Page 150 of Tempest

Cat refused to be another prize.

“It is,” she replied.

“Ah, well.” He shrugged, rolling his shoulders in a way Cat did not like. “I shall have to ask his crew if they agree.”

His crew.

The table wavered, but not Valerian, his face the only fixed thing in her sight. She searched him, looking for a lie or bluff. He was good at neither.

And she found neither.

“After I speak to Fell, of course,” he added idly. “You should join me, Widow Rose.”

The trap threatened to spring, and Cat inched away from it as slowly as she could. Sighing, she put down her cards and relinquished the pot, forfeiting their game.

“I think I’m finished for the evening,” she said, her chair scraping, her hat snatched up. “Being a fugitive is certainly exhausting.”

But Valerian was faster.

He was always faster.

“On that, we can all agree.”

He was already out of his chair, rounding the table to take her by the arm, his palm molding to the flesh above her elbow. Beneath her sleeve, her tattooed skin warmed. As if embraced. Or set aflame.

Then his lips brushed her ear, the scratch of his beard rough and familiar.

“Please, I insist,” he said through bared teeth.

To another, it might seem a smile. Cat knew better. A tempest warred in Valerian Kane, and there was nothing to do but weather the storm.

Her own teeth flashed. If not for Vex and the crowd looking on, they would be buried in his neck.

“Well, if you insist,” she snarled.

Stiffly, she made to leave the hall, but Valerian held her in place. He clicked with his tongue, scolding her.

And flicking over her cards, one by one.

The last turned, the scarlet X on full display.

“So I thought,” he said.

* * *

THE COVENANT ANCHORED beyond the harbor, around a curve in the coastline. Her silhouette cut sharply against a sky of stars, the warship a void but for the lanterns dotting her length. Cat glared at the familiar vessel from the longboat, oars splashing on either side as she sat ramrod straight on the front bench. The Covenant must have sailed in after nightfall, for there was no ship here upon Cat’s arrival in the morning. Another hulking warship loomed a few hundred yards away and Cat guessed it to be the Harriet, Vex’s ship. Not sunk or captured, but hidden, the pair of pirate ships careful in their anchorage.

Even in the dark she could see the figurehead of the Covenant. Once it was a Meridian lion roaring at the horizon—now the beast was skull-faced, laughing at all who dared come close.

Though she refused to look backwards, she was intimately aware of Valerian sitting aft, working the oars alongside his first mate, Adelo, and four other members of the crew. The rest followed in another longboat, cutting swiftly through the black waves.

It felt like being marched to the gallows, and Cat wondered if that was not far from the truth. Valerian had not killed her in the city but that did not mean he would not kill her on the ship. She supposed there was a small sense of justice to it. Pirate justice, at least.

Her heart sank as the Covenant loomed, bigger by the second. She could not help but glance at the ensign, the massive flag hanging loose from the staff at the stern of the ship.

Black fabric rippled, swaying with the rise and fall of waves beneath the ship. The flag was so dark it seemed to eat the lantern light, aside from the white symbol on its face. Cat knew it too well—a smiling skull with a golden tooth.

And beneath it, roses winding around the crossed bones, their blooms red as blood.