Page 76 of Virelai's Hoard
The captain sat on a makeshift bed–just a bundle of blankets atop stacked wooden pallets–with her feet sunk into a bucket full of seawater. Her fingers dug into the wood when Sable turned to face her fully.
She looked… awful, but better than she’d been. The water–given to her on Haddock’s mild suggestion–had helped. Calla was more present than she’d been in days.
Her voice cut through the silence like a knife. “The Moonshadow is still not moving. Why?” Sharp, focused eyes found Sable’s.
By the demand in those words, one could be fooled to think the captain was perfectly poised, perfectly in control–up on deck gripping the ship’s helm and imparting orders rather than locked in the Moonshadow’s brig, feet dunked in a battered bucket, fingers digging into the wood of her shoddy cot. The ridiculousness of it all nearly made Sable forget her anger. Her hurt. Her heartbreak. All of which could’ve been fucking avoided. Today didn’t have to play out the way it had.
“It didn’t work,” Sable said, her voice thick with accusation. “The mist is still there.”
The wood creaked under Calla’s grip. Her eyes were flinty, and it was infuriating how hard it felt to hold her gaze. As ifSablewere the who’d fucked up today. The captain had never apologized for making the hard choices, and it seemed that would not change now.
With a deep sigh, Sable grabbed a chair and dragged it in front of the prison bars. The loud scraping noise of wood on wood echoed in the space around them. She slumped on it unceremoniously, the weight of everything that had happened suddenly too much to bear. When pushing past that door, she’d expected to find a lost, defeated captain–had braced herself for it. But no. It was Sable who felt lost. It was Sable who could barely breathe from the ache and pressure of feelings too big to contain, too strong to control, impossible to push down. She wished she could punch something, but no amount of punching was going to solve any of her issues now.
She told herself it was the sting of betrayal that made her heart twist and throb in her chest as she looked at her captain, but it was deeper than that. It was confusion, frustration, and helplessness. It was the wall Calla had built, high and strong and everlasting. It was the words Sable couldn’t find, the way she’d never been able to squeeze through the cracks she’d spotted during the years.
Through the tightness in her throat and the cold hand gripping her lungs, only a whispered question made it through. “Why?” she asked. “Why couldn’t you just tell us?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Calla said. Soft, calm, detached.
Not eventrying.
A spark of something that wasn’t hurt ignited in Sable’s chest. She clung to it. “How do youknow? You didn’t even give us a chance.”
The bite in her words was only met by even silence. Another wall Sable didn’t know how to scale. It made her want to tear her hair out. She bit down on the feeling, then pushed it away, and took in a deep breath.
They were stuck at sea. They had no captain, no ideas on how to move forward, no hope of things getting better. They’d lost three people today. Thorian. Eryx. Riley. A flash of Riley tackling a half-blooded giant for her flashed in her mind, and Sable shoved it away. She really couldn’t think about that right now. If she acknowledged the gaping hole in her chest, it would swallow everything else. The rest of the crew would die, too, if Sable didn’t get her act together, and fast. There had to be a way out of this. A chance to salvage what was left. She had to at leasttry. Calla clearly wasn’t going to.
“We trusted you with our lives, Calla,” she said. There was a flicker in Calla’s dark blue eyes at the crack in her voice, there and gone too fast for Sable to make anything of it. “You didn’t need to bribe us with some grand treasure for us to follow you to the ends of the world. All you had to do wasask.” Sable wiped angrily at the wetness spilling on her cheeks and tore her gaze away.
Calla laughed. It was short and sharp and the saddest sound Sable had ever heard. It sent a chill down her spine. “So you think I could’ve come up to everyone, and… What?Toldthem I’m a selkie? Why not just give them the noose to hang me with, too? You know that’s the fate waiting for me in Vareth as soon as we step foot back on land, or are you this naïve?” A sharp exhale. “You’re deluded, Sable. Knowing about my–mynatureis just a step away from someone either killing me or using my skin to control me. Imprison me.” Calla raised her eyebrows at the bars keeping her trapped. “Oh. Wait. Would you look at that?”
Sable bristled. “You’re not in here because you’re aselkie, Calla. You’re in here because you’ve been self-destructive,incoherent, and tried to set up a fucking blood sacrifice to get out of a messyoubrought us into!”
“It was the only way,” Calla snapped.
Sable rose to her feet, hands balled into fists, chest raising and falling with ragged breaths. Calla still didn’t understand. All of this was entirelyuseless. “Tell yourself that,” she gritted through her teeth. “If it makes you feel better. But you know what? You could’ve toldme.Iwould’ve had your back. You didn’t have to carry this by yourself.”
“You don’t get it. None of you do.” Calla’s jaw tightened in a sharp line as she shook her head. A dismissal. As if Sable’s words–her feelings–held no weight. No worth. “Have you ever seen a non-human freely walking the mainland, Sable? Besides Thorian.” She didn’t give her the time to reply. “I don’t think so. Because everyone else who thought they could trust people with their secret is six feet underground.” A chilling pause. “Ask me how I know.”
Sable stood there, heart in her throat, mouth too dry to speak. She didn’t want to ask, because she already knew. She’d seen the hangings, the beatings, the senseless killing.
“Ask me.” Calla’s voice went hard, and Sable flinched from it. “You’ve been dying for me to open up to you, so go on. Ask.”
“No.” Sable gritted her teeth. “We’re not doing this. Not like this,” she said, pointing a finger at the captain before changing her mind and turning away. She crossed her arms, pushing down the pain and the hurt enough to speak. “Don’t use your fucking past against me like a fucking weapon, Calla. I did nothing to deserve that from you.”
Before Calla could say anything–wasshe going to say anything?–the door to the brig banged open. “Sable!”
“What?!” she snapped over her shoulder.
“You need to come up on deck. Now! Something’s happening!”
Sable gripped the machete at her hip. “I’ll be right over.” It only took a glare for the sailor to step back with a hasty nod.
“Sable.”
She didn’t trust herself to look back at Calla, didn’t trust herself to speak. But she waited as the pirate’s footsteps clanged down the hallway and away from them.
“What have you done with my skin?”
