Chapter 2
1. The Pirate Karin
A cold body sank onto the sand. Kalina raked her fingers through her hair, tangled and soaked through with seawater, as she struggled to haul the unconscious man up onto the beach.
No matter how strong she was, moving a sturdily built, unconscious man alone was quite the ordeal.
The thick smell of sea salt mixed with the reek of blood stung her nose, and red blood spread messily beneath his soaked uniform. Even at a glance, it was clearly severe bleeding.
“Damn it, just you wait. I’m getting a taste of this today, no matter what.”
She gritted her teeth and pulled hard at Lucian’s uniform. A gunshot wound had pierced straight through his chest. The blood showed no sign of stopping.
He wouldn’t last long in this state. And with his body temperature dropping from having fallen into the sea, even less so. It was, quite simply, the worst possible situation.
Her green eyes swept quickly over their surroundings. Not a single ship was visible on the horizon, and even though the sun was setting, no smoke rose from the island. That meant it was an uninhabited island—no people around.
She trudged through the sinking sand, hauling the man along with great effort. With pursuers possibly still out there, she couldn’t very well treat an injured man out on this wide-open beach.
Hiding herself away in a forest dense with tall trees, she laid the man down on the ground. He still hadn’t regained consciousness.
At his utterly still, silent state, Kalina brought her ear close to his mouth to check for faint breathing.
Clear footprints and bloodstains leading all the way here, and an unconscious man. Glancing back and forth between the two, she unfastened her belt, set it down, and began digging a pit with her bare hands.
Dusk was falling, so their traces would soon be swallowed by the darkness. If there were any persistent pursuers, they’d need light to search, and she wouldn’t fail to notice that from here. She could simply avoid them then.
If she worried too much about pursuit and moved even deeper into the forest, this man’s life would give out before she got the chance to save it.
In the blink of an eye she dug two pits and connected them with a tunnel between them, then checked her surroundings again. Since she hadn’t gone too deep into the forest, dry branches that hadn’t been scattered by the wind lay everywhere.
Gathering up the dry branches fallen on the ground, she pushed them into one side of the pit, then rummaged through her thick leather belt.
When she blew a breath of air, the wind traveling straight through the tunnel made the red flame flare up with a whoosh. Burning the wood completely so it wouldn’t smoke—this was one of the survival tricks known only to pirates.
Even the light itself was hidden inside the pit, making it hard for any pursuers to spot. A small, discreet flame bloomed in the darkness.
“That’s enough for the fire. Now…”
She immediately pulled a small glass bottle from her belt. Rum, which she carried for medical purposes.
Even as Kalina stripped off his blood-soaked uniform, he didn’t stir. She pushed the edge of the uniform into the man’s mouth, then poured rum over the wound, drenched in blood.
When the man’s face contorted, she glanced up at him. Even so, there was no sign of him opening his eyes.
She poured rum over her own hands and her dagger as well, then examined the wound. There was no need for separate treatment—the bullet had passed clean through his body.
She wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad for him. For herself, though, it was bad, at least. It meant this pretty body she planned to enjoy in the future would now bear two whole scars.
Still, better than dying. Grumbling, she thrust the dagger deep into the fire to heat the blade. Once she’d heated the iron blade until it glowed a deep red, she cauterized the wound without hesitation.
“Ngh, aaagh…!”
Even unconscious, it seemed the pain got through to him, and the man thrashed violently. With an indifferent expression, Kalina used her legs and hands, her shoulders and thighs—her whole body—to pin him down.
By the time she’d cauterized the wounds on his chest and back, both sides, her body was a mess of sweat. Subduing a man built easily twice her size was no small feat.
Kalina tore off her cumbersome jacket and tossed it aside. The day had grown late, and she wanted to wash off the blood and sweat that covered her. She unwound the bandage that had been binding her chest as well, then threw off her trousers and boots too, rolling her bare shoulders with a shrug.
The tricorn hat, hung with jewels, was nowhere to be seen—she must have dropped it somewhere. Had she lost it swimming here? Or had it fallen off back on the naval ship?
No matter how hard she racked her memory, nothing came to her—things had been far too chaotic at the time.
‘Damn it, that one was my favorite.’
Among the jewels she’d plundered this time, many had caught her discerning eye. Though of course, none of them compared to the man lying before her now.
She’d leapt into the fray just to catch a glimpse of that pretty face, and whether it was good luck or bad, the very thing she’d been after had landed right in her hands.
Lucian, facing off against her as usual. And behind him, distracted by her, the muzzle of a naval officer’s gun aimed precisely at Lucian.
What was meant to be a brief diversion had turned into a thorny mess. Getting tangled up in something like this never ended well.
Kalina let out a deep sigh and stepped into the incoming waves.
She hated washing in seawater, but now wasn’t the time to be picky.
Her fiery red hair vanished into the night sea as if drawn under.
The blood and sweat that clung to her body were washed away, refreshing and clean. Kalina blinked a few times, then kicked her legs lightly, lifting her head above the water.
Under cover of darkness, her low humming drifted off on the night breeze. With the bandage that had bound her chest gone, and the sticky blood and sweat washed away, what remained was a refreshing feeling she hadn’t felt in a long while.
* * *
Crackle, crackle.
Lucian, lying beside the fire, felt his eyelids tremble before his deep blue eyes came into view. His dazed gaze turned toward the fire flickering within the pit.
“Damn it…”
It was a coarse curse he would never normally allow himself to utter. But could anyone blame him, given the situation he now found himself in? He tried to push himself up with his arms, but strength wouldn’t come the way he wanted it to.
Only then did Lucian belatedly become aware of his own condition. His shirt hung completely open, his bare chest exposed, and his blood-soaked naval uniform coat lay spread beneath him, serving as an improvised blanket.
On his exposed torso, in place of what should have been a gunshot wound, sat a hideous burn scar instead. Blood had clotted dark red in patches here and there, enough to make even he himself guess at just how much he’d bled.
Scattered messily around him lay all manner of items. An empty glass bottle, blood-stained bandages, a scrap of cloth so filthy it had lost its original shape, and someone’s shoes.
Having taken all that in, his gaze dropped, almost without thinking, to his own wound.
He must have lost a considerable amount of blood, and yet the wound had been staunched with astonishing neatness.
‘Remarkable that I’m still alive.’
The gunshot that had rung in his ears, and the muzzle he’d faced when he turned around.
The gun in the hands of the man in naval uniform—his own subordinate—had clearly been aimed not at the pirate, but at him.
It hadn’t been a mistake. It had plainly been an assassination attempt on his life.
It had been barely a week since he’d received the telegram informing him he was to inherit a title from a father whose face he barely remembered. The one behind this was likely his half-brother, or some greedy relative.
He’d known, even before joining the navy, that his very existence was a thorn in their side—but he hadn’t imagined they would go so far as to attempt assassination.
And to think they’d even bribed one of his own men to carry it out.
If his mother had still been alive, he wondered just how much they would have tormented her, too. His face twisted into a harsh scowl. Just then, a low, faint singing reached his ears.
It was an unfamiliar melody, but the voice was strangely familiar. He slowly lifted his head. The sound of waves rolling in alongside the singing. The thick scent of the sea reaching his nose. It was, without doubt, the sea.
Lucian rose to his feet, staggering. The wound cauterized to stop the bleeding throbbed, sending a burning pain shooting through him.
At the edge of the forest, as the sound of the waves grew nearer, the woman’s singing came through ever more clearly.
And then, at the sight that finally unfolded before his eyes, his blue eyes widened in shock.
Beneath the moonlight, a woman stood half-submerged in the sea, her upper body without a single stitch of clothing. Her pure white bare skin gleamed in the moonlight. Her red hair, soaked through with seawater, flowed sensually down over her body. Amid her hair, an old necklace glinted.
‘A siren?’
The moment the name of the legendary sea monster crossed his mind, she turned her body. He dropped his gaze at once, without meaning to. His face flushed instantly at the sight of a woman’s bare body—the first he had ever laid eyes on in his life.
“You’re awake?”
The voice that had been humming an unfamiliar melody now became clear words, striking his ears. At that all-too-familiar voice, Lucian’s face turned deathly pale.
He jerked his head up, and only then did his gaze take in the full sight of the woman before him.
Flustered by the sight of her bare skin glowing faintly in the moonlight, he now noticed what he’d missed before—the countless scars etched all over her body.
As the woman, standing at an angle in the water, swept back her wet red hair, her green eyes were revealed, glowing vividly even in the darkness.
Lucian knew that peculiar combination of colors all too well.
The worst pirate in history, currently carrying the highest bounty of anyone alive.
The captain of the cruel and vicious “Howlers” pirate crew—known for throwing surrendered naval officers to the sharks alive, burning every captured ship to ashes, and beheading even other pirates foolish enough to underestimate her, hanging their heads from the mast.
<Hello, Lucy! Still pretty as ever.>
<Which bastard did that to your face? You’re wrapped up so tight from head to toe, your face is about the only thing left to look at!>
That pirate, who supposedly showed no mercy to her enemies, strangely seemed to take a liking to him, and kept turning up to loiter around his fleet time after time.
Even in his last memory of her, she had darted nimbly across the deck as if mocking him, toying with them all without taking a single life.
There was no humiliation greater than this.
“…Karin.”
He breathed out her name like a sigh. Kalina’s eyes curved into a smile, and she answered as she always did.
“Did you call me, Lucy?”
