Page 39 of Virelai’s Hoard (The Dagger & Tide Trilogy #1)

Riley

The green mist was so thick on the deck of the ghost ship that Riley feared she might choke on it.

It hung close and menacing and coated her surroundings in eerie shadows.

She heard nothing above the thunder of her own heart.

No wind, no waves, no flapping of the sails.

Just a heavy, oppressive silence. She took a step forward, and the loud creak of the wood beneath scraped at her earbuds–made her flinch.

She moved to a damp-looking plank besides.

Her boots clung to it, pieces of rot coming off with every step, and that made her skin crawl.

She pushed forward, squinting through the mist.

“Patch?” she called. “Eryx?”

Nothing. She was alone. Just her and this creepy ass ship.

She caught a flicker in the mist, and she turned to it.

Breathing came easier as the green thinned around her, enough to spot the source of the light.

A torch. It illuminated four crumbling steps leading up–she must’ve reached the quarterdeck–and Riley hesitated before gingerly testing them.

She stepped up. Another torch. This one illuminated a signpost with a single sign nailed to it.

An arrow. It pointed to an open hatch leading below.

A quirk of her eyebrows.

Was she getting directions ?

Maybe Eryx and Patch came this way?

As she cautiously approached the sign, she made out a few words carved beneath. Words she could read.

This way.

Riley peered down the hatch. She could make out two rungs of stairs. Impenetrable darkness swallowed the rest. She stumbled back.

“Fuck that .” She glared at the sign, then startled. The writing had changed.

It’s not a trap.

Riley shook her head, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling.

Rubbing the goosebumps off her arms, she took another step back, and then another.

“There’s no fucking way.” When she looked at the hatch again, her head tilted, ears picking up the echo of–a squeak?

No. This ship was playing tricks on her mind.

She turned her back on it and relied more on instinct than sight as she fled the quarterdeck.

There were no other torches anywhere else.

No other hatches anywhere else, either, which was impossible.

Almost as impossible as being on an empty, rotting ghost ship, sailing on green mist-infested waters with shifting signs and mocking reassurances.

Reluctantly, Riley returned to the sign. It had changed again.

Where else will you go?

Riley scowled at it. There had been no signs of Patch on the rest of the deck, nor Eryx, nor anyone else. They must’ve come this way.

Time dragged on, and eventually, Riley relented. She descended into the darkness, step by careful step. Unlike the wood of the deck, the ladder rungs felt smooth and solid under her feet and fingers. So smooth she nearly slipped off them when the hatch banged shut above her head.

“Fuck!” She clung tighter to the ladder, gasping in a shallow breath.

The pinprick of light she was going by cut off entirely, Riley had to feel her way down. Her hands shook so hard they cramped around the rungs, and she fought her own muscles to release, grip onto the next, repeat.

“Fuck your creepy ass ship,” she muttered as she went down. “And your creepy ass sign.” Her voice echoed down the ladder, which sent a shiver skittering up her spine. How long was this thing? “This way,” she mocked. “Not a trap. Absolutely not a fucking trap. Fuck you.”

She didn’t know who she was swearing at, but it helped.

Her hands steadied, and soon her heartbeat settled.

She felt the oppressive weight of the darkness.

The soreness settling into her limbs with the repetitiveness of the motions.

A subtle chill in the air pricked at her skin as she descended, and it settled into her bones.

It was a long time before she realized there was no ladder in existence that could possibly go that deep, not on a ship this size–not on a ship of any size.

She should’ve been deep underground by now.

Maybe she was. She imagined feet over feet of earth piling up overhead, and she fought off a shudder.

Just as she thought she’d spend an eternity descending these damned stairs, Riley’s boot hit solid ground. A wooden floor.

A torch flickered to life at her side, and Riley shielded her eyes from it with a hiss. She blinked away the sudden pain, and eventually her vision settled. The light barely illuminated the wooden walls of a dark corridor. A ship’s sort of corridor. Not underground, then.

Riley gave up on trying to figure out how anything worked and started walking. She flinched when another torch shot to life, and she mostly fought off the next as she reached the third torch.

“Can’t you just light them up all at once?” Riley grumbled at the fifth torch.

She was ignored.

Resentment settled in at having to follow a path already laid out for her like this, but the corridor went straight ahead.

No turns, no intersections, no doors. Just the plain wooden walls at her sides and the torches.

She tried not to think of how much easier this would be with Patch by her side, how sorely she missed him already. The traitorous little vermin.

“If you touched a whisker on him, I’m gonna find a way to make your stupid ship sink,” she told the empty corridor. Her voice echoed, then faded back into silence.

Am I dead?

Was this what the afterlife looked like?

Climbing down interminable stairs and walking along infinite corridors until your legs gave out from under you?

Doomed to chasing distant squeaks from rodents who snubbed her in favor of far more interesting people.

Like selkies, and pirates touched by the sea. How wonderful.

“You know I had to do it, right?” Riley asked. “We weren’t supposed to get attached , Patch. It’s always been just the two of us. I don’t see why that had to change.”

She’d lost count of the torches. She kept walking. She kept talking, like the words were a weight she needed to get off her chest. It didn’t make anything feel better, but it kept the silence at bay.

“I don’t see why you had to change. Yeah, they were kind to us, but did you forget how I warned you about that?

They just use it to reel you in, trick you into letting your guard down.

Make what comes after hurt worse. No one’s ever just kind.

It’s a front. You can’t trust it,” Riley scoffed.

“Your precious Calla would’ve allowed me to get whipped.

She was going to kill Eryx. But sure, I’m the bad one here.

” She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face.

No matter that she might’ve deserved the whipping.

Or that Calla thought sacrificing one of the crew might save the rest of them.

That was not the point . “We were doing just fine by ourselves, bud.”

That was the point.

By the time she noticed an ajar door in the distance, Riley was positively sulking.

“Patch?” she called out softly as she stepped past the threshold.

The word echoed around the room, along with the scuff of her boots on the floor. Everything was so quiet.

Her steps faltered as she reached a mirror, smack dab in the middle of the room. It stood twice as tall as her and wider than her spread arms. Hung lanterns flickered off the walls at all sides, giving it an ominous glow.

Riley pricked her ears at a sound coming from behind the mirror, a tap-tapping of small claws on wood she’d recognize anywhere.

Frowning at her own reflection, Riley circled the mirror, then circled the room.

Empty.

This was a dead end.

“Great, now I’m hearing things too.”

No windows, no other doors besides the one she’d just walked through. Maybe she’d missed a turn, or a secret passage, while talking to herself like a madwoman. Clearly, she was losing it.

Riley came to face the mirror again and sat cross-legged in front of it.

Just for a moment, to gather her strength and her wits.

Her limbs sunk to the floor like leaden weight.

She looked at her own reflection, at the red tint on her cheek that would bloom into a bruise soon, at the cut on her lip, at the scrapes along her forearms where she’d fallen against the deck, at the dark curls plastered to her neck and forehead.

The sheer size of the mirror made her look…

small. The light flickered off the sheen of sweat on her skin, making her look tired.

And the empty room made her feel alone. A fist came up to rub against her chest, as if that alone could chase the unpleasant sensation away.

“Look, I’m sorry, ok?” she said to her own reflection.

She didn’t mean it, of course. Not in the way that she’d make different decisions, given the chance.

What she’d done had been entirely self-serving.

It was the same cutthroat instinct that had kept her alive this far.

She couldn’t just ignore it now. This was how she survived. How she stayed on top.

Sable had been the safer bet. Someone she could understand the inner workings of.

Someone she could rely on. Someone who showed would protect her if things took a turn for the worse.

A smaller voice at the back of her mind added another reason.

One that shouldn’t have factored in at all.

Someone she liked. More than was wise. Since when was that relevant to anything at all?

With a start, Riley realized a bigger issue. She liked Calla, too. Even though she could not understand her, or what she wanted, or whether it was safe to trust her at all.

But she’d had to pick.

Hadn’t she?