Chapter Text
The Salazar family used to breed fighting bulls: magnificent beasts that seemed to be made of marble and velvet, fiery and aggressive. The cattle that roamed in the pastures surrounding the imposing villa truly was an impressive sight, and the guests that often visited the estate loved to stroll around the meadows, watching admiringly such handsome animals.
But on one day of summer, one of those golden days kissed by the reddish light of incoming fall, the admiral’s youngest son Armando offered them another, even more spectacular, show: he fought a bull. The boy jumped into the arena to face an equally young animal, taken there by the farmers to be trained. The most incredible thing was that Armando tried to fight it not on horseback like a nobleman, but on foot like a peasant.
His father the admiral didn’t stop him and prevented anyone from doing so, just shooting the bull when it charged his son in a way he wouldn’t have been able to fight back.
That’s how much they loved each other.
When the pirates killed the admiral, a part of Armando died with him: the part of him that knew evil but still thought the world was overall a noble and safe place. He broke off his engagement with the woman his oldest brother had chosen for him, a chubby, shy girl he would go on to forget in a couple of weeks. He stopped going to balls, theatre plays, concerts. Minuet and waltz faded from his life, replaced by the melancholia of the cante jondo. Armando stopped being a spoiled dandy that considered his military career merely a facade and became a real soldier. He still had enough of the boy who tried to fight a bull in him to succeed: the little matador became el Matador del Mar. The time for games was over and the season of the slaughter had begun.