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Would I even recognize myself when I saw my reflection? Who was I now? What did I look like? Was I some twisted form of a doll?

Angry, bitter tears burned in alien eyes as I stared down at my chest. I had always envied the attention women with larger chests received. Somehow, I had gotten it into my head that I would have been far more successful in my romantic life if I had larger boobs. And now that I had them, I wanted to claw them off me. I wanted to rip and tear them off my chest and throw them into the gulf of blackness outside of my bars. These were not mine. I didn’t want them, and I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t need them.

I was shaking, buttoning the sheer burgundy gown up over the offending flesh I was being forced to live in. Hate rolled through me and pulsed as I did the last button at my throat. The slight ruffle of the dress irritated already chafed and raw skin.

“It’s okay, Cricket. We all know. It was the same way for us. None of us look like we did when they took us.” Cypress’s voice was soft, consoling, like he was talking to a child, and I hated him the more for it. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Rook and I didn’t get it as bad as you did. You’ll see in a little while. We’re on the move, not long until we get to the Night Market.”

I was panting with the effort not to howl my anger into the darkness.

Rook chimed in, filling the silence that Cypress had abandoned us to. “When I see you, Cricket, if you let me, I’ll hug you. You won’t get many of them where you’re going.” His voice tipped down into a soft whisper, almost as if he were asking for himself more than for me. “Will you let me hug you?”

“No. I don’t want to be touched. Ever again,” I hissed. The next creature to touch me would feel the new pale fingernails that Rictus had given me. “How can you see me? You said you saw me, Rook. How? It’s pitch black.”

I could sense him recoiling from my denial, so it was no surprise when my answer was from Cypress. I was becoming familiar with their voices. “It’s not. It’s full day out. Sun’s pouring in from the eastern windows of the hold. I can feel it on my skin. But Rictus’s cages are built to keep us in darkness. It’s fake, though. He can see in perfectly fine. The whole crew can. There’s two of them gawking at you outside your cage.”

I recoiled from the bars, away from the unseen leering eyes. I didn’t like that one bit. I was blinded to the world around me. It was unsettling and sat in my bones as an eerie feeling. I wish he hadn’t told me.

“Well, that pissed them off. Can’t you hear them? They’ve been talking to you this entire time.”

“It’s probably for the best that she can’t hear them, Cypress,” Rook muttered.

He was wrong. It was probably better for them that I couldn’t hear them.

Cypress harrumphed and plowed on. “Rictus is a shady fuck. Sounds like him to let her only hear us,” he grumbled, the words an acrid old hate. “Since you’re only talkin’ to Rook and me, I’m guessing you can’t hear or see the others, too. There’s twenty of us. Ten women and ten men. Four crew members are in the cargo hold with us. We are on a floating ship, moving what I think might be northwest, chasing the setting sun to get to the Night Market before they close the gates to slavers. You’re in a kin’tha. I don’t know what language or what it means, but that’s what the crew calls them. It’s a creature of some sort. Looks like a black tiger made into the shape of a canary cage. I don’t know much about them aside from the fact they adore the crew and can change into whatever shape they want and are stronger than three men. Oh, and don’t piss it off. It can and will eat you if it gets it into its mind to do so. I’m telling you this shit not to scare you, Cricket, but because no one told me before they took my eyes. And it scared the piss out of me to not know what was going on around me. Humans don’t do well in the pitch black.”

“Th-They took your eyes?” I whispered, feeling like an idiot and an asshole.

Rictus had tortured me, had cut me up into pieces, and reshaped me into his perfect little doll, but he hadn’t taken anything from me but my sense of self. He had taken Cypress’s eyes.

“Stop scaring the new girl, Cypress,” Rook barked with authority in his voice. A mumbled apology answered him robotically and then I heard Rook’s soft cajoling voice again. “Look, Cricket, life is going to get very weird from here on out. And I’m very sorry for it. It’s going to get weird and hard and painful. There’s going to be times when you don’t think you’ll survive it. You’ll even wish you didn’t survive it. You’re going to see nightmares and heaven. All of it is real. None of it is safe. And I’m so fucking sorry, kid. You deserved better from life. Don’t trust any of us, not even me and Cypress. Once we’re out of the hold, we are all trying to survive. Remember that. You do the same.”

In the silence that stretched out between us, I wrote a new rule. One I never had to tell myself before and one that I had a suspicion I would need to cling to.

Rule #21: Just survive.

Chapter 4

The jerk of the ship yanked me from my own thoughts and sent anxiety-laced nerves on high alert.

It was silent, no voices or shuffling about to hint at what was going on. Rook and Cypress had fallen silent as well, leaving me, the blinded golden canary, in her pretty little cage.

I wanted to rattle the bars of my enclosure. I wanted to yell and scream to be let go. I wanted to shriek at the top of my lungs. I wanted to do anything other than kneel quietly, patiently, and wait in the center of my velvet cage.

The swaying told me I was being moved. But still no sounds or sights. It wasn’t until several long minutes after the cage stopped moving that my senses returned.

The top of my cage expanded so I could stand, and I took the opportunity to stretch the aching, new long limbs. When the darkness was pierced by the dwindling, spindly arms of a sinking sun, I was unprepared, and my new eyes stung with the brightness pooling around my newly crafted feet.

Blinking back the sting and the burn, I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Isn’t it darling?” A voice that sounded like a music box chime rang out from a few feet away from me, and I couldn’t help but squeak with surprise. I had heard no other voices in this entire ordeal than Rook’s and Cypress’s and the horrible Rictus’s. “It must have been taking a nap. Look, my Lady Ever Bright! See how precious it is—it even squeaks like a little doll.”

Shapes came into view and slowly coalesced into solid forms. Before me stood two nightmares as tall as my cage, and beyond them, a herd of additional nightmares conspired behind their fans and hands as they stared at me.

The one called Lady Ever Bright stepped forward and peered into the cage. I would have mistaken her for any other woman walking down the street in Detroit. Her features were average except her double-sized eyes that lacked sclera and was but a sheet of cracked, baked clay curved like a normal eye. The slow, twisting mirage of heat flowed around the edges of her silhouette and drew my eye as they radiated.

“And dressed in my house colors already, Harebell.” She leaned forward, leering at me as I scooted to the back of the cage.

Suddenly, I was very aware that, while I might be wearing a dress from chin to foot, the entire billowing gown was as sheer as could be, and every single one of my fake curves was on display.