Chapter Fourteen Before #4
“Let’s start with the gold,” Valerian finally said, satisfied with her for now. The sun caught the windows behind him, turning his hair into a halo. “One thousand crowns, Imperial mint.”
Cat sputtered, her head going light. One thousand crowns was enough to buy a fine house in Brycam City, and everything in it. It was a ridiculous figure, especially for someone as ridiculous as Ryman Rose.
“One hundred,” she shot back through gritted teeth.
“Three.”
She forced herself to look Valerian in the eye. The too-bright light put his face in shadow, blurring his features, but his eyes remained steady as a beacon, storm-green and stunning.
Cat stared back as best she could, willing herself to remain still and strong, to be a worthy opponent. Someone to respect, someone to treat with. An equal.
“Done,” she murmured weakly.
Three hundred crowns.
Suddenly she fought to breathe and wanted nothing more than to sprint back out on deck, pirates be damned. She needed fresh air, and perhaps to empty her guts over the rail.
Valerian showed no such discomfort. He extended a callused hand, as if they had just struck a trade for farm animals and not a ransom agreement.
“A pleasure doing business with you again, Lady Rose,” he said, chuckling.
“Again,” Cat echoed, in a daze.
In the window gallery, the distant Venerable’s hull was slowly sinking, the rib-like beams of wood disappearing beneath the waves. Soon all memory of the great ship would be gone, and her passengers with it.
“You call this business?” she muttered with disgust.
Valerian recoiled, his smile faltering, before turning to a sneer. His open hand closed and dropped to his side.
“As I said, I call it an accident,” he replied. “I think that concludes our meeting, Lady Rose.”
Despite six months on the islands, Cat had not lost her ability to read social cues, especially the most obvious.
Most of her was glad to be dismissed. The smallest piece wanted to linger, frustrating as Valerian Kane was.
She gave the shallowest of curtsies, scowling.
There was something infuriating about him—not just his murderous nature, but the lengthening list of contradictions that made up the pirate captain. It puzzled Cat to no end.
She spun on her heel, ready to be rid of him.
“I call it survival too,” he added, somewhat softer. Not kindly, but matter-of-fact. “This is what survival is in the Lyrian Sea, for me and my crew. We do not have the luxury of buying our lives. We must fight for them or die trying.”
Her steps halted, one hand on the cabin door. Slowly, Cat turned.
Valerian’s long, lean form was braced against the desk. One hand gripped the edge. The other fingered the golden chain around his neck. The braided metal was thin and fine, like a thread of sunlight between his fingers.
“I did not think we would survive the storm,” Cat heard herself say.
Outside, the clouds had completely cleared away, the sky a taunting shade of vibrant blue. So different from only a few hours ago, when the world went black, the darkness broken only by lightning and cannon fire. When the waves became mountains and canyons, tossing their ship like a toy.
“I prayed all night,” she mumbled, remembering the close air of the cabin, and Sara pressed in next to her, their whispers somehow louder than the storm. “Hoping I would live to see the morning.”
Valerian blinked at her. “I’m surprised to see your gods answered.”
“No. No, the gods of the Meridian Church were silent,” she said with a faint laugh. “I think I prayed to something else.”
Valerian’s gaze flared, his eyes going wide, as if her voice had struck something in him.
“What did you pray to, Lady Rose?”
Cat chewed her answer, feeling foolish.
“To . . . to the Lyrian, I think,” she finally forced out. “May the sea always sing for you, Captain Kane.”
He did not move, his eyes lingering on her face. She felt shot through with his focus, nailed in place, unable to move even if she wanted to. She could not help but stare back, searching his face as he searched hers. Looking for what, she could not fathom.
Valerian relinquished first, and Cat exhaled a shaky breath, watching as he leaned back against the desk, planting his hands on his hips, squaring his shoulders.
The action pulled open his shirt a little more, and the golden chain winked against his bare skin.
Slowly, surely, he pulled the full length of it up, twisting the gleaming thread around his fingers.
A turquoise stone hung from the necklace, a perfect match to the prayer beads she had destroyed six months ago. Cat swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. There was no denying it. The prayer bead was her own, with the same crack running through its center.
She remembered the press of his hand in her pocket, sure fingers stealing one last treasure from Lady Rose. Her mouth worked but no words came. There was nothing she could think to say.
Valerian Kane was not so bound.
“May the sea always sing for you, Lady Rose,” he said softly, turning to face the horizon, her prayer bead still caught between his fingers.