Page 80 of Virelai's Hoard
The woman crouched down on herself, holding herself together as several shadowy figures reached with claw-like fingers, stripping away chunks of her skin.
Riley saw herself in one of those figures, and her fingers started shaking. She flipped the page to the next.
This one she recognized. It resembled the sketch she’d pulled from her desk, without Calla realizing, and as she flipped through the rest of the journal, Riley figured outwhyCalla hadn’t realized. There were dozens of drawings of the Heart of the Abyss, each a little different, each the same, obsession bleeding out of the pages and screaming in Riley’s face. The latest sketches didn’t even have any detail. Just the dark shape of it and deep indents, as if Calla had drawn over it over and over, losing control of herself.
Riley snapped the journal shut, her heart racing. The slow, creeping suspicion of what Calla wanted with the Heart strangled the breath out of her lungs.
She’d been wrong about the captain. So very wrong.
***
In the dark of night, Riley roamed the ship aimlessly. She was unsettled. She didn’t know what to do with herself and the twisted feelings gnawing at her guts. It felt like a dark hole that might swallow her whole if she stumbled–and all Riley did lately was stumble. She couldn’t stop thinking about those drawings. The harsh sketches had imprinted themselves in the back of her mind and would not go away. Those shadowy figures, those reaching fingers, taking and taking even though Calla had nothing to give them but herself. Riley couldn’t stop thinking about how she recognized herself in them, how she’d triggered one of Calla’s deepest fears. She couldn’t stop thinking aboutCalla.
So maybe that was why, when there was nowhere left to roam, Riley found herself at the brig’s door. She stared at it, heart pounding, palms sweating inside of her gloves. Inside ofCalla’sgloves. Where before they’d felt like a second skin, now they felt foreign, as if Riley had no right to them anymore. They stayed on as she pushed the door open. Its hinges creaked, loud as a betrayal. As she walked past the empty prison bars, Riley wondered about why she was there at all. To twist the knife in? To see the damage she caused? To figure out why she felt like crumbling when she was supposed to feel nothing at all?
Before any answers came to her, she reached the one occupied cell. A chair stood in front of the bars, as if someone had been visiting and they were expecting to return, to linger.
Inside of her cell, Calla was awake.
Lamps flickered from the walls of the brig, their light hitting the prison bars. Only one half of Calla’s face was illuminated, the other in shadow. The combined bright and dark of her blue eyes was both startling and unsettling as her gaze settled on Riley.
“Riley,” Calla said, unaffected, as if they were back during the days of Patch’s imprisonment and Riley was an expected visitor. Perhaps a secretly welcome one.
Riley didn’t figure that was true now.
But she was still herself, and, not knowing what else to do, she settled into her old skin, familiar and deeply uncomfortable. She let a smirk slip on her lips as she turned the chair around and sat on it backwards. Her arms rested against the backseat, hands hanging in the open air between them. Slowly, her smirk spread into a small grin, as if she’d tried to suppress it and couldn’t. She hated how easy the deceiving felt. She wished she could deceive herself.
“So how long is the sentence for humans?” She tilted her head inquisitively. “Patch got one fortnight. I don’t supposeyou’llget out that fast?”
Calla’s eyes widened briefly, but her face composed itself in a blink. She was sitting on an improvised cot, feet dunked in a bucketful of seawater. How long had she been sitting like that? She looked stiff. Riley wondered if Calla wasn’t cold, though she didn’t notice any shivering despite the chill in the air. Or maybe that was just her. After the ghost ship, Riley’s limbs hadn’t quite warmed up. The fingers inside her gloves felt ice cold. Would Calla’s fingers be that cold if she touched her?
The fleeting thought was puzzling. She let her grin become wider.
“Why are you here, Riley?”
The question was cold. Just cold. It didn’t hold the heat of anger, the resentment of betrayal, any hint of feeling at all. Riley’s grin fell. She forced a playful smile to replace it. It felt wobbly on her lips, hard to maintain. But what was the alternative?
“Thought I’d check up on you,” she said. “Didn’t want you to get lonely. It’s dark in here.” She tilted her head as she asked,“Do you need anything? Figure the galley is empty at this time of night if you want some…” she gestured vaguely with one of her hands, “whatever it is you creatures like to eat.”You creatures. Fuck.She was really bad at this, whateverthiswas. What was she even trying to do? “Wouldn’t have any issue sneaking in and bringing you something.”
As Calla rose a single, sculpted brow at her, Riley realized she was rambling. She stopped. Her heart beat faster at the look in those eyes, as if they wereseeingright through her. Calla was the one who was imprisoned, but it was Riley who felt caged under that intense, knowing gaze. There was no hurt there, only patient disapproval, and it made her jaw clamp tight. Why did that bother her? She should be relieved.
“Yes, I’m aware you’re very good at sneaking inside places you shouldn’t,” Calla said mildly. “But I don’t need anything. You can go.”
No anger, no swearing, not even a hint of tension in her body. The cold dismissal, impossibly, pissed Riley off. It fueled her act. She pouted, resting her cheek on her fist now. “Don’t tell me you already replaced your favorite cupbearer. That wouldreallyhurt my feelings.”
Nothing. Just obstinate silence.
She didn’t have to force a huff out of her lips. That one felt easy. “Fine,” she said. “Maybe you don’t need anything. But I figured you’d at least want this back.”
At that, she pulled Calla’s journal out. She leaned down from her chair to press it on the floor and slide it past the prison bars. And this time, it was there, in the way Calla’s eyes snapped to hers. A spark of something. Anger, maybe.
Riley pretended not to see it, pretended she wasn’t pleased by it. “Oh, and this.” This time, she rolled over a pencil. “Figured it’d give you something to do, besides brooding all day.”
Calla’s jaw worked as she stared at the items on the floor. Slow as the tide, her nails dug into the edge of her cot, though she didn’t move from where she was sitting. “I don’t brood,” she said eventually. Her voice was harder than before, tight with things she was holding back.
Riley could guess at what at least one of those things was.
You had no right.
