The Princess and The Pirate
Chapter 38

“Sire! Should I ready the horses? Are you pursuing them?!” cried a panicked servant while the fire crackled and viciously ate away at the inside of the large house. It was running rampant, destroying damn near everything.

“No. Why bother?” the Regent replied unenthusiastically, masking his disappointment. Lowering his rifle, he watched the pair disappear into the tree line. “I know where they’re going.”

He had missed, having unaccounted for the evening wind. Eustace was simply too eager to kill her and too eager to bury what insulted him. Boyish impulse betrayed his training.

How embarrassing.

Frowning just slightly, the regent turned around to tame this inferno before it devoured everything.

* * *

Adrenaline was all that led Kyle at the moment. Instinct, the primal urge to escape danger, overtook his body and he made snap decisions based solely on survival. Such an overwhelming emotion drowned out both the Princess’s screaming and the searing pain in his shoulder. The captain just kicked the horse harder, despite feeling the grip in his left arm weaken.

“MY HAND!” Jacqueline shrieked into the night. Her lips trembled at the pain which was amplified as she was swatted with the tips of sharp branches. Looking down, there was a hole clean through the back of her hand that bled uncontrollably. Streams of red twisted and ran against her skin like rivers on a map. The hole continued further straight into Kyle’s shoulder. “...YOUR BACK!”

“WOMAN! STOP SHOUTING!” Kyle shouted back at her. The further they got from immediate danger, the more pain he felt. His pulse radiated within his ears and it slowly drowned out the hooves of his horse.

This forest was particularly unkind. It whipped and grabbed at them within the sharp, cruel thicket. They barreled through the brush and tore obtrusive roots, hacking through the most unforgiving terrain. If they were going to be hunted, they wouldn’t be easy game. Thorns scratched at the horse and thistles dug into its legs while it kicked up mud and rocks in haste.

By now Kyle couldn’t feel his fingertips. He needed to stop.

Certain things became alarmingly apparent in his sudden fatigue. The horse’s labored breath and the breaking of twigs were clear in his mind. Seemingly unimportant sounds were all his senses could fixate on. The heartbeat in his ears came and went like the roll of the ocean.

God, he missed the ocean. He missed the ocean like he missed peace and quiet.

From a sprint to a trot, the Captain steered the horse into a small, dirty flat place. It may have been a meadow once but now it was just dead dirt, overgrown by knotty nature. Before they were completely still, the Princess was already off. Shoving his back, she hurriedly landed on her royal shoeless feet in the mud.

Completely unconcerned with her surroundings, Jacqueline grabbed at her left hand and whimpered. It was pierced straight through by Eustace’s bullet. The hand couldn’t close. It only shook and spread free-flowing blood all over the place. “G-Goddammit…” She let out a fractured curse, stammering at the sight. She could look at the ground through the new fleshy window.

Kyle rolled off the horse sloppily. Feeling exhausted and broken, he looked over to the Princess.

Well, it still counted as a rescue, right? So he was technically a hero, right? Even if she was slightly more broken than when he found her? The captain reached out to the Princess—his princess and no one else’s—and looked at her hand. “Let me see it. We don’t have a lot of ti—”

But he was cut off. Jacqueline violently pulled away from him, nearly falling over in the process! “Don’t fucking talk to me! C-certainly don’t you touch me!” and she pointed at him with a bloody finger.

“Who in the HELL do you think you’re talking to?!” Kyle cried at her while moving his own hand to his wounded shoulder. She was such an ungrateful brat!

“You SOLD me!” she shouted hysterically. Covered in blood, dirt, and smeared makeup, she looked more like a war refugee than royalty. “YOU LEFT ME THERE! YOU TOOK HIS MONEY AND LEFT!”

“Shh! Shut the fuck up! Don’t be so loud!” He held up one of his hands, watching as the birds flew from the neighboring treetops. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

The Princess just broke. Eyes open and horrified, Jacqueline cried a hot flood of tears and her pale face was twisted in some indefinable emotion. It was a crazy feat to stare icily at him, completely unblinking with pinpoint pupils, while still managing to sob. All the suppressed despair found its way out. “You’re sorry,” she said flatly, whispering it.

That couldn’t be good. Kyle licked his bottom lip slightly, darting his eyes around in the dark. “Yes, Princess. I’m sorry. So sorry, in fact, I stormed the castle to get you back.” That had to account for something, right? He tried to smile.

Jacqueline glided towards him. It was an eerie phantom-like movement, her arms and face ghostly still. She looked up at him with charcoal-smudged eyes, a stony expression, and then struck him hard in the face with her opened palm. “YOU ARE NOT SORRY! I WILL SHOW YOU SORRY!” She hit him again.

And again. And again! Fear and pain were being released in an unhealthy explosion directed squarely at his face.

It was about the fourth strike Kyle lost his compassion. She could be mad and he understood that, but he wouldn’t be beat to death by a princess. Surely, the Black Duke was spinning in his watery grave.

Grabbing her wrists, the Captain abruptly stopped her onslaught in its tracks. “THAT’S ENOUGH! Listen! I KNOW Y—” and she lifted her knee straight into his stomach.

Gasping, Kyle bent forward but continued to clutch her wrists tightly. Jacqueline violently thrashed to get away. But he held on, grinding his teeth in pain.

Kyle held her in anger. Feeling the Princess’s frail bones bend under his strength, he flexed the power to control her. His face stung and his once warm eyes turned hard. He risked his life needlessly and this was the thanks he got? An apocalypse had been unleashed on him!

“LET ME GO!” In his hands, Jacqueline flailed like a beached shark the Captain saw once. “LET ME GO! I DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING HELP!” Crying, tears flung off her face left and right, glittering in the moonlight. She tried pulling herself back wildly, even with her arms outstretched, but she was anchored forward. It brought him back to the image of the beached shark, fighting so sincerely. People gathered around it, watching the life drain from it as it suffocated in the open air. Its eyes flashed back and forth between white and black, panicking in the sand. Snapping its teeth crazily in the air, no one helped it. It was too dangerous to approach.

“YOUR HELP IS A FUCKING JOKE!”

She was drowning, right here, right in front of him. Overcoming his own offense, Kyle pulled Jacqueline roughly towards him. Letting go of her wrist, he wrapped his arms tightly around the Princess’s back, crushing her into his chest in a hug. She brutally objected by pushing against him and screaming angry, bloody murder into his body.

“Stop,” he whispered into her hair.

The Princess screamed into his shoulder defiantly, gripping his shirt and digging her fingers into his sides. Feeling and absorbing her tremors and lowering his face, Kyle put his cheek against the crown of her head. The volume of her wails subsided. The fury was extinguished and left only a shuddering mass in his arms.

“Listen. I’m sorry,” the Captain started, looking out into the woods while keeping his arms locked, securely containing her small meltdown. “I’m sorry. I can’t change it. I spent every cent to get you back. I set the man’s house on fire. I…” Kyle paused, thinking about his words. The wind blew the clouds in front of the moon, casting the pair in a lonely, vast darkness. “I…”

“I want to get you home.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it was what she probably wanted to hear. “So, let me do that.” He smelled her hair and shamefully enjoyed the warmth held within the strands.

Jacqueline sniffled. “You left me.”

“You just kneed me in the stomach. Let’s not dwell in the past,” Kyle joked.

There was an inner peace the Princess felt as she pushed the side of her face against his chest and heard the thumping of his heart. Feeling so suddenly exhausted, Jacqueline brought her hands to his back. When she went to rely on his strength, she felt something warm and wet.

“Y-your back!” the Princess pulled her head away sharply. “You...We’ve...been shot!” The surge of rage made her forget pain. Her fingertips were covered in blood. “Take off your jacket!” Grabbing the collar of Kyle’s coat, she stripped it from him.

Kyle just groaned. The moment was over and his heart was screaming at him for failing to share his honesty. His shoulder burned as he awkwardly struggled to take his coat off. It ached and popped when rotated, but he kept his complaints to a minimum, trying to listen to the surrounding forest for dogs, men, or rifles. Thankfully, there was nothing, just undisturbed nature.

“Give me some fabric,” he said with a slight grunt of pain. He’d make a sling and be done with it. In fact, it’d work with his plan to get them back into Rocqueburne. Self-sufficient, Kyle kneeled and grabbed the very end of the Princess’s skirts. Those fancy dresses did serve some use by being a walking rainbow of bandages.

She blushed as Kyle ripped her petticoat generously. Clicking her knees together, Jacqueline looked to the left, embarrassed.

“Really? I think the time for modesty is over,” he commented while putting fabric in his teeth and ripping it again. “Besides, you’ll need to change.” The captain motioned over to the loaded horse, again tearing the fabric. “There’s a white nightgown in there, get into it.”

“A nightgown? Whatever for?” Jacqueline asked, confused, even though what she was wearing was wholeheartedly ruined by mud, blood, and fire. Before she walked away, Kyle grabbed her injured hand and gently wrapped it in the fabric, taking his time. He looked to her chest and the long, stitched wound on top of it.

Kyle was glad that Cordinae was dead and felt little sympathy for the man, despite his help.

He must have stared too long, because Jacqueline promptly pulled away just as he tied the knot. There was an uneasy air about her now, like any intimacy was suddenly inappropriate between them.

“It’s ugly, I know.” She walked away, turning her back to the Captain.

Rolling his eyes, Kyle tied his own sling. Slipping the tie over his neck and his own wounded arm into the fold of fabric, he watched her. “I didn’t say that.”

Jacqueline was able to pull her shoulders out of the dress’s many compartments with some clever wiggling and contortion.

“You didn’t need to,” she said as she struggled with the fabric. It was hard undressing herself while one of her own hands refused to work.

Just then, the moon slid out from behind the thin string of clouds and the Princess felt a hand on her shoulder, helping strip the fabric down.

“I think it’s becoming,” Kyle said quietly while looking at the bare curve of her neck. He slid his fingers down to the back of her dress, using his one hand to pull at the corset’s cords. With a few tugs, the contraption was opening up. “It makes you look like you’ve lived a life instead of sitting on a shelf forever. All the other queens will be jealous bitches.”

Jacqueline blushed again, pressing her hand against the imbedded scar, which also meekly kept the dress up. Even in the quiet, she heard Eustace in her head. “We can have that fixed. Worry not love, we’ll have you pretty again.” It was ugly to him, an amendable flaw that could be erased. Anything could happen with enough money thrown at it.

“You don’t think it’s hideous?”

“Nah. Like a sideways stroke on a vertical painting, it’s still art.”

Kyle gently untucked the folds of material that had cut into Jacqueline’s sides under the restrictive corset. For a moment she felt completely free of any pressure. She could finally breathe again and the release of the tight garment resulted in a warm flush of blood throughout her entire body. She felt as though life were returning to every vein and every corner of her being.

Kyle pulled the corset off and roughly threw it behind them. He placed a kiss on her shoulder and his hands on her hips.

Jacqueline ran her hand along her scar and the inflamed skin around her stitches. She saw the blood and dirt smeared over her body and the shreds of the once beautiful dress she had worn. Feeling many things, all at once, was like a tightly cloistered, unrelenting noise in her head. The pressure was going to push steam from her ears and tears from her eyes. It was going to stop her heart.

He felt the cold in her skin. It was buried deep and radiating outwards. His hands hovered upward, lifting off her hips. Within a moment, she seemed unobtainable.

“I’m not…” But she trailed off weakly. She wasn’t what? Ready? Able? Willing? She wasn’t anything? In the quiet and in the freedom of the moment, only the wind rustled in the trees. It blew right through her.

She lifted her eyes and looked up at Kyle. His eyes were weary and honest. She could tell he wasn’t just trying to pacify, calm, or make her feel better for his own motivation. Or was he? Jacqueline couldn’t read his face anymore.

He placed his hands on her shoulders and then pulled her close to him. He still had the bad news of her parents’ death and her cousin’s rise to power to tell her, but those things could wait.

Neither of them said a word. Kyle simply held her until she gently pulled away. She gave a single, exhausted laugh before wiping away a tear. “We should probably go,” she said with a tired smile.

Kyle just nodded and watched her, like a man watching a distant sunset.

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