Page 19 of Tempest

Alive and unharmed, Cat thought with sudden realization. She looked through the crew, reading the shame on their faces. But there was relief too.

“Keep that in mind, Lady Rose,” Kane rumbled, meeting her gaze once more. Despite the bright sun overhead, his eyes darkened, black as the belly of a thunderhead.

“I will,” she replied evenly, some thunder of her own crackling.

Across the deck, Morovant gave one last bow, the dark green velvet of his coat rippling. Kane nodded, seeing the signal for what it was, and made to turn.

“My name is Catrine.”

He froze mid-step, looking back to her in naked confusion. It smoothed the sun-worn lines on his face, erasing years on the sea. With a jolt, Cat realized he was closer to her age, no more than twenty-five, still clinging to the last pieces of youth, buried as they were.

She felt just as shocked as he looked, her mouth still open. Her formal name, her true name, tasted wrong, unsuited to the new world unfolding around her.

“Cat, I mean,” she added hastily, almost curtsying out of reflex. As if that would make things any less strange.

A lady introducing herself to a pirate. Has the sun gone to your head entirely?

“Valerian.”

His whisper was low and rough as the hand snaking past her wrist into her pocket. Before Cat could yell or scream, his fingers retreated, his grin returning as he held up his hand. A single prayer bead, cracked down the middle, gleamed turquoise between his first and second finger, the precious stone spotted with drying flecks of blood.

Her own.

“May the sea always sing for you,” Valerian said, his voice near a growl. But he lingered, his gaze like a challenge.

Cat met it, holding on to the tempest eyes, another storm brewing in their depths. It seemed to pull, a spiral with ragged edges, but the center between them stood deathly still.

And then he was gone, away to his own ship without so much as another glance.

May the sea always sing for you.

Cat watched as the pirate ship caught the tide. She heard none of Sara’s weeping, or her husband’s furious rants that began only once the pirates were beyond earshot. All was quiet, the only sound the beating of Cat’s heart.

She watched the horizon until Morovant’s green coat faded and the black flag disappeared. Overhead, the white sails of the Credence billowed, filled with a fresh wind. Cat felt the same, the storm between them pushing her into a new horizon.

Valerian Kane.

Chapter Five After

CAT DID NOT need a window to guess where the cart was headed. She knew Archenport well enough after nearly a decade. The wheels creaked and shuddered over familiar streets, climbing steadily up the hill. Fort Morden loomed at the top, an ugly, exposed bone thrust up through the crown of the city. And beneath the glowing limestone walls was a place she had never seen before, not in all her years of life in the Lyrian Sea.

The jail cells, dark and endless.

Torchlight glowed through the gaps in the wood, and Cat shivered as she passed through the jaws of Morden’s gates. But when the cart stopped, she arranged herself as best she could, smoothing her skirts and setting her face. The ride had given her time to collect herself, to calm her harried mind and think. She was not imprisoned yet. There was opportunity enough, space to maneuver and weasel her way to freedom. She needed only one moment of weakness from Fell.

But when the cart door swung open, Captain Fell was nowhere to be seen.

Cat looked out to find herself in the middle of the fortress, with nothing but white walls, black cannons, and stone-faced soldiers to greet her.

Coward, she cursed, wishing all manner of terrible things on Captain Fell.

A sunburned bluecoat held the door expectantly, waiting for her. He looked barely old enough to shave, let alone hold a gun. When he offered her a hand, as if Cat were a lady disembarking her carriage on the way to a ball, she quelled the urge to break his wrist. It was not a maneuver she had used recently, but she remembered well enough.

Worse still, she remembered the man who had taught it to her.

The thought made her blood run hot, and her steps faltered as she alighted from the coach. The escort made to help her, but she speared him with a dark look, and he leapt back to let her pass unaided.

A shackled woman was not so unique a sight, not after the Meridian reclamation. Men and women alike had been hung for committing or aiding piracy. No one bothered to jeer her, the soldiers too preoccupied with their patrols or, more likely, their daily ration of rum.