Bwoong. The foghorn sounded across the wide sea. A sailor scanning the open water with a bored expression turned his head and stiffened. A man in a worn knight’s uniform sat in a corner of the deck gripping a rust-spotted sword in the sea wind, his sharp eyes scanning his surroundings. The sailor, trying to gauge whether the man was unhinged, approached him carefully.

“Excuse me.”

Whoosh! The moment he spoke, the man swung his sword and sheared off a lock of the sailor’s hair.

“Don’t touch me.”

“What kind of madman─!”

The sailor, caught off guard, scrambled away. Roderick Ferdinand shook the hair off his blade, tightened his grip, and resumed glaring at his surroundings.

“That man, is he completely out of his mind?”

The captain of the regular vessel watched the scene with a frown and spoke to Jeff Dawson. Jeff Dawson, sipping brandy with a ruddy face, scoffed.

“He may look like that on the outside, but he’s fine on the inside. He’s enduring it by playing mad.”

“I understand he lost the princess he served, but who could stand being near him?”

The captain complained with a pained look.

“Not eating, not sleeping, looking half dead like that. I worry we might be clearing out a corpse before we even reach Eldos.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. The deeper the grudge, the tougher the life.”

“Even so, the way he is……”

The captain muttered, eyeing Roderick with displeasure.

“Hold on. Let me have a word with him.”

Jeff Dawson picked up a brandy bottle and a hard loaf of bread and staggered over to Roderick.

“Excuse me, Sir Knight.”

The moment Jeff Dawson spoke, Roderick grabbed the hilt of his sword. Jeff Dawson quickly stepped back, apparently expecting as much. The man’s eyes softened slightly when he recognized who it was.

“What is it?”

“How do you expect to make it to Eldos like this?”

“……”

“You have to be alive to see the princess or not. Keep this up and you’ll be dead before you ever meet her.”

“……How much farther to Eldos?”

“A week’s sailing at least. Stop doing this out here and eat something.”

Jeff Dawson held out the shriveled bread. Roderick took it without a word and shoved it into his mouth, and Jeff Dawson held out the brandy.

“Drink that and go inside and get some sleep. You have to take care of yourself before you can do anything great.”

“……”

Roderick chewed through the bread and drank straight from the brandy bottle. His bloodshot eyes stared sharply at the horizon sinking into dusk.

Canasia, please be safe until I come for you.

* * *

Clink. The necklace fell to the floor. Canasia picked it up. The chain was broken. She tried to reconnect it but gave up and put the broken necklace in the drawer. The wood must have warped from the sea air, because the drawer was stiff and wouldn’t close properly. She forced it shut and then clutched her throbbing wrist.

The attack by Gunther Burke was four days ago. The bruise on her wrist faded, but the memory remained sharp. Aslan made the pirates keep strict silence about the incident, and Canasia acted as though nothing happened, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget it.

When she closed her eyes, the lingering image of that day tormented her. She tried forcing herself out to the deck so as not to feel like she surrendered to Gunther Burke by hiding in her room, but the dread that someone might throw her into the sea made her unable to bear it even briefly, and she had to flee back to the cabin.

She told herself dozens of times not to let something so small break her, that she would have suffered far worse in Eldos, but her body wouldn’t follow her thoughts.

“Ugh.”

Canasia gagged over the soup Timo brought. She wasn’t nauseous, but food simply wouldn’t go down. She promised herself she wouldn’t show weakness, but worried that leaving the meal untouched would tip Aslan off to her state, so she gathered the remaining food and quietly dumped it over the back of the ship.

“Haa……”

It was a miserable thing, cleaning a bowl with watery soup dripping from it. Canasia looked up at the sky, dark as spilled ink, with a gaunt face and sighed.

……Is he busy again today?

Canasia turned to leave for the cabin, then paused and glanced toward the front of the ship. A faint light leaked from the captain’s quarters. They were about to enter dangerous waters, and it seemed the meeting was still going. If pirates who had weathered every hardship imaginable were this tense, the passage ahead must be genuinely treacherous. Canasia stared at the captain’s quarters with a complicated expression, then trudged back to the cabin.

She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her hollow face. Laughably, it was Aslan who soothed her through the nightmares over the past few days. She pushed him away again and again, not wanting to show weakness to the pirate who kidnapped her, but he stayed stubbornly at her side. That stubbornness made her resentful and, at the same time, strangely reassured. Even to herself, it was full of contradictions.

Canasia curled into a ball and buried her face in her knees. She was exhausted from nights of broken sleep, but closing her eyes brought Gunther Burke’s face, and even trying to sleep felt frightening.

Please. I just want to sleep soundly again.

Breathing hot, ragged breaths through cracked lips, Canasia suddenly lifted her head. Pushed to her limit, her mind landed on the sleeping medicine Bjorn gave her.

‘Take it and you’ll sleep soundly.’

It should be somewhere here.

Canasia got up and reached under the bed. Her fingers groped along the dusty floor and touched a small, hard glass bottle.

She pulled it out and wiped off the dust. Clear liquid swirled inside a bottle no bigger than two finger joints. Canasia carefully opened the cap. The colorless, odorless liquid looked like water.

Would this really work? However friendly he seemed, Bjorn was still a pirate she couldn’t fully trust. But right now, even if this were poison, she felt she wouldn’t care as long as it let her sleep. Canasia brought the mouth of the bottle to her lips in a trance. A faintly sweet scent touched her tongue.

Will this much be enough? She drank once more. This doesn’t seem like enough. Just one more, just one sip, just one last time. The moment she registered the bottle was empty, her vision blurred.

“Hng……”

A feverish m*an slipped from her lips. Something was wrong. Far from feeling sleepy, her body was growing hot and her breathing was quickening. Canasia grabbed the headboard and pushed herself up. Her whole body burned like it had been set on fire.

“My body, it’s…… why……”

Why is this happening all of a sudden? Is it the medicine? Her entire body itched beyond endurance. Even the feel of fabric against her skin was overwhelming. Panic seized her, but the unbearable heat rising through her was impossible to fight, and Canasia pressed her hand against the wall and barely managed to take a step.

“Someone…… hng.”

Her legs gave out without warning and Canasia slid down the wall to the floor. Cold sweat poured off her. She tried to press her trembling hands to the floor and stand, but her body refused entirely. Her vision split into two, then three.

“Haa…… hah……”

Canasia lay sprawled on the cold cabin floor, breathing in feverish gasps. Colors she had never seen swirled and warped before her eyes. Is this how I die? Hot breath spilled from her parted lips. Her body shook like she was in the grip of a fever, though she couldn’t even register it.

“……cess, Princess!”

Someone shook her shoulder. Hng. A m*an broke from her the moment she was touched. Canasia forced her eyelids open with great effort. A young boy stared down at her with a flustered face.

“Princess, are you all right?”

“Ti…… mo, I need…… help……”

“I, I’ll go get the captain!”

Startled, Timo bolted out of the cabin. Canasia watched his blurring figure and lost consciousness.

* * *

Splash. The wine in the glass spilled onto the desk. Sean Walter quietly wiped the wet desk in place of its owner, who stood staring out the window. The white handkerchief quickly turned deep purple.

“The weather doesn’t look good,” Sean Walter said, opening with a note of concern. Aslan, gazing at the black sky, nodded in agreement.

“Looks like a storm is coming.”

Bjorn looked out at the darkening sky and continued:

“Passing through Cardoman is already a trial. If a storm rolls in on top of that, we’re in for a rough time.”

“We’ll have to hope luck is on our side.”

Aslan looked away from the window and down at the nautical chart. He sat thinking for a long moment, then spoke again.

“What about going around Cardoman and heading straight to Tuonela?”

“That won’t be easy.”

Sean Walter shook his head and added:

“We have only a week’s worth of provisions left. We won’t make it to Tuonela.”

“Then we have no choice.”

Aslan clicked his tongue.

“We have to stop at the Empire to make our declaration anyway,” Bjorn said with a shrug.

“By now Philkennon will have heard the news.”

“The moment we dock, send word. Tell him we have the Princess of Hereis, and if he wants her back he should bring the ransom to Tuonela.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to give a more generous timeframe? Notify the Empire first, and then prepare thoroughly, weapons, crew, everything……”

“If the Empire gets involved, this becomes something bigger. This is something I need to settle myself.”

“Even so, it’s better to do everything we can. Isn’t that what you promised from the start?”

“I agree. There’s no need to go charging into a fire with kindling strapped to your back.”

Sean and Bjorn urged Aslan against it one after the other. Aslan frowned with displeasure.

He already waited three years. And now they were asking him to wait longer.

Part of him wanted to storm Eldos’s royal palace alone and cut off Philkennon’s head himself.