Page 51 of Virelai’s Hoard (The Dagger & Tide Trilogy #1)

Calla

The longboats hit the sandbanks by the mouth of the cave with a judder.

This wasn’t what she’d expected of Virelai’s hidden island.

It couldn’t even be called an island. It was a dark, hidden rock.

They would’ve passed it over without a second thought if the compass hadn’t led them to it.

And hunger wafted off the place in waves. Calla felt it licking at her skin.

She stepped out of her longboat, and the others followed, craning their necks at the stone walls curving beyond their heads.

But Calla didn’t marvel at the size of the cave, at how the walls glistened from sprayed sea water, or the way the sea beat against the rocks–the water frothing, swelling, thrumming with foreboding energy.

No. Calla just stared down at the footprints in the sand. They led straight into the dark maw of the cave.

What are you waiting for?

Beside her, Eryx shuddered. “This is not meant for us.”

Their words hung heavy in the air, their warm breath lingering in the chill in white puffs. The pirates around them shifted, uneasy.

Calla tore her gaze away from the footsteps and turned to the others. “Eryx is right. You’ll be waiting outside until I return.” Before Sable could protest, she met her eye. “Let’s go.”

Sable’s eyes widened in surprise, but she nodded, stepping at her side. “After you, captain.”

Thorian, arms folded, grumbled something about her playing favorites. They ignored him as they left.

Riley

Riley slinked through the cave like some sort of frightened animal.

Alone, spooked, nerves frayed.

Everything felt wrong. The bag slung over her shoulder, empty of Patch’s reassuring weight.

The sea water lapping at her feet, the sand raised against the walls of the cave so narrow that she had to hug the rock as she went, the ground crumbling beneath her boots.

The way the water rippled, dark and ominous.

If she peered at it, her head swam–she couldn’t see its bottom.

Instead, she looked ahead, where a golden light pulsed and reflected off the walls, eerie and alive .

If she slipped into the water, that would be the end. There would be no mysterious creature to save her from drowning this time.

The memory came, unbidden and startling. Those eyes. Calla’s eyes. The creature had been Calla. Calla had risked exposing herself, her secret, to save Riley.

Riley’s gloved fingers dug into the wall of the cave as she gasped at the realization. Her lungs filled in with salt, and something metallic coated her tongue. Like blood.

‘She’s of no consequence to me.’

Riley gritted her teeth and pushed forward.

She’d survived by preying on fools like Calla.

This wasn’t any different. It wasn’t personal.

Usually. But this time? She would show Calla just of how much consequence she was before leaving them all in the dust. She would not allow them to dismiss her so easily.

If her every waking moment had to be filled with thoughts of Calla’s dismissal, she would pay Calla the same damn courtesy.

Eventually, the path widened into a sand shore, stretching beyond into a vast chamber and keeping the sea at bay. Strange carvings littered the walls, the symbols thrumming with energy beneath her hand.

Riley stumbled to a halt as her eyes fell to the contents of the cave.

Gold.

Piles of it. Too much to fit into any sort of chests and coffers, as much of it as to satisfy the hoarding instincts of a dragon.

Precious gems and pearls glittered in the midst, and Riley’s head swam with what she was seeing.

Not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined so many riches.

She would never want for anything ever again, even if she just filled the bag over her shoulder and snuck back onto the Moonshadow–no one would ever even notice she’d taken anything.

But the bag was meant to be Patch’s nest. And a startling realization hit Riley over the head like a cudgel, making her numb from head to toe.

She wanted none of the gold. Now that she could have it, the life she was dreaming of lying at her fingertips, an apology away? She didn’t want it.

Instead, her eyes got drawn to the middle of the cave. Where the Heart of the Abyss lay waiting.

It rested at the top of a throne-like scepter made of stone.

The Heart was just like in the sketches, and also entirely different. Small enough to fit in Riley’s palm, lit veins splitting the length of it–a pulsing core of light and shadow. It looked… alive.

Riley approached it, cautious and in awe. If she listened closely enough, she could hear it whispering to her, making promises so grand as to make her head swirl.

This was it. This was what Calla had dragged them here for.

And it was Riley’s to take.

Calla

Calla didn’t need to reach the end of the path to know this was it.

This was the place she’d been looking for.

It was like a rope tethered to the center of her being and pulled her towards it.

Her steps were automatic, inevitable. When she reached the center of the cave, she already knew what she would find, as if she’d been there before already.

As if this all had played out before, and she was replaying the beats of it through the haze of a dream.

Riley stood there, just a step from the Heart of the Abyss, and Calla knew what would come next, knew she could do nothing to stop it. Riley would reach out for the Heart, and Calla would bear the consequences. It was already played out. Inevitable.

It is not. You can stop this. Kill her. She is nothing.

“No,” Calla whispered.

And she knew, then, her thoughts had not been her own.

If the only way to save herself was to doom someone else–even someone as reckless and infuriating as Riley–then she did not want it.

She would bear the consequences when they came.

The gold would be enough to safe-guard her crew, and if it wasn’t, Sable would rise to the challenge.

She had to. But she would not kill Riley for this. She could not.

The haze that had been plaguing her extinguished with a final whisper.

Fool.

Sable tried to rush past her, but Calla grabbed her arm, tethering her.

“Wait,” she said. Her voice sounded like it was miles away. Calla could not feel her own body, but for the hand tethering Sable in place.

Sable twisted to look at her, baffled. “She’s about to do something stupid .”

Calla knew, and yet she kept watching, feet rooted to the sand beneath her feet.

Riley closed the distance between herself and the Heart with a torturously slow step.

Riley

“Riley!”

Riley flinched, looking over her shoulder. She met Sable’s eyes, wide and pleading, then Calla’s, sharp and focused. Something in her chest shifted, slow and painful. They were too far away to do anything about this. The Heart lay just a breath away from her fingertips.

She was just about to touch it when Calla’s voice rang out throughout the chamber. “Let her,” she said. “She’s only out for herself,” she said. “She always has been.” Calla’s eyes met hers, then, daring Riley to contradict her.

The chill of that gaze settled into her bones. A flash of anger sparked in Riley’s chest. “You won’t even try to stop me?” the words spilled out of her.

At her back, the Heart of the Abyss pulsed in delight.

Calla’s lips spread in a smile, as if Riley had said something funny .

“No,” she said simply. “You must want something pretty important if you’d go to these lengths to get it.

So go ahead. Take it.” She gestured toward Riley and the Heart, watching as if this had nothing to do with her.

As if Calla hadn’t gone to greater lengths to get here.

What was she playing at?

Sable, looking as confused as Riley felt, just stood there, glancing between Riley and Calla. Calla wasn’t holding her anymore. She could rush to Riley’s side if she wanted to. She didn’t.

Riley was alone. Completely and utterly alone . She’d fucked everything, hadn’t she?

More uncertain than before, she reached towards the Heart, its pull strong and undeniable.

“Let me guess.” Calla’s voice drew her gaze again, and the captain tilted her head at her. “ More gold?”

Against the pile of gold already spilling at Riley’s feet, the question was pure mockery.

Anger twisted in her chest again, sharp-toothed and swirling.

Riley’s silence must’ve been taken as confirmation, because, nodding once to herself, Calla turned to Sable. “Come on. We’re done here.”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Calla was supposed to fight her. Sable was supposed to stop her. Someone was supposed to–

But they didn’t.

Calla just turned away, and Riley’s chest ached with something ugly and sharp.

She wasn’t even worth fighting for?

No. No, that wasn’t right. This wasn’t right.

Fix it.

The thought wasn’t hers, not entirely. But it was enough. Her fingers brushed the Heart.

Calla

Calla collapsed on her knees, pain unlike anything she’d ever felt before spreading through her limbs.

She gasped in a breath, sharp and burning.

Everything was agony. She braced herself on her hands, her vision blurry as her bones twisted.

Not like breaking—breaking would be kinder.

This was something else, something worse.

Her body reshaped itself as though she were melting and reforging all at once.

Ahead of her, the sea lurched.

There was something lost. And something gained. Her skin shimmered in the dim light, salt and brine sinking into her veins.

Water lapped at her hands, soothing her. Saying farewell. And welcome. Claiming her as her own once more.

Sable

One moment, Sable witnessed the pain on Riley’s face as Calla turned to walk away, her disinterest like a slap in Riley’s face.

Mocking. Daring Riley to prove her wrong, to prove that she was better than this.

Riley hadn’t seen it, but Sable had. Calla wasn’t walking away. She was challenging Riley to stay .

But Riley didn’t know that.

One moment, everything was normal, if not fine . The next, the world tumbled in on itself.

Calla stumbled on her knees, gasping for breath, her skin rippling, flesh and bones shifting beneath.

Sable rushed to her side when a guttural cry of pain stopped her in her tracks. Her head snapped to where Riley had been standing just a moment before.

She wasn’t standing now, but floating inches above the ground.

The Heart of the Abyss was gripped between her fingers, the only part of her that was still.

The rest of her body was convulsing, pain written all over her face, eyes closed and teeth gritted, not quite holding her screams in.

Darkened veins erupted from the Heart and up her arm.

Where the veins reached, her body went weak– limp .

It was killing her. Whatever Riley had asked it for, the Heart of the Abyss was killing her to get it.

With no time to think, Sable rushed to Riley. She faltered for just a moment before reaching out. The moment her fingers closed around the Heart, pain tore through her–white-hot, searing, a scream curling in her throat, stuck like a fishhook. It wanted her gone. It wanted her dead.

This wasn’t just magic. It was hunger. Old and endless.

The others hadn’t felt it like this. They hadn’t realized–

This thing didn’t give. It took. It would always take.

She clenched her jaw, ground her teeth, forced her fingers to pull even though she could barely breathe through the fire in her blood.

Whatever it was Riley wanted, whatever she was giving Calla, it wasn’t worth her life.

Grunting from the effort, Sable reached out with her other hand and tore the Heart out of her grip.

Riley collapsed to the ground.

The chamber around Sable shuddered, and loud cracks echoed overhead.

The walls started to collapse, the Heart of the Abyss pulsing into her hand, its color different from before.

Wrong. Its whispers angry and twisted. Sable’s body was almost paralyzed with the sheer malice of it.

How had Calla and Riley not felt it? The Heart wanted to destroy.

She couldn’t let them have it.

Gripping the Heart tighter, Sable took a last look around. At the collapsing ceiling, at Riley’s passed out body, at Calla stumbling to her feet, changed.

Then she ran.

Calla

The pain faded, but Calla’s breath didn’t steady. Her fingers curled against the sand, feeling too smooth, too foreign.

She flexed them. They moved like they were hers. But they weren’t.

Something inside her had shifted, like a wave crashing against the shore and pulling the sand beneath her feet.

Slowly, the rest of the world blinked into focus.

A heavy boulder fell into the water ahead with a loud splash–the cave was collapsing. And she was alone? She looked around, searching for Sable, for Riley–

No .

A collapsed body, near where the Heart of the Abyss had been. Calla stumbled to her, heart in her throat. Riley. It was Riley. She crouched down, checked her pulse–still alive. Dark marks like veins ran up her arms, beyond the sleeves of her shirt.

Calla looked up at the collapsing cave around them. Sable was gone. Just… gone. With the Heart.

No time. No choice.

Picking Riley up, Calla fled to the water by instinct. When a section of the ceiling collapsed right atop of their heads, she dove into the sea, and trusted it to see them back to the surface.