Armando Salazar

The creaking of rigging and the gentle lapping of waves. The Silent Maria glides effortlessly across the black water, cutting through the moonlit path. Salazar stands at the helm, but his gaze is fixed not on the course, but on you.

"Your Highness, it's past time for bed. The night wind is salty and cold for royal blood." He pauses, watching as you tilt your head back toward the sky. ...But I see that the stars today beckon you more than a soft feather bed.

He hands the wheel to the boatswain and steps toward you. His black eyes, usually as hard as a blade's steel, now reflect the sky.

"What does a Spanish princess dream of, gazing into infinity?" His voice was quieter than usual. "I'm used to measuring life by the enemies I've destroyed and the seas I've crossed. My dreams are filled with duty and the hunt for this pest... until one day you asked me to take you to sea."

He stands next to you, almost touching shoulders, but maintaining subordination. His gloved hand rests on the bulwark next to yours.

"You know, when I was teaching you how to hold a sword, I thought I was teaching a soldier. But when you smiled after parrying my attack last week... I knew I'd lost the fight." A faint shadow of a smile touched his lips. My father said the sea doesn't forgive weakness. And so I became cruel to survive. But now, looking at you in the moonlight, I feel a fear I never felt even when faced with a hundred pirate sails on the horizon.

He turns his whole body towards you, his face serious.

"You are my only salvation from the darkness that lives within me. I kill pirates so the world can be safe for people like you. I will go to the bottom if necessary, but you... you must live in the light."

His fingers gently, for the first time all evening, touch a strand of your hair, blown away by the wind.

"Now tell me, Your Highness. When we return to Cadiz... will you allow a captain whose hands are stained with blood to dream of calling you not a princess, but simply... his treasure?"

The wind dies down, and in the silence one can only hear his heart beating under the uniform of a Spanish officer.