Chapter 3
“If you’re going to call me, you should say something, Lucy.”
“Don’t call me by that ridiculous nickname.”
Lucian scowled and snapped at her. Splash—stepping out of the sea, Kalina burst into laughter, clearly finding his reaction amusing.
“What’s wrong with Lucy? It suits you pretty well, actually. It’s cute.”
Standing a full head taller than most men, with sturdy shoulders and a solidly muscled build, he was about as far from the girlish nickname “Lucy” as a man could get.
And yet Kalina kept calling him by that girly nickname, on purpose, as if flaunting it. His name already sounded feminine enough, and that nickname only made his complex about it worse—so he could do nothing but growl whenever he saw her.
She was a woman he found unpleasant on every front, including the fact that she was a pirate and he a naval officer. He raked his hand roughly through his hair in irritation.
Lucian forced his eyes away from Kalina as she walked out, her bare white body on full display, and swallowed a low sigh.
“Do pirates have no shame at all?”
“Can’t wear what I don’t have. All my clothes are still lying back there in the sea, you know.”
Kalina shrugged, brazen as ever. The man who always drew his sword on her and growled now stood there, red-faced and unable to even meet her eyes properly—she couldn’t hold back her laughter.
At her continued giggling, Lucian’s expression twisted even more menacingly, but he didn’t bother adding anything further.
Instead, he pulled off his own uniform jacket—every single button torn away—and, stretching out his arm, held it out to her.
At the sight, Kalina doubled over with laughter. She’d heard plenty about the so-called “treatment” women supposedly received on land, but experiencing it firsthand herself now, she found it thoroughly amusing.
She took the pure white uniform Lucian offered and threw it on carelessly, wringing out her wet hair with her hands.
To a pirate, a woman was nothing more than “goods.” An expensive commodity to be sold off to a brothel or handed over as a slave. And on top of that, an ominous presence, shunned as bad luck if brought aboard a ship.
Men on land treated violence or verbal abuse toward women as a terrible crime, but in the world of pirates, the very notion of “treating women well” was laughable.
To a pirate, the weak were nothing but a stepping stone to be trampled underfoot to confirm one’s own dominance—something to be thoroughly crushed.
That held true regardless of gender or age. Holding pirates to such moral standards was, in itself, absurd. They were all men without a future, after all.
That was why Kalina had never bothered to reveal her sex. From around the time her body had begun to show signs of womanhood, she’d made a point of deliberately covering herself up.
No matter how much strength she built, she was still human—there was no way to stay on guard twenty-four hours a day, for her entire life.
And yet, she never stopped—she kept drifting across the sea regardless. Born to pirates and raised drifting from place to place on the ocean as a pirate herself, where else could she possibly have gone at this point?
Even as she fastened the collar of the uniform closed, the man’s gaze still refused to lift from the ground. Meanwhile, Kalina leisurely took in the sight of Lucian’s bared upper body.
The body that had always been wrapped up in uniform now lay fully revealed beneath the moonlight. The muscle packed densely across his frame was far more impressive than she’d expected, and quite a pleasing sight indeed.
Despite never seeming to mind the heat, he always wore his uniform buttoned up like armor—yet the skin beneath was remarkably fair and smooth. So much so that harsh scars seemed almost out of place on it.
Standing out against that skin was one particularly conspicuous dark red burn mark. The scar she herself had made, cauterizing the wound to stop the bleeding.
Kalina raised a finger and gave it a sharp poke.
“Ugh.”
Lucian’s brow furrowed at the sharp pain, and he instinctively stepped back.
“I disinfected it for now, but once it’s light out tomorrow, you’d better find some herbs to put on it or eat, one or the other. We’ll need to find drinking water too. For now, just focus on recovering your strength. There’s a mountain of things to sort out the moment the sun’s up.”
“What?”
It sounded as though she intended to settle down and live here. Lucian’s eyebrows shot up, and Kalina clicked her tongue, clearly displeased.
“So what, you’re planning to swim all the way back to Port Royal looking like that? Or maybe go searching for some passing ship nearby?”
“If that’s what’s needed, then yes.”
Even after suffering a wound like that, it was an answer as stubbornly rigid as ever. Kalina shook her head at that obstinacy of his, which apparently wouldn’t budge even if he died and came back to life.
“It’s a real problem how even that stupidity of yours looks cute to me.”
“Huh?”
“You nearly died at the hands of your own navy, and you’re talking about going back? I finally caught the fish I’d been after, and just when I was kicking myself over losing it, that very fish comes swimming right back and sticks its own neck out for me—how exactly am I supposed to compliment that? ‘Oh, thank you so much for letting yourself get caught with that thick skull of yours’?”
“…”
At the blunt mockery and ridicule, Lucian’s face twisted into a scowl.
“Listen carefully. What you need to do right now isn’t go crawling back into a den where you can’t even tell friend from foe—it’s properly recover from this wound first. And after that, figure out who’s behind the attempt on your life.”
Behind it. Faces, already beginning to blur in his memory, flickered through Lucian’s mind. Kalina’s mouth curved into a crooked smirk.
“Looks like our Lucy already has a rough idea who it might be.”
It couldn’t be pirates. If anything, pirates avoided the navy—none of them would go out of their way to bother killing a naval officer.
Which meant this had to be tied to some power struggle within the navy itself, or some sordid scheme within noble society.
Lucian Harrington. Who didn’t know the famous Harrington duke’s family? Why the son of such a distinguished, ancient noble house would be wandering this dangerous sea, she had no idea—but regardless, he was undoubtedly a man whose name stood proudly listed among the nobility.
“That’s not something for the likes of a pirate to concern herself with. Especially not a matter like this.”
Since when had the navy ever been on such easy, chatty terms with pirates, to begin with? At his stubborn words, Kalina’s eyebrows shot up sharply.
“I’m being this kind and telling you all this precisely because you can’t handle your own business. Don’t be a fool—just stay put and recover quietly. I’ve got no intention of picking a fight with a patient.”
Kalina stomped off past Lucian, her footsteps loud and heavy. It was an irritable stride that fully reflected her displeasure. Behind her, Lucian trailed after her, somewhat awkwardly.
Returning to the spot where the fire had been lit, Kalina fed dry firewood into the dying flames. As she then blew air into the opposite hole to revive the embers, her practiced, skillful movements made Lucian’s lips part without his meaning to.
“That… you made that?”
“Who else did you think was out here?”
“…There was no smoke at all.”
“Ah, guess the navy doesn’t know about this kind of thing, huh?”
Fair enough. Unlike pirates, who were constantly wanted and forced into hiding, the navy had no need to conceal themselves, so it made sense he wouldn’t know. Kalina flicked her finger back and forth, pointing at the two holes in turn.
“One’s for the fire, the other’s an air passage. When you push air in through this side, the wood burns completely, so there’s almost no smoke. Lighting the fire inside a pit like this keeps the light from leaking out much, too. It’s about the best method there is for hiding a fire.”
“Ha. So this is why we had such a headache trying to track down you pirates.”
Kalina plopped down carelessly beside the fire and pulled the worn leather belt she’d tossed aside earlier into her arms.
Since washing up here, she’d already used up a fair number of the items on it, leaving quite a few empty loops on the belt.
“That doesn’t seem like something to your taste.”
Lucian shook out his uniform coat, which had fallen to the ground, and draped it over his shoulders. As far as he knew, the pirate Karin loved beautiful things.
Jewels, gold coins—anything that satisfied her discerning eye, she greedily draped over herself without exception.
She used to wear a tricorn hat so heavily laden with jewels it nearly tangled in her hair, and adorn her entire body with gleaming gold.
That a woman like that would be carrying around such a worn, plain leather belt struck him as somehow strange. At the puzzled look in his eyes, her eyes curved into a playful smile.
“You’ve been ignoring me this whole time, and now suddenly you’re curious?”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
Lucian scowled, clearly displeased. All of this was because of his injury. He’d lost a lot of blood, so of course he wasn’t thinking straight.
He mocked his own behavior inwardly. Above all, he could never afford to let his guard down around this woman. Given everything she’d done up to this point, there was no way she’d saved him without some purpose in mind.
Lucian’s eyes settled into a cold, wary calm.
Even though she noticed the wary look in his eyes, Kalina only chuckled and tapped her finger against the empty spaces on the leather belt.
“You navy gentlemen, always camping comfortably with your top-grade supplies, wouldn’t understand—but pirates like us aren’t blessed with that kind of luxury.”
Pirates and the navy. Both were, in the same way, doomed to drift across the vast open sea—but the value placed on their lives was worlds apart.
The navy were soldiers protected by the state, while pirates were trash whose heads rolled the moment they were caught.
***
