Chapter Thirty Before #3
But he is not that man anymore.
And this is not his world to take.
His pale face reddened and he shook his finger at her, as if she were a child to scold. Behind him, Fell looked just as stricken as Cat felt, his silver eyes too wide. If not for the men holding his arms, she suspected he would be on Ryman in an instant.
“Quiet, my lord—” he snarled, just to be waved off with an aristocratic flap.
“I shall go ashore. And you, as my wife, as my property, will stay right here,” Ryman shouted, his voice echoing over the wind and waves. Then he sneered, locking eyes with the man still standing behind her. “You are welcome to her, Captain. If you haven’t sampled already.”
Despite the feet between them, Cat heard the slow, steady exhale of breath. Not a sigh of frustration or weariness, but a low growl. And beneath it, a metallic click. The same one Cat had heard echoing across the deck a few days before.
It was unmistakable.
“You should listen to your wife, Rose,” Valerian murmured, his voice dangerously soft. Somehow it still carried as forcefully as any shout. “This ship does not deal in flesh.”
Cat could not look back at the captain, loath to see the disdain on his face. Her eyes landed on Ana instead. The first mate was already staring back at her, her black eyes lit like coals in a fire. Her lips were pursed, but Cat thought of her silver teeth, and wished for a weapon of her own.
She chewed the inside of her cheek, her mouth filling with an iron tang, growing in time with the rising thud of a drumming heart.
“Ha!” Ryman howled over the deck, stamping his foot. “Not flesh, but you certainly deal in blood. How many men of the Victorious and the Venerable went to the depths because of you? What a hypocrite you are, Kane!”
“Put him in the boat.” Valerian’s voice was like the crack of a whip.
For the first time in his life, Ryman dodged a blow, ducking away from a sailor trying to shove him towards the sea ladder. He took weaving steps, and Cat wondered if he had gone mad in the brig, tormented by the bars of a cell he could not gnaw his way through.
“Take her,” he snarled, shoving Cat with all his strength, sending her sprawling back into Valerian’s hard chest. He caught her, but Cat barely felt the firm arms holding her steady.
Her vision narrowed to Ryman Rose, all the rest falling away. He leered, his fleshy, pale face wavering, his features distorted by her thrumming rage.
“Fuck her or sell her, I care not. Though I warn you she is barren, a poor quality for a wife,” he added. His laughter scraped, worse than steel on stone. “But I suppose it will be a welcome advantage for a whore.”
Blood filled her mouth and her head and the hole in her chest, thunderous and roaring. The blood kept flowing, an endless tide, threatening to pull her under, until everything washed red, and the impossible blue of the Lyrian Sea turned scarlet.
This is not his world.
But it could be mine.
Distantly, she thought of the metallic click.
The world slowed, the moment sharpened, and the memory formed, demanding to never be forgotten.
Cat doubted she ever would.
Her body turned to Valerian, but only for a second.
It was not him she grabbed for, her arm reaching down to his hip.
Her fingers closed around the smooth, cool hilt of a flintlock pistol, the hammer already drawn, the chamber loaded and ready to fire.
When she swung back around, arm raised, gun aimed, Ryman’s leer froze on his hateful, ghastly face.
This time, when her husband screamed, she did not flinch. Or falter.
“You foolish woman—”
A thunderclap and flash of lightning exploded, smoke blooming from the gun in a gray storm cloud. The force of it catapulted through her, and she lurched, almost losing her balance. But Cat refused to fall.
Ryman did not have the same choice.
He gaped at her, a fish on the shore, mouth flapping as he wheezed for one more gasp of air. It whistled through the hole in his chest, sputtering blood and breath like a carafe pouring wine. The blood won out, a river of it spreading from the wound, soaking through his shirt and down his body.
He gurgled as he pitched forwards, slumping onto his knees. Without thought, Cat lunged towards him before he could fall, grabbing Ryman by the roots of his thin hair, wrenching his head back with her free hand.
His watery eyes rolled, his lips fighting to speak.
“You foolish woman,” he sputtered again, blood flecking the air.
Cat did not flinch.
“You foolish man,” she shot back. “You played by the rules of a different world. A world that does not exist here.”
Amongst the crew, a silver smile gleamed. But Cat only spared Ana a passing glance. She dared not miss Ryman’s last rattling breath, or the spiraling look of despair finally creeping across his face.
It was the same despair she felt every day in his presence.
“A world that will never remember you at all,” she said, letting him drop with a meaty thunk.
So ended Lord Ryman Rose, keeled over on the deck of a pirate ship, without anyone to mourn him.