‘Kill everyone except the princess.’

“……!”

“Do you understand now? Philkennon intended to isolate the princess completely.”

Her vision swam. She couldn’t tell whether the world was tilting from the waves or from the shock. Canasia closed her eyes and steadied her ragged breathing. While she worked to sort through the chaos in her mind, Aslan reached out and gripped her trembling shoulders.

“Princess.”

His voice, mixed in with the sound of crashing waves, sounded surprisingly gentle. Canasia barely managed to pull herself together and lifted her head. The gaze that always seemed sharp was now turned toward her softly.

“What’s your reason for telling me all this?”

“Only to keep a promise.”

“A promise?”

Canasia’s question made Aslan curve his lips gently.

“You asked me to take you away, even to hell.”

“…….”

“I’ll take you.”

“…….”

“Cling to me. Like you did that night.”

* * *

Canasia stared quietly at the vast open sea beyond the porthole. By schedule, she should have entered Eldos’s territorial waters by now. She might even have boarded an Eldos ship sent to receive her and been busy preparing for the wedding.

‘A pretty little fraud.’

He was right. A grand swindle staged between Eldos and Hereis. Canasia thought about how she nearly played the puppet in that swindle and smiled bitterly.

Beyond the passage toll, there were more than one or two unfair terms in the agreement, including transfers of territorial rights and shared sea zones. She blamed herself for not paying attention to how things were unfolding, since it was a marriage she never wanted, but even if she had paid attention, nothing would have changed.

On top of that, most of the agreements were revisions or continuations of the treaty made at the time of her sister Eleanor’s marriage, so it would have been difficult to argue they were unfair in any new sense.

Perhaps to avoid repeating the mistake from Eleanor’s time, every agreement carried the same provision. The terms would take effect from the moment Canasia Hereis and Philkennon di Eldos announced their marriage, and would remain valid even if the two were unable to continue their marriage due to unavoidable circumstances.

How thoroughly they prepared.

Canasia pressed her aching eyelids with a hollow feeling.

If Aslan hadn’t told me, I never would have known. From the moment I decided to go to Eldos, I stopped caring about anything.

‘Cling to me. Like you did that night.’

His words circled in her head. The more she thought about it, the more incomprehensible he was. He didn’t fit the image of a notorious pirate. There was something oddly peculiar about him. His looks, which could easily be mistaken for a nobleman’s, and the way he treated her.

For a hostage meant to lure Philkennon di Eldos, the treatment was far too generous. He was a pirate who didn’t even fear Eldos, so he certainly wasn’t tiptoeing around a small kingdom like Hereis. And if it was out of some attachment from the one night they spent together, she couldn’t explain why he hadn’t laid a hand on her since.

Most suspicious of all was that a mere pirate knew the political landscape of the continent in such thorough detail. It made sense that someone who commanded the Dead Sea would have extensive knowledge of sea routes, but knowing the inner workings of every nation was not ordinary. And Bjorn’s words nagged at her too.

‘Some people exist for others. People fated to carry the lives of others on their shoulders, whether they want to or not.’

Aslan, fated to carry the lives of others. The pirates on this ship were people who entrusted their lives to Aslan, that much was true, but was that all the man meant?

“Haa……”

One thought chased another without end, and Canasia rubbed her face with a stifled feeling. Not a single question was resolved, but she needed to make up her mind before it was too late. Whether to join hands with Aslan, or to wait quietly for the King of Eldos to come for her.

Her tired gaze landed on the pile of documents Aslan left behind. One thing was certain: the King of Eldos was far more dangerous to Hereis than any pirate. But.

……Roddy.

He said he might be alive, but it was a slim chance. So this choice was between the man who killed her sister and the man who killed Roderick.

I’m sorry, Roddy.

Canasia made her decision.

* * *

“The ship carrying the princess of Hereis was attacked?”

Philkennon di Eldos, King of Eldos, was in the middle of dinner when a messenger burst into the dining hall. He directed the question at the man. The messenger, who ran to deliver the urgent news, bowed his head.

“Yes, Your Majesty. A merchant vessel passing nearby reportedly found the Victore wrecked.”

“You useless bastards!”

Philkennon hurled the plate he was eating from. It struck the marble floor and shattered, sending fragments flying in every direction.

“Can’t even manage to bring back one measly woman!”

“I, I am deeply sorry, Your Majesty.”

“So what about her? What happened to the woman from Hereis?”

The messenger continued carefully, sensing that one wrong word could cost him his neck.

“Sh, she appears to have been kidnapped by pirates……”

“Kidnapped?”

“Yes. From the circumstances, it seems Aslan took her, but nothing has been confirmed yet…… Ugh!”

A wine glass suddenly flew and struck the messenger in the forehead. Philkennon, in a frenzy, grabbed everything on the table and hurled it all while screaming.

“That rat of a pirate is interfering with me again! I should have drowned him at the bottom of the sea like his father!”

Philkennon kicked back his chair and shot to his feet in a rage.

“Find him immediately! This time I’ll cut off that pirate’s head and hang it on my wall as decoration!”

“Y, yes, Your Majesty!”

The messenger scrambled out of the dining hall. Philkennon stood fuming at the ruined table, then grabbed a bottle and drank from it in long, furious gulps.

“Damned woman, how much trouble are you going to put me through just to satisfy me.”

Clang! He threw the empty bottle down and muttered darkly.

* * *

“Sleep well, Princess?”

Canasia stared at Aslan in disbelief. He leaned casually against the old wooden door and greeted her without a care in the world. Seeing how light he was, after such a grave conversation the night before, made her feel almost ridiculous for lying awake all night wrestling with her thoughts.

Canasia tried not to get swept up in his lightness as she spoke.

“I asked you to come when you had time.”

“When the princess calls, I have to come running even if I don’t have time.”

Aslan winked and settled into the empty chair. He glanced at the neatly arranged papers on the table and asked:

“So, why did you call me?”

“What do I need to do?”

“You’ve decided to cooperate?”

“If I don’t cooperate, do I have any other choice?”

The pointed question made Aslan smile wryly.

“Can’t argue with that.”

“Then get to the point. Tell me what I need to do.”

Aslan opened his mouth with a faint smile at the blunt question.

“This ship will reach the Empire in two weeks. The plan is to announce there that we have the princess, and tell Philkennon to come to us in person with the ransom if he wants her back safely. In the meantime, all the princess needs to do is stay quietly by my side.”

“The goal was my ransom?”

“No, the goal is Philkennon’s head.”

Canasia briefly doubted her own hearing at the casual reply.

“You’re going to kill the King of Eldos?”

“Think I can’t?”

Of course you can’t.

No matter how formidable a pirate Aslan was, going up against an entire nation was like throwing an egg at a rock. And the opponent was Philkennon di Eldos, no less. The man was famous for his cruelty and ruthlessness, and commanded an army powerful enough to rival the Empire. She couldn’t understand what he was relying on to be so confident.

‘There’s someone who loses his mind over anything related to Eldos.’

Canasia recalled Jeff Dawson’s words and asked carefully:

“What’s your reason for wanting to kill the King of Eldos?”

“I have a debt to repay that bastard.”

The smile vanished from the man’s face in an instant, replaced by something cold. The killing intent was sharp enough to make the back of her neck go cold. She thought she understood now why the Victore’s crew feared Aslan the way they did, and she turned his words over in her mind.

A debt to repay the King of Eldos……

It was only natural that pirates who roamed the seas plundering and a kingdom like Eldos, which relied heavily on maritime trade, would be at odds. But from his manner, this was clearly not such a simple grudge.

“Does it bother you? That I’m using the princess for my revenge?”