Page 38 of Virelai’s Hoard (The Dagger & Tide Trilogy #1)

The captain just shook her head. Her lips moved, but the murmur was too quiet for anyone to hear.

The look in her eyes vacant. She took to glancing from her skin to the sea beyond, her fingers clenching open and closed.

Open and closed. She didn’t seem aware of what was happening around her anymore.

A daughter of the sea. What was it whispering to her?

The pirates around looked both irate and helpless, as if the sky had crumbled above their heads.

“What have we been chasing? If not Virelai’s Hoard?” someone thought to ask.

It was Sable who said, “The Heart of the Abyss.” She narrowed her eyes at Thorian, who didn’t seem surprised by the information.

Slowly, he swiveled his gaze on her, but his arms didn’t move from his sides.

He was big, but it would only take a twitch for her blade to slit his throat.

“What does it matter what she’s after? The gold is real.

She never lied to you about that,” Thorian said, voice pleading.

“And she’s still our captain.” His tone was hopeful, but he looked dismayed when Calla’s gaze remained blank, fixed on the sea.

“ Captain .” Silence. “…Calla?” He gritted his teeth, looking back at Sable. “She’s not well .”

“We can all fucking see that,” Sable snapped.

“What the fuck is the Heart of the Abyss?” Ignatius asked, his one eye narrowing at them.

Kittredge licked her lips. “It’s supposed to make wishes come true.” Then, unconvinced, “Does it matter? We still end up rich, don’t we?”

Ignatius kicked at the skin. Calla flinched again.

“Like hell it doesn’t. Why hide it if she meant anything good with it?

I say it’s high time we throw someone overboard and got ourselves out of this mess.

” He flung his hand at Calla. “Clue says we need to sacrifice someone touched by the sea, aye? Well, here we have her. A selkie , no less,” he spit.

“Can’t believe we had a two-faced sea creature walking among us all this time and we didn’t see it. ”

“You fool,” Thorian said, voice trembling in something like anger. Pain? “Why do you think the sea has favored us all these years? We’d all be long dead if not for Calla, or is your brain so clouded by pointless hatred that you can’t see it?”

“We’re not throwing anyone overboard, you hateful old bastard,” Sable threw over her shoulder.

She missed Thorian’s surprised stare as she pointed to a group of pirates.

“You there, tie him to the mast. He’s not getting out of my sight.

Gadrielle, escort the captain to the brig.

She looks like she might jump in the water at any moment.

Merrow, Haddock, you’re the most experienced sailors on deck.

Do you know what the hell is going on with her? ”

No one moved.

Sable gritted her teeth. “Am I speaking to the wind here?”

Nyxen cleared his throat. “Ignatius is right,” he said, wincing as if he wasn’t happy to be saying that. “What are we going to do about the mist , Sable?”

The mist had gotten closer. Thin wisps of it flew in the air right in front of Riley’s face. A chill went through her.

Thorian took a step toward Sable, features set into hard lines. The machete dug into his throat. “You’re touching the captain over my dead body.”

A lot of things happened at once after that.

Riley noticed something shift in Thorian’s posture, in his expression, but it was too subtle, too sudden for her to give out a warning.

His wrist snapped up, knocking the blade out of the way.

He didn’t bother reaching for a weapon. His body was a weapon.

He lunged at Sable, slammed her against the mast. Air whooshed out of her lungs with a gasp, but she didn’t cry out.

The others did, though. The air had been crackling with electricity, the same way it had back during that first storm, and it only took this one spark for everything to turn into chaos.

Pirates grappled with each other, pushing, pulling, shoving.

Someone knocked Riley’s shoulder as she tried to avoid the worst of the fight and slip by unharmed.

A punch made for someone else grazed her cheek.

Or maybe it had been aimed at her, the others too far gone to care who they were lunging at or why.

A pirate backed into her as they avoided a kick to the gut and knocked Riley on her ass.

Her eyes searched wildly for escape as she scrambled back to her feet.

She found it. In a split moment, she sprinted for the rigging and hauled herself up above the chaos.

Safe. She took in a deep breath and surveyed the situation.

Just in time to see Thorian pull his arm back and pummel Sable’s face.

Shit.

Sable’s head knocked against the mast, and it was a wonder the punch didn’t knock her right out. She swayed on her feet, machete limply hanging at her side.

This was bad.

If Thorian won, and Calla remained captain, the first item on their list would be to throw Riley overboard. What she’d just done was nothing short of a betrayal. She knew it. There was no pretending otherwise, and nowhere to run with the sea and the mist pushing in from all sides.

Thorian pulled his fist back again, and Riley sprung into action.

This had to be a winning bet. Her life depended on it.

She swung above fighting pirates, their screams and shouts and the discordant clang of their weapons morphing together.

Some of them were trying to intervene, argue reason where people were too hot-headed to listen, but Riley’s focus was on Sable.

She barely ducked out of the trajectory of Thorian’s second punch, swaying against the mast at her back.

When she was right above their heads, Riley jumped down.

She landed on Thorian’s head, and the impact knocked the air out of her lungs.

Thorian stumbled on his feet. Riley, in true street rat fashion, scratched at his face and savagely bit at his ear, tearing out a chunk of it and spitting it on deck.

Her mouth filled with the metallic slickness of his blood.

He howled, arms flailing, tripping back. A hand gripped the back of her shirt and tore her away from his head. She landed on her back, slid across the deck.

But the distraction had worked.

Sable was back on her feet, wiping blood from her nose and mouth before brandishing her machete once more.

She stopped Thorian’s advance with a flick of her blade, then a slash made him take a step back, toward the railing.

The mist was climbing slowly on deck, and Riley watched with growing horror as it thickened into slithering tendrils, licking at their feet.

As Thorian’s back hit the railing, he caught Sable’s next slash between his palms–her blade now trapped and useless.

Riley could only watch from between moving feet as the machete clattered on the deck.

He twisted his fists in Sable’s shirt and lifted her in the air, her boots leaving the deck as they snarled at each other.

Then the mist lashed at his feet. It circled an ankle. Lifted. He let go of Sable with a startled shout, cut off by his chin knocking against the deck. More tendrils circled around him, lashing his arms, his torso, pulling him back. Over the railing and into the sea.

Wide-eyed, Riley stared at the empty spot where Thorian had been just earlier. The pirates who’d witnessed the scene stopped fighting, cuts and bruises forgotten as they stood around, slack-jawed and silent.

In the next moment, they looked at each other, panting. Then at Sable, split lip and swelling cheek and a grim expression on her face as she eyed the mist–harmlessly incorporeal once more.

But not gone. Still looming. Still waiting.

Heads shook, as if no one knew what they’d been fighting about.

Calla was sitting in the middle of the deck, head gripped between her hands, her shoulders shuddering.

“Get the captain below deck. Now,” Sable said. The pain in her voice rang louder than her words.

No one argued this time. As she was led away, Calla looked back at her skin.

Or where the skin was supposed to be. A low layer of mist covered the entire deck now. The pirates shifted on their feet, murmuring, glancing to where Eryx stood. The young pirate’s lips were pale, pressed tight and grim.

Finally, for the first time, they spoke. “I’ll do it. I’ll go with them.” The words were said with great effort, but the crew just looked at them blankly.

“What do you mean, them ?” Kittredge asked, looking around.

Eryx frowned. “You don’t see it?” They raised their arm, pointing at something in the thick of the mist. “They’ve been waiting.”

A flurry of heads turned to see.

Riley couldn’t make up anything at first. The mist was so thick now she could barely peer beyond the railing.

Then, as if Eryx’s words had called it into existence, a dark shadow.

Indistinct and distant, slowly taking shape, materializing into something solid.

It dwarfed the Moonshadow with its sheer size.

Another ship.

If it could be called that.

A rotting, creaking, algae-ridden corpse of a ship, who looked like it belonged on the bottom of the sea rather than floating along the Moonshadow. Nothing on it moved, not a soul in sight. Riley startled when a plank extended from it, connecting the ghost ship to the Moonshadow’s deck.

The sailors stumbled away from it, knocking back into the crowd as they tried to put as much distance as they could between them and… whatever that was.

Eryx was the only one who didn’t look scared. Under the muted stares of the crew, Eryx approached the railing. Halfway there, they glanced behind, taking a good look at the frightened crew and the Moonshadow’s deck, as if trying to commit the sight to memory. Then they reached the plank.

A small squeak called out from under the mist’s blanket. Eryx’s steps faltered. They bent down, hands cupped, and as they straightened their back the mist poured out of their hands to reveal–Patch. Eryx hoisted him on their shoulder.

“Patch?” Riley called softly, lurching to her feet.

Eryx stepped up on the plank. The rotted wood shuddered. Dust shook off under their steps.

“Patch!”

What Riley did then was stupid. No, it was idiotic. And it was the only thing she could do. She pushed through the frozen pirates and raced after Eryx. The plank cracked under her feet, gave way, and she jumped off it just as it slipped into the water between the two ships.

With a groan, the ghost ship swallowed her whole.