I was utterly, completely lost.
I stumbled into a damp alley, leaning against slick brick as the sounds of the port swirled around me. I was clothed in a stained wool cloak, with no money, no plan, and a brain that felt like shattered pottery. But I was out of the box.
I looked down at my trembling, rope-burned hands. Then I started to laugh, a quiet, broken sound that mixed with the drip of fog from the eaves. It wasn't a victory laugh. It was the sound of someone who had just rolled a critical success with their last hit point.
Now I just had to survive the city.
The laughter died in my throat, strangled by the reality of the cold, wet brick against my back. Freedom was a vast, terrifying expanse. My head throbbed with a deep, bone-ache emptiness. The magic had been spent down to the dregs, leaving a hollowed-out core where something vital used to be.
I needed to move. Standing in an alley shaking wasn’t a plan. I pushed off the wall, my legs unsteady. The port district of Sylvera unfolded in a cacophony of smells and shouts—salt, rotting fish, spilled ale, and the tang of forge smoke. I pulled the hood of my servant’s cloak up, the coarse grey wool blending with the mist and the drab clothes of the dockworkers.
My first goal was simple: get out of the open. Every shadow felt like it held a man with a silver-tipped cane. Ilias Drevik. He was here, in this city, waiting for a crate that contained a confused sailor. He wouldn’t be waiting long.
I moved with the crowd, letting the current of bodies carry me away from the wharves. My mind, sluggish from exhaustion, began its mechanical analysis. I needed information, food, and a place to sleep that wasn’t a gutter. The small pouch of coins from Lyra was gone, taken when I was captured. My only resources were the remaining hard cheese and bread in my mental inventory, and six steel hairpins.
A sign creaked ahead: a chipped painting of a leaky tankard. ‘The Grinning Eel.’ The sounds of raucous conversation and clattering tankards spilled from its doorway. Taverns were information hubs. They were also dangerous for a woman alone.
I slipped around the side, into a narrow close strewn with empty barrels. The back door was propped open, venting steam and the smell of stew. A kitchen boy, maybe thirteen, was scrubbing a pot with a sullen intensity.
“Hey,” I said, my voice raspy from disuse.
He jumped, dropping the pot with a clang. “Stars above, don’t sneak up on a person!”
“Sorry. I’m looking for work. Scullery, serving. Anything.” I kept my head down, my accent flattened to something unplaceable.
He looked me up and down, taking in the damp, plain cloak. “Kitchen’s full. Try the ‘Staggering Mule’ down by the tannery. They’re always desperate.”
“Where’s the tannery?”
He jerked a thumb westward. “Follow your nose. You can’t miss it.” He picked up his pot, his interest already gone. “But you don’t look desperate enough for the Mule. Yet.”
I needed currency. I ducked behind a barrel, out of sight. I focused, reaching for that strained mental space. The effort made my vision swim. I retrieved one of the silver hairpins, the one with a small, polished moonstone at its end. It was the finest of the lot. It appeared in my palm with a soft, almost imperceptible weight.
Back inside the tavern, I approached the barkeep, a broad woman with arms like ham hocks. I slid the hairpin across the sticky wood. “For a bowl of whatever’s in the pot, and any news about ships from Veridia.”
She picked up the pin, squinting at the moonstone. Her eyes flicked to my face, hidden in the hood. “This’ll buy you the stew. News is extra.”
“The news is for the pin. The stew is for not asking why a Veridian noble’s hairpin is in my hand.”
A slow smile spread across her face. She pocketed the pin. “Smart. Sit in the corner. I’ll bring it.”
The stew was greasy and glorious, filling the hollow, cold places inside me. As I ate, I listened. The talk was of tariffs, weather, and a missing sailor from the ‘Wave Dancer’—a man found sleeping soundly in a shipping crate, remembering nothing. I kept my head down, spoon steady.
The barkeep returned, wiping her hands on her apron. She leaned in, her voice low. “Ships from Veridia? The ‘Dancer’ was the last. Dock’s buzzing about some noble fuss back there, though. Something about a missing heirloom. A silver music box, they say. Guards are asking questions, showing sketches.” She paused. “Not of a music box. Of a girl. Brown hair, green eyes. Looks a bit like you, if you cleaned up.”
My blood went cold. They were already here. Seraphine’s guards, or Lyra’s, or Drevik’s men. A missing heirloom was a clever, face-saving cover. I was a stolen trinket.
“Thanks,” I muttered, pushing the empty bowl away.
“The pin was worth more than the stew,” she said, not unkindly. “There’s a bolthole. Two streets over, the house with the blue door. Ask for Mara. Tell her Bren sent you. It’ll cost you another pretty thing, but it’s safe. Safer than here.”
It was a risk. It was also my only lead. I gave a tight nod and left, the mist now chilling me to the bone.
The house with the blue door was faded, the paint peeling. I knocked. A slot slid open at eye level. “Bren sent me,” I whispered.
The door opened. A woman, Mara, was bird-thin with sharp eyes that missed nothing. She looked me over, saw the exhaustion and the fear I couldn’t quite hide, and stepped back. “One night. Two silvers. Or something of equal value.”
I had no silvers. I retrieved another hairpin, plain steel. She took it, tested its point against her thumb, and nodded. “Top of the stairs. Don’t make noise. Don’t bring trouble.”
The room was a closet with a pallet and a slop bucket. It was paradise. I barred the door and finally, finally, let myself shake apart. The sobs were silent, heaving things that stole my breath. I cried for the crate, for the terror, for the hollow ache where my magic had been. I cried for the sheer, stupid luck of being alive.
When the tears were spent, I felt drained but clearer. I needed to check my resources. I focused, pulling the makeshift survival kit from the conceptual inventory. The tapestry-wrapped bundle appeared on the thin blanket. I untied the knots.
My spare clothes, the water flask, the remaining food. And something that hadn’t been there before.
A square of heavy, cream-colored parchment, sealed with a drop of crimson wax. No emblem. My breath hitched. I knew that paper. It was from Lyra’s personal desk.
Hands trembling, I broke the seal. The handwriting was elegant, flowing, and utterly familiar.
Evelyn,
If you’re reading this, congratulations. You’re more resourceful than I gave you credit for. I knew you’d wiggle out of that box. Honestly, shipping you was the safest option. The palace is a gilded snare, and Seraphine was moments from having you quietly disappeared into the north tower. My way, at least, gave you a fighting chance.
Consider this your tutorial level. You passed. The real game is much harder.
Don’t bother looking for the ‘right’ path. There isn’t one. The plot you think you know is already rotten. Drevik is a symptom, not the disease. The Shadow Court wants more than a pretty princess for a collection. They want a key. You’re it.
I can’t help you directly. My affection has limits, and my position is precarious. But I can give you a hint. Look for the ink that isn’t there. Listen for the story the bards won’t sing. The truth is always in the margins.
Good luck. Try not to die before the final boss. It would be dreadfully anticlimactic.
—L.
I read it twice. Then a third time. The casual, almost cheerful malice of it was breathtaking. She’d had me kidnapped, shipped to a monster, and left a cheeky note in my pocket the whole time. She knew my real name. Not Celestine. Evelyn.
The world tilted. She didn’t just know about game mechanics. She knew about me. The player. The reincarnation. She was one too. A villainess with the script. And she was watching, amused, from the sidelines.
The fear curdled into something hotter. Rage, yes, but beneath it, a terrifying spark of recognition. This wasn’t just survival. This was a multiplayer game. And my sister was a fucking griefer.
I crumpled the letter, then stopped. I smoothed it out, my mind racing. The ink that isn’t there. The story the bards won’t sing. A clue, or more mind games? A key. What key?
I had no answers. Only a direction: deeper into the margins. I looked at the remaining items from my bundle. Four hairpins, some food, a cloak. And a note from a sister who’d thrown me to the wolves for her own entertainment.
A faint, grim smile touched my lips. I tucked the letter away. She wanted a game? Fine. I’d just unlocked a new quest line.
Outside, the mist thickened into a true fog, swallowing the sounds of the city. Somewhere out there, a man with a silver-tipped cane was realizing his prize was gone. Somewhere, guards were asking about a missing girl. And somewhere in the palace, Lyra was probably taking tea, waiting for my next move.
I blew out the room’s single candle. In the sudden dark, the world narrowed to the sound of my own breathing. I had a bolthole for one night. I had a cryptic hint from a traitor. I had a mind that understood game logic and a body that was running on fumes.
It was enough. It had to be.
Tomorrow, I would disappear into the story the bards wouldn’t sing.