Chapter Twenty-Nine After
SLOWLY, CAT PULLED out a chair and sat down at the table, leaving Valerian alone at the head.
Her black skirts pooled around her, the intricate Arcayan beadwork at the hem catching the light.
She held his gaze all the while, careful to let her curls spill over one shoulder, leaving her exposed collarbone bare to the lamplight.
Just as Valerian liked.
“What are you going to do with me?” she murmured, sitting straight as a lady. Rigid and useless.
She hoped he would soften, if only a little. He used to hate when she retreated into her ladylike habits, born of another life and a harsher cage. But Valerian’s piercing stare remained unchanged.
He ran his fingers over the table, but Cat felt them as keenly as if dragged over her skin. He filled the close air of the council chamber, his usual heat making the room feel tight and cloying. It was a threat as much as a reminder. He was the apex predator here, and Cat was merely prey.
“When I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
Frustration boiled, and Cat felt her skin might ignite. Her good manners dropped as quickly as they came, her finger pointing an accusation across the table.
“I told you this was coming. I told you to run while you—while we could,” she said, sputtering with rage. And exasperation. She tossed her head, chestnut hair spilling across her face. “I tried, Valerian. You wouldn’t listen. You forced my hand.”
“I’m no judge, but I fear the punishment does not fit the crime.”
“Hate me all you want,” she spat, feeling as murderous as he looked. “Just don’t forget I saved your life too.”
His chair careened backwards, slamming against the timbers as Valerian shot to his feet. He towered over the table, and while Cat told herself to hold her ground, she shook doing it.
“And what about the lives you doomed?” he roared, seizing either side of her chair to drag her forwards until he was all she could see, his arms a cage on either side of her shoulders. “With your whispers and your secrets?”
His scent enveloped her again, the smell of the sea so strong, she remembered the old legends of Valerian Kane. That his veins ran with salt water, and not blood.
Cat knew firsthand that was hardly true, having tasted such blood herself.
Then he laughed over her, halfway to howling like a mad dog.
Cat bared her teeth. “What’s so funny?”
With a shrug, he released her chair, the front legs swinging forwards to land on the floor. Cat flinched at the impact as Valerian walked away, his weaving gait in perfect rhythm with the swells of the tide.
When he spun back to face her, Cat flinched again. She had seen heartache and sorrow and rage on Valerian Kane too many times to count. But never grief. It turned him inside out, the light racing from his eyes, the smile gone from his lips as if it had never existed at all.
“They call me the deadliest pirate in the Lyrian Sea,” he breathed. “They say I’ve sunk more ships than any other captain, killed more crews.”
The lamps flickered on his face, as if burning in his skin. Cat did not doubt it. Something certainly burned in Valerian now.
“But I don’t hold a candle to you, Widow Rose.”
True, Cat thought, her stomach twisting so violently, she feared she would be sick all over the timbers or her own new boots.
Valerian held her eyes through it all, the same wretched sickness on his face, the same heartache welling up in his eyes.
Until a knock at the door snapped them from the painful hurricane, and both Cat and Valerian turned to face the sound.
“As requested, Captain,” Adelo said from the other side.
With two quick strides, Valerian returned to his chair, his face wiped clean of every emotion. It was dizzying to watch.
“Bring him in,” he called out.
For a moment, Cat thought she had been thrown back through time. There was Jasper Fell in chains, captured on the Covenant, his hair loose and eyes menacing. She knew how this dance went.
But it was not Ana shuffling him along, calling him a Meridian dog. Adelo was a diligent mate, but he was not the Seawolf. And this was not ten years ago, when a different Cat Rose and a different Valerian Kane sat in similar positions.
“We searched him, as ordered,” Adelo said, laying out a spread of Fell’s items, including the tightly folded documents from the governor.
But it was not the papers that interested Valerian. His eyes fell to the flintlock pistol, still attached to its gun belt and holstered on the table. Silently, he stood and prowled towards the weapon, entranced by it.
Silver chasings ran through the polished wood, curling in intricate patterns around the hilt and hammer.
The gun looked just as much a piece of jewelry as a weapon, the adornments dulled by fingerprints.
Without a word, Valerian drew it from its holster and checked the sights, his grip easy and familiar.
After all, it had been his pistol once. Many years ago.
While the pirate pored over his prodigal flintlock, Cat met Fell’s accusing eye.
He pursed his lips, letting her see his anger.
Then he glanced about the room, taking it in as she had.
Taking in the peculiar, repetitive nature of this moment.
And his mouth twitched, betraying the smallest smirk, and his eyes rolled. As if to say, This again?
Cat could not help but agree, the corners of her mouth lifting.
Valerian abandoned the gun and grinned, a feral sight.
“Good to see you, sir. I’m told congratulations are in order,” he said, slapping the shackled Fell on the shoulder.
The navy man became steel again. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve been made captain! That’s quite the accomplishment, wouldn’t you agree?”
Fell went stiff as a board when Valerian slung an arm around his shoulders.
The pirate leaned loose and easy, while the navy captain almost hissed, the picture of an angry cat with its hackles on end.
Cat had to bite her lip to keep from giggling, the pair of them forming the lethal ends of a wide, disparate spectrum.
Valerian steered Fell around the table, forcing him to pace.
“Though I saw that ship of yours,” he said, laughing. “Well, no worry. I’m sure the governor will reward you with a grander post once you whore for him a little longer.”
Purple splotches appeared on Fell’s cheeks, as if he were being strangled.
“You know that is not my ship—” he sputtered, only to stop short and draw a steadying breath. “What do you want for my crew?”
“Want?” Valerian clapped a hand to his chest in mock pain. But the mirth didn’t reach his eyes. “Captain Fell, I’m sure you realize as much as I do, the times have changed. I’m not holding your crew ransom.” His arm around Fell’s shoulders tightened. “I’m holding them hostage.”
Fell kept his unyielding stance, despite the pirate staring him in the face. “Hold me. I’m enough.”
With a laugh, Valerian swooped backwards, unhanding Fell so quickly the officer stumbled, chains rattling. An old trick. Though Fell was her enemy, an obstinate obstacle on her path to freedom, Cat could not help but cringe to see Valerian toy with his captive this way.
“No, I prefer multiple bodies to sell if it comes to it,” Valerian sniffed, grabbing the flintlock again. His voice took on a more lethal edge. “And I suspect it will come to it.”
Prideful as he was, even Fell edged backwards.
Cat eyed the gun, half expecting Valerian to load it and level the sights at Fell’s head.
But Valerian was smarter, or simply knew Fell as well as she did.
There was no threatening him in an interrogation.
Jasper Fell was too noble, too loyal to crack under the threat of death.
Whatever information he gave would be given freely, or not at all.
Valerian took to counting the shots in the pouch affixed to the gun belt. Silver spheres clicked together in his palm, one by one.
“How many crew aboard the Fledge?” he said.
Fell did not hesitate.
“Ten.”
There was no cause to lie, if Adelo had done as asked, and marched Captain Fell in front of every captive member of his crew.
Valerian nodded. “And how many ships in convoy?”
“One,” Fell said.
“Is that the truth of it?” The pirate’s green gaze flicked to Cat.
Her face remained a mask.
“As far as I know,” she answered, feeling herself step out onto a ledge with death waiting below. She dared not look at Fell, lest her mask slip, and her desperation be put on full display. But it bloomed beneath her skin, acidic and corrosive.
Jasper Fell will not lie for me again.
Another clink of the shot, the gleam of them reflecting in Valerian’s eyes. They roved like planets, as if he held all the heavens in his stare.
I used to think so, Cat mused to herself. Every constellation, every star, even the moon and sun used to dance when she looked at him.
But no longer. She refused to see the stars in him anymore.
“And your endeavor?” Valerian asked.
Cat’s breath froze, sticking fast in her lungs.
Captain Fell did not look at her, standing tall despite his chains and the nature of captivity. He was, as usual, a puffed-up statue of Meridian superiority.
“To drag Catrine Rose screaming back to Archenport,” he snapped, tossing her a livid look. “To face judgement for her many crimes.”
It took all her will to keep her face blank, even as numbing relief swept through her body.
Valerian was a stone, unreadable, though Cat desperately wished to decipher his expression. Does he believe?
The pirate turned his chin, surveying Cat in her chair. Clink clink clink. He dropped the shot back in its pouch, but for one little ball still in hand. Sighing, he rolled it between his fingers, a little spit of iron that could tear out a man’s soul.
“Is that the way of it?”
“No,” she said, poised and without hesitation. “I am guilty of nothing, only survival.”
Long fingers scratched at golden stubble as Valerian rubbed his cheek, surveying them both.