Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,56

stood under the burning sun as Oran dropped to one knee and Tassos smiled triumphantly.

“Now we are even,” Tassos said.

It was then that Caledonia realized why he’d chosen the steel hand to exact his price. Whatever had happened in their past, Tassos had endured this same punishment, and Oran had either commanded it or delivered the device. Tassos hadn’t agreed to meet them simply because Fiveson Oran stood with her, but because he’d waited a long time to see Oran suffer as he had.

Oran climbed to his feet, chest heaving, sweat beaded across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, eyes bright with pain. He let the steel hand fall from his broken fingers, flinching only slightly. It landed with a loud clatter against the metal planks. Then, with his eyes on Tassos, he kicked it off the edge. The ocean received it soundlessly, tucking it away where it would never taste flesh or blood again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Shall we talk?” The smile on Tassos’s face was both empty and cruel.

A hard lump sat in the back of Caledonia’s throat as she returned her attention to Tassos. Clenching her teeth against a sudden desire to vomit, she raised her chin.

“I’m here to offer an alliance against Lir.” Caledonia let cold anger clip her words into daggers.

Behind Tassos, Cepheus smiled, her lips curling in a practiced sneer. It was then, when her lips pulled tight, that Caledonia saw they, too, were laced with delicate orange scars, as though sliced with something as thin as a butterfly’s wings.

“Ah,” Tassos said, as if this were news. “I’m not interested.”

One turn ago, that answer would have brought Caledonia to her rage. She’d have countered hotly without a care for what happened next, because what happened next would have affected her and her crew alone. Not a fleet.

Not the entire Bullet Seas.

She let the sea air fill her lungs, let it cool her from the inside. Tassos didn’t think he had anything to gain from an alliance with her, and she was going to prove him wrong.

“I think you are,” she said.

“Do you? What do you have to recommend you?” Tassos folded his arms across his chest. The move was calculated to make him bigger and more imposing. “You stood against Aric, but it wasn’t you who defeated him, was it? Not really. Lir did that for you.”

“We both benefited from what Lir did,” she answered. “You got the Net, after all.”

“And you got—or I should say had—Cloudbreak. Lir tried to come for me and he failed. He’ll try again, but I suspect you’ll take priority now that you’ve emerged from hiding. So, tell me again, what do I possibly have to gain from allying with Lir’s next target?”

As he spoke, Caledonia could feel Oran bristling at her side. Behind her, her crew watched with a kind of intensity that pressed against her back like many hands holding her up. Tassos wanted her to feel small, but Caledonia wouldn’t do what any Fiveson wanted.

Taking a measured step forward, Caledonia dropped her voice, forcing Tassos to pay attention and cutting their crews out of the conversation. “I know what you need most in the world right now.”

Tassos narrowed his eyes. “And what is that?”

Caledonia leaned in, the first taste of blood on the tip of her tongue as she said a single word: “Silt.”

Doubt sliced Tassos’s eyes while want curled his fingers into fists. He wanted what she offered to be real, she could see that plainly. But more than that, he needed it to be.

“You have Silt?” His eyes tripped from her to the deck of her ship, skating over her crew as if one of them would reveal the truth. “You don’t have Silt.”

“No, I don’t have Silt,” she admitted. “But I can help you get it.”

“I don’t need your help.” Tassos pulled back. “We can fight this war without you, and when we’re done, I’ll crush your fleet without a second thought.”

There was no denying that Tassos outnumbered and outgunned her, but he was still here, standing suspended over the ocean between their ships. And that meant he thought there was something she could give him.

“You’re running out of your drug. Lir is, too. Two weeks ago, I destroyed a massive crop of baleflowers—from what was one Fiveson Decker’s AgriFleet. The Bullets in that fleet were already on reduced rations and I’m willing to bet the AgriFleet doesn’t have many barges of that size left. If any. That means one of you is going