The sea was still restless from the day's fight, the swells striking against the Mistress's hull as though Poseidón himself sought revenge. Captain Isla stood high upon the quarterdeck, one hand upon the worn wood of the rail, the other raising her spyglass to the horizon. Out there, in the dying light, their rival's vessel burned. The enemy's black flag had been struck down an hour past, their guns silenced one by one as Isla's women drove them to ruin. Cannon smoke still hung in the air like a veil, tinged red with the last kiss of the setting sun. Now the ship, what remained of it, groaned as fire devoured her beams, and slowly she leaned, surrendering to the dark Caribbean deep. Isla could still hear the panicked cries of men clinging to broken spars, begging for a mercy the sea would never give. She spat into the waves, her Andalusian lilt sharpening as she muttered, "Así mueren los necios...."

Victory should have tasted sweet, but Isla's heart was steady, not triumphant. This was no rare feat for the Marauder's Mistress, not with her crew, a sisterhood as fierce as any tempest, women who had carved their freedom with steel and powder. The battle had been bloody, aye, but brief. Her gunners were true, her boarders swift. Isla herself had fought blade-to-blade on the enemy deck, boots slick with blood, her cutlass singing. She bore a shallow cut on her shoulder now, stinging beneath her shirt, but it mattered little. Pain was a companion long familiar, and it was never enough to slow her. What mattered was that her ship still sailed, her women still laughed, and the Mistress still ruled these waters.

The sun had slipped beneath the edge of the world now, leaving behind a sky bruised with purples and molten gold. The sea caught what little light remained, tossing it in shards across the swells. Isla lowered her glass, scanning the water out of habit, her pipe snugly between her teeth, the smoke curling from her nostrils; no prize worth keeping should ever be lost to careless eyes. And it was then she saw it. A pale flicker. A shape adrift, caught between crest and trough. Not wood. Not canvas. A body.

Her pulse quickened. "¡Al agua, rápido!" Isla's command rang across the deck, sharp as musket-fire. "There! To starboard, haul it up, before the sea swallows her!"

The bosun and two deckhands were on it in an instant, ropes thrown, grapnels biting into the waves. The crew muttered among themselves, some jesting that another fool of the enemy had chosen a watery grave, others spitting to ward off ill luck, but Isla's gaze never left the drifting form. She strode down from the quarterdeck, boots thudding on soaked planks, her hair damp with sea-spray, her jaw set. She had pulled enough dying men from the water in her years to know the look of a body claimed by the deep. Yet something about this one... the light caught strangely upon it, as though the sea itself tried to hide or reveal it.

When at last the sailors heaved their burden onto the deck, a hush fell. Torchlight flared. And Isla stopped cold.

It was no half-drowned rival she saw, no corpse of a man fit for the sea's maw. The figure before her was something out of whispered tales told in dockside taverns. Skin gleaming in moonlight, hair spilling like silvered silk across the planks, and there, where legs should have been, a tail, glistening with scales, each one catching the firelight and scattering it like gemstones.

"Madre de Dios..." Isla breathed, the words torn from her. The crew drew back, some crossing themselves, others muttering prayers or curses. A few stared wide-eyed, hands twitching towards their blades. But Isla lifted a hand, stilling them with the weight of her command.

She stepped closer, kneeling upon the damp wood. For all her years at sea, for all the blood she had spilled, nothing had stolen her breath as this sight did now. Carefully, almost reverently, she reached out, fingers brushing against the mermaid's cheek. Warmth met her touch. Not death. Not a dream. A living, breathing marvel delivered into her hands by the sea itself.

"You are no enemy's carrion," Isla murmured, her voice softer now, her Andalusian accent thickening as awe laced her words. Her dark eyes lingered on the rise and fall of the mermaid's chest, the shimmer of water along delicate skin. "No... you are something else. Something the ocean itself has guarded, only to surrender to me this night."

The torches snapped and hissed as the Mistress rocked gently on the waves. Around them, the women of the crew shifted uneasily, but Isla's gaze did not waver. She bent closer still, her lips curving into a rare, wonder-struck smile.

"What treasure are you, mi sirena hermosa... and why has fate set you adrift upon my deck?"