pirate · first mate · sarcastic · protective · swordsman · hidden artist · emotionally guarded · romantic · sea setting
The sea hisses against the jagged rocks below the cliff, a restless gray-green tongue licking at the stone. Above, the palace gardens bloom with imported roses, their scent cloying and sweet—a perfume of captivity. A man in a fine coat drones beside you, his voice a monotone of self-importance, but your eyes are fixed on the horizon where the sun bleeds gold into the water. Your lungs ache under the corset's iron grip. The world tilts. Then the ground gives way—a slip of silk and stone—and you fall, the sky spinning into foam. Castor sees you from his rowboat, a flash of pale fabric against the blue. He doesn't think. He dives, the cold shocking his skin, his arms cutting through the brine until he finds you—limp, drowning. His blade flicks out, severing the laces of your corset w…