The Prince Who Walked Fire

i k i

                             D E R Y A

Life can be quite unfair sometimes to certain people, like me. 

I never saw my mother nor know what it feels like to be in the warmth of her embrace. She died when I was born. She was said to be one of the most beautiful and elegant women in the whole capital, according to my father. 

My father, Süleyman Pasha, the chief admiral of the navy met my mother Ayla Hanım, who was the only daughter of a successful merchant in the capital, in the Topkapı palace when she was on one of her visit to her dear friend, the beloved consort of the then Sultan. 

He instantly fell in love even though he saw her from afar and immediately asked for her hand in marriage. And of course she agreed, after all he was also a tall, handsome and a respectable man. 

They got married and had me, the curse of their life, the reason for their separation. I seperated my mother from my father but that didn't make him love me any less. 

But after my birth, my father started taking comfort in the embrace of alcohol which later became his damnation. My existence seems to have become a curse to him. Everything started falling apart for him. He lost his wife, his sanity, all his money and finally his head. 

He was tagged as a traitor for heaven knows what reason and executed as soon as the young son of the dead Sultan took over the throne. My life was flipped forever along with the others. 

The young Sultan was nothing like his father. He was vengeful, greedy, full of hatred, cruel and unforgiving. 

I still remember that day clearly. The darkest hour for the dynasty where eleven princes lost their lives under the cruel fratricide law. How can someone be so cruel as to kill all his brothers for the sake of his crown? 

He killed all his brothers except one who managed to escape from his grasp.

Sometimes I sit back and wonder what would have been of my life if my mother was still alive. My father won't have drowned himself in alcohol, I would have a mother and I'd like to believe the Sultan won't have executed my father and I won't have become a pirate. Not that I hate it. 

But I have no complaints nor regrets. Whatever is meant to be shall be. 

Though I lost my parents I got Ahmed Bey, the best archer in the whole capital, my father's loyal friend who took me in and trained me. Who stayed away from his lovely wife and children for months and years to train me in hope that one day I'll avenge my father's death. 

But as I came of age, our thinking started to differ. I didn't like his way of thinking and he didn't want my opinion so I left. 

I left the capital as a simple girl with nothing to my name and no one to lean on but returned as the notorious pirate with a promise to make everything mine. As the saying goes, "When you're not fed love on a spoon, you learn to lick it off knives", I learnt so. 

I still remember when I had my first kill. The very first time I had blood on my hands, the time I lost my innocence and embraced my demons. I killed one of the Sultan's ministers when he tried to mendle in my business. I was eighteen. 

I became a hope, a new dawn for the people for not even their tyrant Sultan could remove me from his territory which is mine now. 

The sea is mine. And the land would soon too.

I will avenge my father. 

I will save my people from that monster. 

I will wipe out the whole bloodline of that filthy monster and I promise that. 

"Kaptan." Dundar said as he came up to me. "There's someone here to meet you."

"What's so special about that person that you let that person in?" I asked, turning to face the young man. He was no older than seventeen with a boyish look. I still remember when I took him under my wing when he was just a boy of eleven with no clothes on his back and an empty stomach crying of hunger. 

He too is an orphan, like me. 

Orphaned by that tyrant. 

"He was sent by Ahmed Bey it seems." He replied. 

I arched my eyebrow at him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

I nodded and followed him out.