Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,81

see.”

Caledonia followed him to the port side, Pisces at her heels. They skirted the gaping hole in the center of the bow, careful to avoid touching the jagged leaves of still-steaming metal. They crouched behind a team of gunners, letting their shields protect them from enemy fire.

“Lir’s ships are forming up.” Oran pointed beyond the breakers to the north side of the harbor. “Looks like a barricade.”

Even as he spoke, more of Lir’s fleet turned from the fight.They created a solid line of ships that stretched from one side of the concrete breakers to the other.

“For what?” Pisces asked. “There’s nothing on the north side except land.”

“He’s staging an exit, moving ships out.” Caledonia traced the hint of movement just behind the barricade.

“Are those barges?” Pisces narrowed her eyes.

There, in the space between ships, Caledonia saw them, too. Barges gliding across the water toward the open ocean, each one covered in barely budding baleflowers.

“He won’t be far behind them. We can’t let him get away!”

All of this—the battle, the alliance with Tassos, their losses at Cloudbreak—would be for nothing if she didn’t capture Lir. If she didn’t find a way to stop this cycle of running and fighting and dying.

“Target that barricade!” Caledonia called out to her crew. “Keep your eyes peeled for the Bale Blossom! When it lands in our sights, fire everything you have!”

“Yes, Captain!” the crew shouted.

“Approaching the breakers,” Nettle announced when Caledonia stepped onto the bridge once more.

Moments ago, the breakers had been clogged with Lir’s fleet. Now they were nearly clear. The Luminous Wake shot between them, her deck rumbling with a sudden surge of power. On either side, the rest of her fleet did the same, shooting into the harbor and turning hard to north. They aimed their guns at the barricade, firing relentlessly. Above, the gun towers provided cover, taking out barricade ships one by one.

Caledonia’s focus narrowed. Every minute of the past turn had brought her to this point. She and her crew had grown strong together, they had lost together, they had survived and decided to keep fighting together. And now they were here, on the very brink of the victory they had yearned for and bled for and endured for.

They were nearly upon the barricade when a gun tower missile demolished the ship directly ahead. Smoke clouded the sea, dense and billowing, but as it thinned in the breeze, the silhouette of a familiar ship appeared inside.

Caledonia and her entire crew stopped in their tracks.

The elegant sweep of the hull, the line of four mast blocks studding the centerline, the way it seemed to glide atop the water as though nothing could hold it back. They would know that ship anywhere.

“The Mors Navis.” Caledonia almost couldn’t breathe as she said the words.

And then she knew, without a doubt, that Lir was sailing her ship. Lir was sailing the Mors Navis.

Before any of her crew could gather their wits again, the ship was gone, vanished beyond the barricade and heading out to sea.

Caledonia heard a faint ringing in her ears as she searched in vain for another glimpse of that familiar vessel. But it was gone. The barricade was failing. More of Lir’s fleet was peeling off, racing away from the harbor and the onslaught of the gun towers. The day was hers.

But Lir was getting away.

“We have to pursue,” she said.

A hand caught hers as she spun toward the bridge. Pisces pulled her to a stop, forcing their foreheads together as the cacophony of gunfire faded from a constant, overlapping barrage into occasional bursts.

“Cala.” She breathed her sister’s name. “We cannot pursue. Not like this. We have to take the win. And let him go.”

Caledonia ground her forehead into Pisces’s. “We can still get him,” she protested. “We can still end this.”

But Pisces shook her head. “Listen to me, Cala: you won. The Holster is ours. This was a good fight.”

“We won,” Caledonia said.

Pisces nodded, repeated, “We won.”

Caledonia raised her head to find her crew gathered near, their eyes trained on their captain and her second-in-command. Dozens of Lir’s ships were dead in the water, their crews destroyed or fleeing in whatever vessels they had left. The Holster, though injured, was theirs. And beyond the breakers, Lir’s fleet was running.

Lir was running from her.

Caledonia let a ferocious smile split across her face as she cried, “For Cloudbreak!”

And her crew answered viciously, “For Cloudbreak!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Victory rushed through Caledonia’s veins.

A warm wind seeded with the scents of burning metal and salt drove