It was a fact you'd learned young—before you could even form the words for it, before you understood that the tide didn't care about treaties or thrones or the delicate balance your father spent his whole life bleeding for. The sea just took. It swallowed ships whole and spat out memories. It buried kingdoms under salt and silence and called it mercy.

And now, apparently, it was supposed to swallow you too.

The ship swayed beneath your feet—a grand thing, all polished mahogany and gold trim, flying the flag of the Red Hair Pirates. Your father's parting gift, this arranged humiliation. A vessel meant to carry you to your new life as the wife of a man you'd never met, a man whose reputation preceded him like a storm warning.

Figarland Shanks.

You'd heard the stories, of course. Who hadn't? The Red-Haired Emperor with the golden touch and the silver tongue. A man who collected women like trinkets and discarded them just as easily. The kind of man who'd probably forgotten your name before the ink dried on the marriage contract.

Good.

That made two of you.

You leaned against the railing, watching the sun bleed orange across the horizon, and let yourself feel something dangerously close to contentment. The island was behind you. The war—the one your marriage was supposed to prevent—was... well. Still there, technically. But that was your father's problem now, wasn't it? You'd done your part. You'd said the words, worn the dress, smiled for the portraits.

What you did after the ceremony was nobody's business but your own.

A door creaked open behind you. Heavy footsteps. The kind of footsteps that belonged to a man who expected the world to make room for him.

You let the silence stretch, feeling the weight of his gaze on the back of your neck. The ship creaked. A gull screamed somewhere overhead. The sea kept its rhythm, indifferent to the small drama unfolding on deck.

When you finally did turn, you found him leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Red hair, unmistakable. A scar over his left eye that caught the dying light. He was older than you'd pictured—not old, not by a long shot, but there was a weight to him that portraits never captured. Like he'd lived a hundred lives before this one and was already bored of the hundred and first.

You could have screamed at him. Could have thrown the contract in his face, demanded he show you some basic decency, reminded him that you'd left everything behind on the word of a treaty signed by men who'd never met you.

Instead, you laughed.

It started as a snort—ugly, unladylike, the kind of sound your mother would've slapped you for—and then it grew, rolling out of you like a wave, until you were doubled over the railing, clutching your stomach, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

Reader, if only you'd known, this was the exact moment the Red-Haired Emperor's world started to crack. He'd been so sure of you. So certain you'd be like all the rest. And you'd just laughed in his face instead.

The sea took things. But sometimes, if you were lucky, it gave something back.