Chapter Twenty-Nine After #2
“Strange. I’m the pirate, but I’m the only one here who hasn’t betrayed anyone,” he muttered, shaking his head. Then he laughed, surprised. “I’ve never held the moral high ground before. I’m not sure I like it.”
While he amused himself with the predicament, Cat shot one last glance at Jasper Fell.
He was older than the last time she saw him in chains, now with the weight of a crew on his shoulders.
But he wore the same scars, the same silver eyes.
The same unknowable heart, loyal to Crown and Empire, except for the sliver-thin moments when he was not.
Not like Cat Rose. Loyal to one person always, and one alone.
Herself.
“You can’t ransom him,” Cat muttered.
Still laughing, Valerian threw up his hands. “We’ve been over that several times now.”
Cat pushed on undaunted, methodical. “You shouldn’t kill him either. Or the crew.”
“Not even to boost morale?” the pirate sneered.
“Will you take this seriously if I slap you?” Cat shot back, her fist tight in her lap. Certainly, she would prefer to punch him instead.
“It would not be the first time,” Valerian drawled, but motioned for her to continue.
In spite of the circumstances, Fell snorted a laugh.
Don’t you start, she wanted to snap. But she looked to Valerian, spilling her desperation and need to make him see. To prove once and for all—
I am right.
“The navy is coming. You’re outnumbered and outgunned, even with whatever armada you’re putting together,” she said forcefully. “If the Covenant is overtaken, it will be good to have men to trade. Living men.”
To her surprise, Valerian shrugged. He put the last ball of shot away.
“Yes, I agree,” he said, with so little fanfare Cat felt like chewing the walls. “Very well, Captain. I know you’re familiar with our accommodations below deck.”
Fell raised a black eyebrow. “I take it they have not improved?”
Valerian grinned.
“You let me know. And—” he added, pausing to strap the gun belt and holster back into place around his hips. The flintlock slid along his side, where it had lain years ago. “I’ll be taking this back.”
While Adelo bustled in, taking Fell by the shackles, Kane adjusted the pistol.
“You know, I never took you for a thief, Fell.”
The navy captain tossed him a pointed smile, the type better suited to a Meridian ballroom.
“Never took you for anything else, Kane,” he replied.
Valerian only nodded, watching him go. “Keep your crew in order.” His voice dropped, laced with an air of command. And a warning. “Or I will.”
To Cat’s surprise, Fell returned a shallow nod, before being wrestled out the door.
It swung on creaking hinges, slamming closed. Plunging both lady and pirate into thick, heavy silence.
Cat’s eyes trailed to the documents on the table. She knew what they were—her warrant of execution. And Fell’s letter of passage from the governor, stating he was on official business for the Meridian navy. Neither would condemn her. Not yet, at least.
“Who said I’m assembling an armada?”
She looked up to see Valerian squared to her across the table. His gaze burned. Suddenly the flintlock at his hip did not look quite so handsome. Especially when he drummed a finger over the silver, tracing old curves and new nicks.
The lie was easy, carefully laid.
“I lived in Archenport until two weeks ago, when they put me in the prisons of Fort Morden, and waved a death warrant in my face,” Cat said, ripping open the papers to send them sliding across the table.
Valerian barely glanced down. “Sailors talk. Ships are going missing. Storms are breaking out of season. And there’s no man I know who can bring a ship through a storm like you can, Valerian.
” Her breath caught, the whole of the Lyrian Sea spiraling before her eyes. “What are you planning?”
He did not answer for a long time. The quiet fell again, broken only by the shouts of men on deck, the creak of the ship settling beneath them. They were familiar sounds, too easy to lean into, like a warm bath. Cat kept tight, refusing to relax no matter how much her body wanted to.
Again, the grief flashed over his face. With a jolt, Cat realized he mourned not just Morovant or the pirate republic.
He mourns me too.
“You lost the right to know,” he said coldly, stalking to the chamber door. He was all knives and gold and ringing shot. A predator, a conqueror.
A king who always refused the crown.
“Am I free to leave?” she called out, though she already knew the answer.
He stopped short, one hand on the latch. Both shoulders rose and fell, betraying the heavy breaths he took to keep steady and anchored.
Anchored against me.
Once more Cat wondered if the smell of her body affected him as much as his did her. If he was also overwhelmed with the desire to run hands over hot skin, tracing old, familiar roads between collarbone and hip. To press fevered lips to scars and tattoos, worshiping each the way they deserved.
There was no way to tell with his back turned, his face hidden, his emotions shielded from even Cat Rose.
“Put my things back where you found them, Cat,” he growled, wrenching open the door without so much as a backwards glance.
Cat lowered her face, hiding the satisfied curl of her mouth.
Her voice carried, finding his ears before he could lock her in for the night.
“I will when I’m finished with your things, Valerian.”