“You can’t be serious, Victoria. Are you stupid? Have you forgotten the reason we ran away in the first place? I can’t believe that you’d do something like this. Some days I won-”

Victoria sighed, wishing for the umpteenth time that hour that Luhan would knock Kris unconscious again just so she didn’t have to hear him rant at her anymore. But no matter how much she wanted him to shut up, she wouldn’t say anything. How could she when he was right? Agreeing to become Tao’s wife, even if it was in exchange for her crew’s life, went against everything that she believed, everything that she had spent the past fourteen years running from. 

“Kris,” she said once he paused, watching the sunrise from the window of Tao’s bedroom. “You need to go back to the ship.” 

“What?” 

Victoria flinched at the outrage in the younger’s voice, too emotionally drained from a night of watching the sea that she had called home for so long now and knowing she couldn’t return to it without forfeiting the lives of the people she’d grown to think of as family to deal with honest anger from her first mate and best friend. “They need a captain, Kris. You know that ship just as well as I do, I trust you to take care of it and my crew,” Victoria’s voice was thick with unshed tears, heart crumbling at the thought of her ship sailing away and not even getting to say goodbye to Sulli or Yixing or Krystal before they were gone from her life forever. “Yifan, I need you to take care of them for me.”

The first sob broke through when Kris’s arms wrapped around her, chin resting on her shoulder and chest flush with her back. “I’m not worried about them. Our crew can handle themselves, Tor, but if I leave, who’s going to take care of you?”

Victoria cried for the first time since she was a thirteen year old girl without a home for the first time in her life, and just like that time, Kris held her until her sobs had turned to gentle sniffles and her tears had dried.

“I’ll go back to the ship and tell the crew and then I’ll come back, okay?” He said once she’d finished. 

Victoria nodded, a small surge of happiness at not being entirely without her family causing her to smile as Tao’s chamber door opened to reveal the dark-haired prince and his personal guard, a man whom had introduced himself to Victoria several hours prior as Han Geng. 

Tao glanced between the two before turning to Kris. “You can leave now. The soldiers previously guarding the ship have returned and are under strict orders to let you all go free. Of course this only lasts until you’re all out of our waters. If your ship ever returns to my kingdom, you will be captured and executed as pirates.” Tao turned to Victoria then, apparently expecting Kris to say his goodbyes and leave immediately. 

“I’m not leaving.” 

Tao’s eyebrow twitched as he turned to the pirate once more. “Excuse me?” 

“Kris is the only family I’ve got off my ship; he stays with me,” Victoria answered. If Tao had expected Victoria to roll over and do everything he asked without question just because they were getting married, he was going to be severly disappointed. 

Tao scoffed. The man she had sympathized with the night before seemed to have completely disappeared during the morning hours, leaving behind the exact brand of snobby noble born Victoria had spent the better half of her life loathing. “Too bad, I will not have a pirate running around my home.” 

Victoria’s eyes narrowed as she stood. “Don’t forget that you’re trying to marry a pirate.” 

“You ceased being a pirate the minute you agreed to this marriage,” the prince replied, glaring at what he considered to be the only pirate in the room. “If you’re still here in the morning, then every guard in this palace will be under orders to bring me your head.” 

Victoria lunged for him, the two of them falling to the ground before Kris or Han Geng could fully comprehend what was happening. “If you harm a single head on his head, I’ll kill you myself before you’re even crowned, princey boy.”

“So you just expect me to let a pirate stay under my roof?” Tao growled, seemingly unafraid of the women radiating fury atop him. 

“Yes.”

Tao rolled his eyes, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Why don’t I just invite your whole crew to live here then? Give them all royal pardons and their own wing? Have a whole horde of pirates calling themselves lords and ladies? Would that make you happy, Victoria?”

Victoria grinned down at him. “Yes, actually. Kris, why don’t you go ask the crew what they think of the idea?” 

A matching grin spread across Kris’s face as he nodded and made his way to the door, stopping for a fraction of a second to wink at the furious prince. 

“I wasn’t being serious, Victoria. Your crew are not allowed in the palace,” Tao growled, sitting up as best he could with Victoria still sitting on him. 

“Too late for that now, princey. After all,” she laughed, standing and making a show of dusting herself off. “Don’t you want your fiancée to be as happy as possible?” 

“You can’t really bring an entire crew of pirates into the palace, Victoria, that’s insane!” he yelled, standing up and following her as she retook her seat next the window. 

“My crew’s small, only thirteen of us, they could all live comfortably in a room this size and most will prefer to share with one another, we’re all used to months of little to no food where we had to survive on the lightest meals possible, all of my crew have some trade or skill that could be useful to the kingdom in some way or another; there is no reason at all for my crew to continue stealing and foraging to survive while I lounge about living the life of a princess.”

Silence covered the room once more when Victoria finished, the sheer weight of the life she’d lived reflected in the eyes that bore into the brunet’s own dark orbs. Several moments passed as they continued to stare at one another. 

Victoria thought that he was going to leave without even acknowledging her monologue when he turned and made his way back to his chamber door, but he stopped with his hand on the handle to yell over his shoulder: “Han Geng, tell the maids to have rooms prepared for Victoria and her crew by breakfast.”

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