Chapter 31 A Lead
Riley
They didn’t sleep that night. By the time Nivros climbed up into the sky, Riley was sore and aching in all the right places.
She was sore and aching in all the wrong places, too.
After Riley was done exhausting the both of them, they’d stepped outside amidst snoring bodies under the night sky. They both huddled by the fading embers of the fire, stoking it back up to life just enough to keep the chill of the early morning at bay.
And Riley watched.
With Calla’s arm around her ribs like an anchor, keeping her grounded, she let the visions come.
It was easier this time–away from the ship. Instead of flashes of her crew and their futures and maybes, she saw the lives that had come and gone here, long before she’d ever drawn breath. Quiet lives. Boring, at first glance. But the details breathed.
A rhythm built on hands and trust rather than coin.
Children darting through doorways as if every home were theirs, laughter spilling like sunlight.
Doors that never locked. An elder shucking corn and wheezing out stories between rattled breaths, his cough softened by steaming tea pressed into his palms. A one-armed woman teaching a youth how to carve.
“Feel it where it wants to go,” she was saying, guiding their fingers along the grain of the wood.
A storm. A fallen tree. And by morning–hammers, shoulders, laughter. No one’s burden was their own.
The fields–no, not fields. No neat lines, no fences. Just clusters of green, wild and deliberate all at once. Plants grew where they pleased, each feeding the next. The earth wasn’t forced to yield. People learned what it offered and tended it in return. Caretakers, not masters.
Feasts under strings of flickering lanterns. Bread passed from hand to hand. Someone started a song, and the whole village followed.
Even punishment carried mercy. The one flash of an exile showed the young woman with enough food and tools to begin somewhere new.
It wasn’t perfect. But it was kind.
Riley had never seen anything like it.
By the time she saw someone who shouldn’t have been there, Riley’s awed brain took a long moment to catch up to it. Then she jumped to her feet, startling the pirates out of their sleep. “Kittredge,” she breathed out. “She’s here. We need to search the island.”
Calla’s arms caught her as she swayed on her feet. She gave the word.
***
As the suns rose and fell in the sky, they searched.
The houses, the forest, the bushes, the beaches.
With every inch of land covered, more and more doubtful looks dragged Riley’s shoulders down until all she wanted was to curl in on herself and hide.
It might’ve not been real. It might’ve been one of the maybes.
Or maybe they were too late. But if there was even a chance she could be right, they had to make sure.
A sharp whistle cut through her building despair. She met Calla’s eyes, a held breath between them. Then they rushed to the beach. Trees rustled around them, a thudding of boots like hooves hitting the ground as more of the crew raced to the spot.
Earth turned to sand, the cool shadow of the forest turning to the blinding light of Nivros, still high up in the sky, and Aelion in its last gasp of light. Riley blinked, faltering at the brightness of the shimmering sea, and then she saw him.
Nyxen, crouched over a body. Pumping at her chest.
Riley’s heart hammered against her ribs as she approached, unsure if she really wanted to see–to know. What if they were too late–
“Kittredge!” Rowe shoved past, knocking Riley off-balance.
Steady, cold hands caught her, and rested on her shoulders. Digging into her flesh with tension. Riley leaned back into Calla, pretended she needed the support, and the grip softened. An apologetic squeeze. Then they both moved through the crowd.
“Kit?” Riley asked softly, squeezing through until she saw her.
Kittredge. Laying side-ways on the sand and coughing up seawater, with Rowe rubbing soothing circles against her back.
When the coughs turned to wet rattles, Rowe pulled her into her lap, cradling her. “Kit,” she murmured, a wide, disbelieving look in her eyes as she burrowed her nose in Kittredge’s blonde hair, inhaling deeply.
It had grown longer.
With the merciless coughs done wracking her body, Kittredge threw her head back. She squinted up at Rowe, bleary-eyed. And then she looked stricken. “Oh man,” she cried. “I’m dead?! That’s such bullshit!”
Surprised laughs burst from pursed lips. Even Riley couldn’t help but snicker, a light feeling sneaking inside her chest like an intruder.
Rowe was the only one who frowned. She carefully caressed Kit’s cheeks and chin and neck as if she couldn’t make herself believe she was holding her. “You’re not dead, Kit.”
Kittredge squinted at Rowe again, this time in suspicion. “Then how are you here?”
Now Rowe smiled. Fond and a little wobbly. “Heard you might’ve done something dumb. I had to come see it for myself this time.”
It took a long moment for it to sink in.
As Kittredge looked at Rowe, really looked, a light shone in her eyes–as if she was gazing upon the most wondrous sight of her life.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and then she threw herself in Rowe’s arms, toppling her with a hug so fierce it sent them both sprawling in the sand.
“Fuck, Rowe, you–”
“Shhh,” Rowe said, soothing. She drew Kittredge closer, closing her eyes as she held her as if she never intended to let go again.
And Riley understood now. Why Rowe had to come on the Moonshadow. Something deep and aching twisted in her chest, and without meaning to, she met Calla’s eyes. Reflected there, she saw the same question that was tearing her up inside. Would they get their own reunion?
To the side, someone coughed, and the two reluctantly disentangled from each other. They remained seated on the sand, hip to hip and clutching at each other’s hands.
It was in that awkward silence that Riley finally asked, “Sable?”
The question felt more like a choked sound than a real word, but Kittredge looked at her, and understood.
A flash of pain passed across her face. It sent Riley stumbling back into another of the crew, who caught her and kept her steady on her feet.
She barely noticed it. Her ears were ringing. Everything was too loud.
“What happened?” Calla, this time. Her voice was faint.
“She dove. With the Heart,” Kittredge said softly, quietly, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “She… she found the deepest point of the ocean, and she sank herself. Said it was the only way. I couldn’t stop her. She wouldn’t listen to me. I’m sorry. I don’t know if she–”
“She did,” Calla cut in, sounding so sure that even the noise in Riley’s head quietened.
Riley looked at her. There was an understanding dawning on Calla’s face. Something like… something like hopeful knowledge. Riley clung to it, holding her breath for the next words.
Calla turned to Merrow. “Can you find the place?” she asked.
The old navigator nodded, uncertain. “Yes, captain, but–”
“Then let’s go. There’s no time to waste.”
Merrow sighed. “Yes, captain.”
As they turned to go, someone grabbed her shoulder. Riley barely had the chance to glance back before she was pulled into a rib-crushing hug. “I get it now,” Rowe said roughly, for her ears alone, then leaned back to look at Riley with red-rimmed eyes. “Thank you.”
It was enough for Riley to spend the walk back to the Moonshadow in a daze.
***
“We’re here,” Merrow announced in the sombrest voice Riley had ever heard.
She frowned out at the water, only mildly aware of the way the rest of the crew stood around their captain, shuffling their feet, scratching at their necks.
No one thought this was a good idea.
The hard look on Calla’s face dissuaded them from informing her of that.
Which was wise. They’d all already witnessed the lengths Calla was willing to go to for her first mate, after all.
Their ship still bore the scars of the storm.
Now, Riley realized, Calla’s hunch had been right.
The island was just visible from here, like it had been from the eye of that storm–it was the same spot.
They just hadn’t known how deep to look.
On the way here Kittredge had filled them in on their adventures, from the stop to the Gullet–where she looked sheepish when she explained to Rowe why she couldn’t visit her–to the passage through the Graveyard, to the encounter with the leviathan and, at last, the savage storm that had reached her small boat just after Sable had sunk herself with the Heart.
It seemed impossible for the two of them to survive all that only for Sable to–to go and sink herself to the bottom of the fucking ocean.
What was she thinking?
At least she hadn’t been alone. And if Kittredge was right, if the Heart was bound to protect her until she named her wish, then maybe Sable was still alive. More impossible things had happened. Sable was alive. And Calla was going to find her.
If she didn’t die on the way there.
“Gadrielle,” Calla called, ripping Riley from her thoughts. “If I don’t make it back, the ship is yours.”
Gadrielle parted her lips, maybe to protest, but Thorian beat her to it. “Her?” he asked, frowning in offense. “Why not me?”
Calla’s lips quirked up. “I don’t trust I’ll have a ship to come back to if I leave them in your hands,” she said. She raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to contradict her.
“That’s harsh,” he harrumphed, and some of the pirates chuckled uneasily. Gadrielle smirked at him, crossing her arms, her chest puffing up in pride.
Thorian didn’t take the bait. His expression twisted into something else. Worry. “You better come back, cap.”
“Is that a threat, quartermaster?”
Thorian scoffed. “You bet your ass it is. Come here.” Before Calla had a chance to see it coming or escape, Thorian pulled her into a hug so tight it made Riley wince just to see it.
When it looked like he might be on the verge of suffocating her, he let go and walked himself back to the back of the group.
Calla nodded at them all once, sharply, and then shrugged her captain’s coat off. Took off her boots. It was when their eyes met, a goodbye on Calla’s lips, that Riley got out of her own head.
This felt wrong.
Calla going alone after Sable, it felt wrong.
Why did it feel wrong?
Riley couldn’t follow.
…could she?
A memory tugged at her awareness, making her frown. More than one.
The vision, compelling her to dive into the sea. Her last swimming lesson with Calla. Their kiss. Riley getting shoved underwater by a rowdy crew. Breathing. With the compass–with everything, Riley had forgotten about it.
“Captain?” Riley asked, a smirk spreading on her lips. Energy zipped up her fingers, like she hadn’t felt in cycles. Excitement. “Forgetting something?”
Calla tilted her head in question.
Riley’s smirk spread wider. “What about a kiss goodbye?”
That look, that tolerating amusement, shimmered in Calla’s eyes, and Riley’s stomach flipped with it.
She approached amid the scattered laughs and whistles of the crew, cupped Calla’s cheeks, and kissed her.
She kissed her like she never had before.
Like her life, and Sable’s, depended on it.
She kissed Calla as if this might be the last thing she ever got to do, and by the time she pulled back, Calla looked dazed and breathless and–blushing. She was fucking beautiful.
With a laugh, Riley kissed her again, soft and quick and tender, and then threw her a wink.
“See you on the other side.”
Before Calla could catch up with what that meant, Riley ran to the railing and dove headfirst into the sea.