Page 184 of Tempest

“The Lyrian Sea does not shoot sailors, Valerian,” she said coldly, remembering what Fell said. Corpses washed up with bullet holes in their heads.

The lamplight danced in his eyes, his smirk curling into something darker.

“Where did you hear this?” he growled, taking a long step towards her.

Again, his necklaces caught the shifting gleam of flame and moonlight, rippling gold and silver. And one above all, the old Arcayan amulet seeming to wink at her. Cat stared at it, trying to decipher the markings, the tiny notches cut into the gold inscrutable to her eye. But not impossible. Certainly, there was an answer, something to make it all come together. The song priest in Alvaris, an Arcayan tower in a colonial harbor. Valerian’s faith, part of him since the day they met. And then Ana, shut up in her tower, watching the sea with a keener eye.

You betrayed the sea, she told Cat, with no explanation as to what it could mean.

Until now.

The wind was warm, but Cat shivered as she raised her eyes, dragging them up from Valerian’s chest to a face that still made her heartsick. But she did not linger, looking beyond him, far out to the Lyrian. Stars hung bright and piercing across the black sky, but for a band across the horizon, where the guardian storm still churned. As she watched, many miles stretching between island and horizon, lightning flared within the far-off clouds. The distance was too great, the sound of thunder never reaching the ship.

Cat felt it anyway, a tremor in her heart.

“I told the governor you were using the storms to steal Meridian ships. I did not realize how close I was to the truth.” Her voice felt heavy, the words ridiculous even as she spoke them. “You’re not just using the storms, Valerian.”

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m foolish and going mad. After all she had seen, in the gallows of Archenport or her own worst nightmares, it would hardly be shocking.

But Valerian kept silent, unblinking.

As if urging her to continue.

“You’re calling them,” she whispered.

The lightning flashed again. This time, thunder followed, low and shuddering as a drumbeat.

Slowly, Valerian drew out the Arcayan necklace, the amulet passing between his fingers. The gold seemed to darken at his touch, as if consuming the light. His nail tripped against the notches, counting them, one by one. She felt each tap of his finger as if tapped against her spine.

Her mind spun but there were no answers to grasp. It was like being thrown into a dark room, blinded and searching for something in the blackness.

“You never were a believer, Cat,” he muttered, shaking his head at her. “It’s bit late to start now.”

Valerian can call down storms across the Lyrian Sea. Her heart thumped, pulse fluttering at the vein in her throat. This was not a game Cat knew how to play, and Valerian held all the cards. Cards she never even knew existed.

This time, when she reached out to touch the necklace, Valerian did not pull back. He let her look, turning the amulet over in her hand. It felt heavier than it should have, as if the gold was mixed with something else. What, Cat could hardly guess.

The notches were strange but not unfamiliar.

It’s a whistle, she realized, thinking of the song priests in their towers, and their voices carrying across the sea.

Or the wind in the Archenport harbor, hissing through the stone arch in a forgotten melody.

“Arcayan magic,” she breathed, dropping the necklace back against Valerian’s chest. It nestled alongside another golden chain she knew, the first she ever saw him wear.

Her prayer bead hung at the arc of it, never removed. Unremarkable next to his collected treasures and many tattoos. But it gleamed, freshly polished, as if it were his greatest jewel.

Even now.

Send me back to Nera. Let me run. I will turn my back and never speak of you again and let you turn the Lyrian Sea to blood. The navy’s and your own.

“Storms and the sea itself,” she whispered, forcing herself to look up into Valerian’s face. He glowered down at her, and she knew he weighed his options too. “Another pirate armada, all the ships and sailors still left.”

The words seemed to stick in her throat, her breath hitching. She remembered this feeling, the abject terror of losing Valerian to something so much bigger than even he could be. She barely survived it before.

I won’t survive it again, she thought, pushing down the urge to drag him as far away from the Lyrian Sea as she could.

For there was another path to walk, and a new hand yet to play.