Page 34 of Virelai's Hoard
So different from Riley.
Where Calla’s beauty was striking, hers was rough, relying on charm rather than looks. Where Calla was deliberate, Riley was restless. Where Calla felt like still water, deep and dangerous, Riley felt like the wind skimming across its surface, never staying in one place. Never really touching. Always leaving chaos in its wake.
What happened when the wind met the ocean? When they kissed?
Riley forced herself to stop that, stop glancing at Calla’s lips, at the small crumb that had somehow strayed on the bottom one. Tried to find it in herself to resent this new act of kindness, instead. Then Calla’s tongue darted out to catch that stray crumb, and Riley had to fix her gaze back on the maps on the desk. She swallowed.
Her forgoing dinner to bring Calla food was supposed to be a calculated move. Trick her into letting her guard down. Because so far Riley had been holding her tongue, and respecting Calla’s personal space, and she’d wasted half of Patch’s imprisonment doing so. If there was going to be any breaking of walls going on, it had to start from her side. And Calla had somehow gone and beat her at her own game. This wouldn’t do.
“What do you expect in return from me, then?” Riley asked. At Calla’s look of confusion, she clarified, “For being nice to me.”
Calla’s gaze settled on hers, surprised by the directness. Just a flicker, quickly smoothed over. “What I expect from anyone on this ship,” she said. “Hard work and loyalty.”
Riley had to battle a sudden rush of disappointment.
What did she think?
That she wasspecial?
“So?” Calla asked once they emptied the plate.
Riley frowned. “What?”
“Do you have something you want to ask of me?”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows rose. She should say no, try to build some goodwill with gestures not meant to be repaid, but a question pushed at her throat and Riley couldn’t stop it any more than she could stop the tide. “What happened, really, during that storm?”
Something in Calla’s expression shuttered, closing off.Shit.
Riley rushed to add, before Calla could dismiss her, “I… saw something.”
Now the captain tensed, the inquisitive raise of her eyebrows too mechanical to be genuine. “You saw something?” she prompted.
Riley sighed, but nodded slowly. She chose her next words carefully, not wanting to put her even more on the defensive. She didn’t know what Calla was hiding, but she sensed she’d stepped into a territory more treacherous than expected.
“I…” She hesitated. Did she really have to admit this? She took a breath. If she meant to break through Calla’s walls, it needed to start from her. “I can’t swim,” she said. “I shouldn’t be alive right now. I should’ve drowned. Iwould’vedrowned. I think something saved me.” She didn’t meet Calla’s eyes as a shiver ran through her body at the memory.
It wasn’t an act anymore. She really did want to know what had happened that night, and every bone in her body told her Calla had the answers. If this was what it took to get them…
“What did you see?” The quietness in Calla’s question rose the hairs on the back of her neck.
Riley’s pulse quickened. Was she imagining it, or were Calla’s eyes darker now? Deeper. Dangerous. The sudden memory of drowning nearly suffocated her. A cold, harsh grip of her lungs. The wrong answer right now would make her wish she’d never asked. She was certain of it.
Rule number two: don’t let them see your feelings, unless you can use them as a weapon.
“I can’t really remember,” Riley said. “I just know something dragged me back to the surface.” She sighed, letting her frustration show, using the desk’s shield to wipe her sweaty palms off the rough material of her pants. The gesture was grounding. “I was drowning, and then I wasn’t.” A shrug. “I thought you might’ve seen something. We were clinging to the same barrel, right?”
Calla’s shoulders lost some of their tension. She shook her head. “You were already clinging to that barrel once I’d found my way above the water.” A pause. “You likely saved yourself,” she said. “The human body can be incredibly resilient when it really matters. People do things they never thought they could all the time.”
Riley nodded slowly, even as she knew Calla was lying through her teeth.
But why?
Later, once she was away and far from prying eyes, Riley pulled out the sheet of paper she’d managed to stick under the bottom of Calla’s now empty plate.
It was a… drawing. A sketch. Of something roughly oval-shaped, perhaps a stone of some sort, with dark veins splitting its surface. A handwritten scribble marked the space under it, its curves much more complicated than Sable’s neat writing and nearly illegible.
Footsteps resounded from the hallway ahead of her, and she quickly rolled and slipped the paper up her sleeve, finding her way back on deck.
