Page 37 of Virelai’s Hoard (The Dagger & Tide Trilogy #1)

Riley

Riley rushed down the empty corridors of the Moonshadow, the chaos on deck making its way to her through the dimmed booms and vibrations of the voices above.

The scuffing of feet, the tramps of boots pacing.

Her heart thundered above them all. This was it.

The moment she’d been waiting for. And she had to hurry, or it would be too late to choose.

Heavy breaths and jittery hands, she now stood in front of Calla’s door.

Patch leapt on the ground and pawed at it, then looked up at her.

She took out a pin from her sleeve and knelt down.

Soft metal rattling filled her ears as she worked at the keyhole.

Her hands shook, and she had to tighten her grip to keep her movements steady, force herself to focus on the task at hand.

She wanted to know what the distant voices were saying, which way the crew leaned, but this was more important.

She needed to know who she could trust. Was it Calla, distant and aloof and willing to make the hard choices to get what she wanted?

Or Sable, brash and impulsive and, under the surface, too kind-hearted for her own good?

Riley needed to know. She needed to know what Calla had been hiding away before it was too late.

The lock gave in with a dull click , and Riley let out a soft exhale. This was it. No one was here to stop her anymore. Every other soul on this ship was up on deck, so engrossed in the impending mutiny that, for the first time, they paid no mind to her.

Patch rushed into the room with a happy squeak as Riley opened the door, and she stepped in after him.

She didn’t bother closing it at her back.

As if the rat knew her intentions, he made straight for the locked chest at the foot of Calla’s bed, walking rounds around it, his whiskers twitching in the air.

Once again, Riley knelt, taking hold of the heavy iron lock. Her hands shook harder. She dropped the pin on the floor. Once. Twice.

“Fucking piece of–”

Steadying herself, she inhaled deeply and pulled off her glove, then tried again.

The tips of her fingers went white as they pinched the pin, and her muscles ached with the effort of keeping her hands steady, but she didn’t drop the pin anymore.

It rattled inside the lock, just like her thoughts rattled inside her head.

Imagine there’s nothing in here.

She scoffed and shook the intrusive thoughts away.

Click.

Riley’s hands stilled. She held her breath. This was it. Finally.

The lock fell to the floor with a dull thunk. Riley’s hand reached for the chest.

That was when Patch leapt on the lid and growled at her.

He growled . A low, dry, gurgling sound in the back of his throat she didn’t even know he was able to make.

Shocked, Riley’s hand stopped mid-air, and she just stared at him. His fur bristled all over, and his beady black eyes shot daggers at her. His lips twitched, showcasing his sharp little incisors, small claws scratching into the wood as he braced himself.

“Patch?” she asked quietly, a wounded twist inside her chest. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t reply, of course. Just held his stance. The growling faded away when Riley’s hand fell back by her side. He did not want her to open that chest.

Riley steeled herself. “I have to.” Then, pleading, “You know I have to.”

It changed nothing. For a few long, stretched-out moments, they stared at each other, at an impasse.

Riley huffed and stood, flinging an arm around the room.

“So what, she fed you a little cheese and now you’re loyal to her ?

Is that how this goes? Seriously, Patch?

” She started pacing, getting herself distracted by the maps and items on Calla’s desk.

Under the big map, there were dozens of the same damn sketch of the Heart of the Abyss.

And Calla’s journal. She picked it up and slipped it under her shirt, tucking it inside the band of her trousers.

“Listen to me,” she grumbled, slipping a hand through her curls and tugging at them. “Arguing with a damn rat .”

Through all that, Patch didn’t move. Just kept watching her, fur bristling every time her eyes fell on the chest. Maybe Calla was a witch, and she’d put a spell on him back when he was locked in this room with her? That was the only thing that made even a sliver of sense.

“This is fucking ridiculous.”

Bracing herself as if she were approaching a snake instead of literally her only friend in the world, Riley bent by the chest and pulled the glove back on her hand.

Then she pounced. She grabbed Patch by the scruff of his neck, holding him at a safe distance as he twisted and snarled and scratched at the air.

She headed for the empty cage, still in the room, and shoved the rodent in.

The metal scratched her skin as she slithered her hand out without letting him escape.

He’d also pricked the skin on her wrist, and the dull sting of the bite made her match his glare with one of her own.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she said and showed him her back.

Finally, she knelt by the chest again and lifted the lid.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting to find, but what she saw was not it.

Half-part intrigued and half-part disgusted, Riley tugged both of her gloves off and reached for the thing inside.

It was moist and smooth, her fingers gliding easily along its folds.

She flinched away, failed to fight off a shudder.

Gloves back on, she picked it up gingerly, studying the shape of it, the pattern of mottled darkness, shining silver under the porthole’s light. It was a… skin.

Calla’s skin.

She side-eyed Patch. “You’re crushing on a selkie ?”

***

With the weight of Calla’s skin slung across her shoulder, Riley rushed up the companionway.

She’d let Patch go before dashing out of the room, and she’d tried not to hold it against him when he’d zipped past her without a glance back, nails scraping the wooden planks, tail barely touching the floor with the speed of his leaps.

She tried not to acknowledge the sore feeling in her chest as she approached the group of shouting pirates with enough cluster and blunder that everyone shut up and turned to stare at her.

At the selkie skin she was holding.

Through the gathered crowd, Riley made eye-contact with Calla.

Calla, who wasn’t human. Calla, who, just like a human would, paled when she realized what Riley was holding.

The most vulnerable part of her, gripped between someone else’s fingers.

Her lips parted. Riley told herself she imagined the quivering in Calla’s chin before her mouth snapped shut.

She’d never seen so much raw emotion playing on Calla’s face, and Riley had to tear her gaze away before the twist in her gut could make her crumble to her knees.

She had no reason to feel guilty. This was not personal.

It was survival. That was what Riley did . She survived.

She found Sable’s gaze. If she’d had any doubts about the first mate being in on Calla’s secret, they disappeared at the shock written on her face.

Thorian was shocked too, the grip on Sable’s arms slackening. But he wasn’t staring at the skin. He was staring at Riley.

In the shock of this silence, Riley faced the crew and flung the skin at their feet.

Calla flinched, hard, as if she’d been dealt a physical blow.

Riley pretended not to care. It came naturally to her, like breathing, and that, too, felt like a betrayal.

It didn’t matter. “The captain isn’t who she says she is,” she said, raising her voice to cover the thrumming of her own heart, pushing the words out of her tightening throat.

“She’s not one of us. She never was. And she was never after Virelai’s Hoard. ”

The crowd recoiled from the skin, staring at it with the same mix of intrigue and disgust Riley had felt.

Splattered on deck, the skin made for a sorry sight.

Calla made for a sorrier sight still. The crew’s eyes flitted between the selkie skin and their captain, disbelieving, waiting for Calla to laugh in their faces, or for the lash of her rage, or for any sort of denial at all.

None of that came. Calla just stared at her own skin, too, looking more disgusted than all of them put together.

“Is that true?” Gadrielle asked, fighting off a snarl.

Calla didn’t reply. Her hands twitched as if she was fighting off the impulse to reach out.

Sable reacted first. She twisted out of Thorian’s grip, dove for her machete, and pointed it at the quartermaster’s throat.

The big man barely seemed to take notice, staring intently at–everyone else? He looked hurt . It was the most hint of emotion Riley had ever seen from him, too. “I told you. You should’ve never let her on our ship,” he said, throat bobbing against the tip of the blade.

So he already knew. Of course he did. The two non-humans, sticking together against Vareth’s persecution of anything different.

Thorian was tolerated in the port cities, on the forgotten edge of society, but they would’ve never let him live on the mainland proper.

They would’ve never let her live anywhere at all, if anyone found out.

Being a half-blooded giant was one thing, but a selkie?

Vareth didn’t turn a blind eye to that. It was the sea that had driven people to the mainland after all, the sea that had lashed out at them until they turned into a shell of their former glory, the sea that had kept them caged on land for centuries.

Never allowed to grow, never allowed to prosper again.

Riley had nothing to feel guilty about. She didn’t.