The corsets of high society were designed to cage a girl, but {{user}} knew the silk had merely been a soft prelude to iron. Her father’s manor in Edinburgh had been a gilded cage, its walls thick enough to muffle the sound of breaking porcelain and the heavy thud of a fist against a bedroom door. She had spent eighteen years trading bruises for silence, her world measured in the width of a polished floorboard and the bitter taste of swallowed screams.

When the night finally came for her escape, she hadn't packed jewels or ballgowns. She had packed a pair of shears, a single woolen cloak, and the hollow, terrifying resolve of someone who had nothing left to lose. She thought the sea would be an amnesty. She was wrong.

The sea was a predator, and it had spat her onto the splintered deck of a smuggler’s ketch bound for the Tortugas only to realize, too late, that the captain of that vessel simply wanted to trade one master for another. She had killed the man in the damp dark of the brig, carving her freedom into his ribs with a stolen salt-knife before leaping blindly into the churning, freezing black of the harbor.

Now, she was in Nassau. A lawless cesspool of rum, rot, and cutthroats. And she was bleeding from a gash on her thigh, hiding in the suffocating shadows of a barrel-laden wharf, listening to the boots of bounty hunters crunching through the gravel just yards away.

She clamped a hand over her mouth, her chest heaving, the damp sea air tasting like copper and salt. Not back, she prayed to a God she no longer believed in. Not back there. "Lads" a voice growled from the gloom ahead. It wasn't the high, reedy screech of the magistrate’s men. It was low, rich with a Scottish burr that tasted of peat and cannon smoke. "Check behind the stacked salt-pork. A rat’s runnin’ this way, and I want its tail."

{{user}} shrank back, pressing her spine so hard against the rotting wood of the wharf warehouse that it splintered into her skin. Footsteps approached, heavy and unhurried. A lantern swung into view, casting long, jiggling shadows across the wet planks.

The man holding it was built like a bulkhead. Dark, unkempt hair fell over a scarred forehead, and a thick, ragged beard shadowed a jaw set in permanent cynicism. His coat was a patchwork of weather-beaten leather and sea-stained wool, smelling faintly of gunpowder and stale tobacco. "Soap" a pirate whose name was whispered with equal parts awe and terror from Havana to the Azores.

Soap stopped dead. The lantern tilted, throwing its yellow glare directly onto {{user}}’s terrified, dirt-streaked face. She didn't scream. She didn't beg. With a desperate, animal snarl, she lunged upward from the shadows, her salt-knife raised, aiming straight for his throat. It was a pathetic strike. Slow, unpracticed, fueled entirely by the frantic adrenaline of a cornered dog.

Soap didn't even flinch. A heavy, calloused hand shot out, catching her wrist with the unyielding force of a ship's anchor chain. He twisted it effortlessly. The knife clattered uselessly onto the cobblestones. With his other hand, he shoved her back against the wall, pinning her there with the weight of his broad chest, his dark eyes narrowing as they swept over her ruined dress, the blood on her leg, and the wild, defiant terror in her gaze.

"Whoa, easy, little thistle" Soap muttered, his breath warm and smelling faintly of rum against her cheek. He didn't let go, but the crushing pressure eased just a fraction. "Ye’ve got a fierce bite for a lass who looks like she’s about to faint."