Chapter Twenty-One After
AFTER TEN YEARS in the Lyrian Sea, Cat was hardly sick on ships anymore.
Even in the worst of storms, and of those she had her share.
But now her stomach roiled, nausea climbing up her throat like a sailor through rigging.
She turned into the wind, hoping the fresh salt air would calm her a little.
Until she caught the familiar scent. Seagrass.
Dying flowers. Rotting wood. And the sweet grove of phoenix trees, still casting a bit of shade across the southern tip of Rosby Island.
Even Lieutenant Whisten was good enough to look away and let Catrine Rose empty her guts over the gunwales in peace.
It was not the smell that disgusted her but the memories that came with it. The first six months of her life in the Lyrian Sea were a ghost Cat thought had been put to rest. But as she eyed the horizon, shivering in the warm sun, she had to admit that was far from the truth.
Cat could still remember what it felt like.
To stand on the crumbling veranda and look out at the taunting sea, wishing it would carry her away or swallow her up.
To gallop her old mare Sparrow back and forth across the island, like a tiger pacing a cage.
Worse still, she remembered the feel of Ryman’s eyes and Ryman’s hands.
The sound of his voice, as good as a slap across the face.
And the heavy thud of his footsteps up the stairs, followed by the creaking whine of her bedroom door.
She was sick again, retching bile into the waves.
I should have burned the island, torn up every root, salted every patch of stubborn grass.
She wondered if she might be better served in her narrow cabin, to sleep or stare at the walls until Rosby was behind them.
But that felt like admitting defeat. And Cat was done being defeated.
Jaw clenched, she raised her eyes.
The small island was just as she remembered.
Shaped like the gentle rise of a whale barely breaking the surface, with a little nub of a hill for a fin, and the smudged shadow of a house where an eye would be.
She suspected the building would be little more than splinters now, the wooden frame a skeleton, with only the brick chimney still standing tall.
Wispy grass lay green and golden across the sandy soil, the only thing that grew in abundance.
Her hands closed on the portside, nails digging into the wooden railing. Overhead, the sails flapped as the helmsman set a dead-on course for what passed for Rosby’s harbor.
“Would that we had a better option.”
Fell’s voice sounded at her ear, and Cat jumped in her skin, whirling to see the navy captain standing stoic at her side. He looked gray as she felt, hands clasped behind his back, squinting out at the horizon from beneath his hat.
“It isn’t like you to sneak up on people,” Cat muttered, trying to steady her galloping heart. “Usually, your snide comments precede you.”
The captain glanced down at her and frowned, a bitter look on his face.
“I’ve been standing here for five minutes.” He softened a little, silver eyes round. “I suppose you were preoccupied.”
“With what?” Cat replied with icy sarcasm. She wiped her mouth with a handkerchief. “Hopefully your men can be quick about their business.”
Fell dipped his head. “It won’t take long to refill our water stores.”
“Unless the well has run dry or gone sour,” she said, still tasting bile. “It would be so like Rosby to let me down one last time.”
His gaze felt like cold metal against her face, the kind that never warmed no matter how long it lay against skin.
“Will you be all right?” he prodded.
“Enough.” Cat was strong, but not invincible. And she refused to spiral in front of Jasper Fell, even if he knew where the spiral began. “Tell your crew to be fast. For me.”
It felt like begging, and she wanted to be sick again.
“I will.” His reply was swift and thankfully sincere, his eyes holding hers. Cat wanted to look away, but Fell’s gaze was easier to weather than the island fast approaching.
He shifted, leaning down so they were nose to nose, mere inches apart. His voice lowered, filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry for what I said in Alvaris. I know what this place did to you. What it was to you.”
Again, Cat thought of turning tail and fleeing to her cabin.
Again, she did not.
“A cage,” she murmured, eyes stinging.
Next to her, Fell’s stern expression took on a haunting edge.
“An ending,” he offered. “And a beginning too. You must not forget that. One life ended here, and another began.”
Though she was loath to admit it, Jasper Fell was right. She wrenched her eyes away from him to watch Rosby come into sharper focus.
“I suppose I should be grateful,” she murmured, tracing the familiar coastline.
Her eyes snagged on the poor excuse for a harbor, little more than a battered dock half-submerged in the water.
Sunlight shimmered on the calmer waves, like a trove of jewels set aflame.
If she squinted, she could still see the ghost of a ship just offshore, anchored in another time.
Sails tacked, a commotion on deck, blood and gunpowder, the firm hold of a pirate’s arms around her waist. The echoes of a different life.
Her fingers tightened on the rail.
The Covenant.
“I should be grateful,” she murmured as the vision faded. The harbor was empty, the island abandoned again. “After all, this place gave me Moseley,” she added.
Fell was good enough to allow her the cover.
“And me,” he said with a smirk.
Her heart clenched.
“And him,” she whispered, unable to stop herself.
It was enough to sharpen Fell, and he leaned away, putting some distance between them. His smirk became a sneer.
“Ah, yes, him,” Fell said. “Valerian Kane. You know I’ve a bet with myself, Cat.”
His disdain was easier to stomach than his pity, and Cat responded in kind.
“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms, matching his stance. “I do love a wager. What is it? Whether or not I find Val?”
“No, I’m quite confident you will.” Fell shrugged and studied the waves, his keen captain’s attention skipping over the water. “But I can’t decide what happens after.”
Frowning, Cat did her best to ignore the sudden rush of unease coiling in her chest. “I thought that was already agreed upon.”
“I know better than to trust your agreements,” Fell replied, his laugh a blade. “Or your heart.”
Her teeth gritted. “So what is the wager?”
“Will you be able to do it?” Silver eyes pierced bronze, and Cat felt cornered. “Will you betray Valerian Kane?”
“That’s an easy bet, Fell,” she snapped, jabbing him in the chest. He did not wear the ridiculous merchant vest today and his shirt was thin. There was no hiding the firm muscle beneath her touch, nor a chest sculpted by years of life at sea.
He did not move, daring her to finish.
“I’ve already betrayed him before.” Her voice carried across the deck, but Cat was well beyond caring about the opinion of Fell’s crew. “What’s a second time?”
He glared down, trying to read her. “That isn’t an answer, Cat.”
“Leave me be, Jasper,” she said abruptly, putting a step between them. “You’ll get what’s promised, and so will the governor. So long as I get what I’m promised too.”
A sudden hunger passed over his expression, as if he were a man starved and stumbling towards an impossible feast. From another, Cat might have mistaken his look for lust. But not Fell. This was ambition.
“I know you don’t like to admit it, but we are alike in our nature, Cat.” He closed the gap between them again, the smell of his sandalwood oil enveloping her. “Perhaps even the same.”
Her first instinct was to laugh in his face, to dismiss the concept outright. But with Rosby looming, their past and present so terribly entwined, Cat could not find it in herself to deny his words.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, reluctant and begrudging. “We both do what we must to keep our heads above water.”
Fell nodded, eyes never leaving her face. “To survive.”
“To survive,” she echoed. It felt like a confession, if not an apology.
My head or theirs.
“Well then,” Fell said, and his mood shifted like the wind. Whatever concern he carried, his intensity seemed to melt away. With a careless flick of his wrist, he gestured out to Rosby. “Would you like to go ashore?”
Cat clenched a fist instead of slapping him, her anger eating up her worry. “Would you like me to be sick again?”
Fell shrugged. “Better on land than my ship.”
“This isn’t your ship,” she said, annoyed but also relieved by their return to familiar ground. It was better to nip at Fell than to suffer his compassion.
“I can’t believe you were ever a Meridian lady,” Fell said, a spark of mischief in his eyes.
Cat only sighed, putting her back to Rosby, her elbows braced behind her.
“On that, we can agree.”
She would not turn around again until they were back at sea, the water stores replenished, and Rosby swallowed up in their wake.
* * *
THE DAYS OF sailing blurred, as days at sea tended to do.
And while Cat felt a peculiar sort of pride for the Fledge, their commandeered little merchant vessel turned clandestine navy ship, she also grew weary of her limited size.
Compared to Fell’s Scorpion or the Covenant, let alone grand warships like the Seadragon, the Fledge was a rowboat.
Cat certainly felt it, her pacing the decks becoming more maddening by the second.
Her cabin was too small, the lower deck too cramped, the main deck narrow and crowded.
She was not alone in her sentiments. Like her, Fell and his crew were used to far more impressive vessels.
So, despite their misgivings, every soul aboard was glad to see Arcayo appear on the southern horizon, her green spine of volcanos rising up out of the Lyrian Sea. Even Lieutenant Whisten, staunchly loyal to the Church and suspicious of anything beyond it, looked relieved at the sight.
But it would not last long. Cat knew that keenly.