Timo rattled off his words like rapid fire and bolted out of the cabin. The bang of the door made Aslan click his tongue, and he turned to look at Canasia.

Has she been crying? He studied her carefully. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but there were no tear tracks on her face. The gaunt face and the firmly pressed lips seemed to speak to a stubborn princess’s pride, and Aslan smiled wryly.

“Eat before it gets cold.”

Aslan said this as he sat down. He expected she wouldn’t comply, and sure enough, Canasia turned her head away and said nothing.

Stubborn one. His gaze moved to the bruised wrists, blue with marks. The wrists, barely a handful, trembled pitifully.

He knew she was thin, but she didn’t seem this thin before. Aslan put a fork in her hand and spoke again.

“There’s nothing in it like poison, so go ahead and…….”

Thud. Before he finished, Canasia flung the fork away. It hit the cabin floor and clattered for a long moment before going still.

“I’d rather die than eat, so take it away!”

Canasia glared at him with venom in her eyes and shouted. Aslan let out a short laugh at the feeble display. It was probably her attempt to preserve some dignity as a princess, but to him it looked like nothing more than clumsy bravado.

Aslan slowly rose from his seat. His shadow fell over the woman’s small frame entirely. He ignored Canasia flinching at the darkness closing over her and picked the fork up off the floor and set it back in place. The gaze that kept turning away from him followed his movement faithfully.

Should I get angry? The brief consideration dissolved the moment he saw her lips trembling faintly.

Then again, she was captured by pirates, locked on a ship with no idea where it was headed, and watched the people around her until just days ago get killed. It would be stranger if she had any appetite. Aslan stared at the irritatingly thin wrist and swallowed what he was going to say.

“I’ll give you time to think. Call me when you’ve sorted yourself out.”

* * *

The sound of dishes clinking woke Canasia from a light sleep. She couldn’t tell whether someone was setting the table or clearing it, but she knew that opening her eyes would only invite pestering about eating, so she stayed still.

“Untouched again.”

Timo grumbled under his breath as he cleared the untouched plates. Since boarding this ship, she hadn’t eaten a single thing, yet three times a day without fail someone set out food and took it away again. It was miserable for the one setting it and the one refusing it alike.

“Haah, what am I going to tell the captain?”

Timo sighed loudly enough for her to hear and left the cabin. Only after the door closed did she lift her eyelids. The light coming through the porthole stabbed at her eyes. Canasia stared blankly at the shafts of light pouring into the cabin.

How many days has it been? Two, or maybe three?

Her sense of time was muddled, probably from sleeping constantly since coming aboard the Abyss. She had no desire to exchange words with those savage pirates, but her body also felt endlessly heavy, as though her strength had completely run out.

Barely managing to sit up, Canasia stared at the wheat bread on the table. It looked like someone left it for whenever she got hungry, but she had no appetite at all.

“Ugh.”

A sudden wave of nausea surged up and she grabbed the bed and retched. She had never experienced seasickness this severe in her life. She felt queasy on the Victore too, but it was nothing like this gut-wrenching torment. After several dry heaves in a row, Canasia leaned her back against the headboard. Her vision spun.

‘I’ll give you time to think. Call me when you’ve sorted yourself out.’

What is that man thinking, kidnapping me? Does he plan to go to Eldos and collect a ransom for me? A vile pirate would certainly do that and more. Though it seems unlikely Philkennon would pay a ransom without a fight.

Canasia pressed her throbbing forehead. It was less than ten days since they set out, so news of the Victore’s capture probably hadn’t reached land yet.

There was no way to send a messenger at sea, so word would most likely only get out after the expected arrival date passed and the ship failed to show. If anyone survived the wrecked ship, the news might reach land sooner.

……Roddy.

Roderick’s face, the last time she saw him, suddenly flickered before her eyes.

Roddy, did you meet Sister?

Canasia pressed her aching eyelids shut.

* * *

A small boat pushed through the pale sea mist and touched land. Two oars scooped at the shallow water for a long while before being tossed out of the boat.

“D*mn it, we’re alive!”

A hoarse voice came from the front of the boat. The man who let out the thick curse blinked back tears, seemingly overcome with gratitude at making it ashore, and climbed out. Jeff Dawson looked around at the land in every direction and a bright smile spread across his face.

“Hell yes, Sir Knight! We made it! We actually made it!”

“Is…… cough, is this the right place?”

“I’m telling you it is!”

Roderick Ferdinand pulled himself upright inside the boat at Jeff Dawson’s answer. The man was soaked from head to toe, his complexion deathly pale, but his eyes burned with a terrifying clarity.

Roderick climbed out of the boat with effort and set foot on the white sand. His boots, waterlogged with seawater, sank deep into the sand with each step. Drops of blood from a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding soaked into the white sand.

Roderick frowned and gripped his shoulder. The bandage he tied tightly around the wound had torn open from rowing, and its original color was barely recognizable. Whether from relief, the body he kept going through sheer willpower swayed sharply.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Jeff Dawson, still savoring the joy of survival, walked over to the staggering man and moved to support him. Roderick politely declined.

“I’m fine. Where exactly are we?”

“Reigar. A small island under imperial territory.”

Reigar. Roderick repeated the unfamiliar name and closed his heavy eyelids, then opened them again.

After the merciless raid swept through, all that remained on the Victore were heavy casualties and a ruined ship. Roderick fought the pirates to the last, but couldn’t overcome the difference in numbers.

The pirates who subdued Roderick plundered Canasia and the trousseau and vanished, and the Victore, its helm smashed, hit a reef not long after. Jeff Dawson, a seasoned sailor, took one look at the ship sinking rapidly and made a quick decision.

He divided the remaining provisions among the lifeboats loaded on the Victore. Surviving on lifeboats in the open waters of the Dead Sea, notorious for its violent currents, was a reckless gamble, but there was no other way. The survivors scattered in all directions on the lifeboats.

And Jeff Dawson decided to keep Roderick alive. It wasn’t that he particularly liked Roderick. It was simply that Jeff Dawson knew well how low sailors could sink when their lives were on the line, and he saw at a glance that Roderick Ferdinand was a foolishly straightforward man by comparison.

On top of that, Roderick was injured but not fatally so, he was skilled enough to protect Jeff Dawson in an emergency, and most decisively, Jeff Dawson needed someone to shift the blame onto when he returned to Eldos.

Jeff Dawson, having won a low-odds gamble, felt like he could fly.

“Follow that cliff face over there and you’ll find a village. I know some people there, so we should be able to get help.”

Jeff Dawson walked with a swagger and continued.

“A regular ship to Eldos comes to this island once a month, so let’s wait until it arrives and get that injury treated in the meantime. Pirates don’t touch the regular ships, so…….”

His words cut off when he realized Roderick, who was following behind, had stopped walking.

“What, can’t walk anymore?”

“Where is that pirate’s base?”

“You mean Aslan?”

Jeff Dawson furrowed his brow as though searching his memory and answered.

“An island called Tuonela. I’ve never been there myself.”

“Tuonela…….”

That island where those cast out by the empire are said to gather. So it actually exists.

Roderick asked with pale lips.

“How would one get there?”

“I don’t really know that much about it. But why do you want to go there?”

“Cana, I have to find Canasia.”