Page 61 of A Reckless Indulgence

There’s no sound from inside. She tries the locked handle, already reaching into her hair for two pins. Her time with pirates has given her this skill, if nothing else. She bends the pins with her teeth and cuts a fervent glance down the deck. When no one appears, she eases the bent pins into the lock and feels for every miniscule click.

The boat creaks. Her heart pounds, but she forces herself to steady, timing her movements with the roll of the ocean.

Finally, the lock clicks open. She doesn’t waste any time, tucking the pins into her pocket and sliding through the open door.

Heathen’s room looks exactly as Lyx remembers. Her bed is tucked into the port side wall, and on the other, bookshelves surround the ornamental ship wheel. It’s a little on-the-nose, but Heathen doesn’t seem the type to care for decoration. In fact, there’s still nothing Lyx can see that give her any clues about the captain.

She crosses to the desk at the back of the room. In the drawers, she uncovers papers, books, and coins. There are ship logs, manifests, and professional documents in pristine condition, but underneath everything else is a crumpled piece of parchment.

Lyx pulls it out and flattens it against her knee. It’s a letter addressed to Heathen, signed by some name Lyx doesn’t recognize. The paper smells sweet with the faintest hint of perfume. Unlike the other documents, this one is well-worn with smudges along the edges, like someone has held it more often than not.

Lyx isn’t sure why. The letter is short, so vague that it’s cryptic.

The jewels are working exactly as intended. You continue to impress. I’ll have more shells for you at the end of the month.

Lyx flips through the papers again, but there’s no other mention of “jewels.” She arranges everything back into the drawer and moves onto the others, but all of them are locked tight. Lyx huffs. No doubt there’s something she could use in there, but Heathen would never be so careless to leave the key here. They probably keep it on them at all times. Maybe she could pick this lock, too.

The floor creaks near the doorway. Lyx sinks behind the desk, leaning out with one eye to scan the entranceway. Was that sound of the ship groaning, or is someone headed in here?

No shadows pass over the curtains. After a moment, Lyx pushes to her feet. She’s been here too long already. She needs to wrap this up. She crosses to the bookshelf. This is where Heathen retrieved the jar for Lyx’s scales, but all the glasses here are empty. She scans the titles of the books and pulls on the spines of the particularly mundane. Heathen seems like the type to have a secret passageway, but no matter what Lyx tries, nothing happens.

“Dammit!” Frustration rises in her. Something is happening on this ship. She knows it is. She will not leave empty-handed.

She shuts her eyes and tries to remember everything she saw in the room downstairs. Glass jars. Oysters. Metal tools. A table, shelves, and —

A hole in the wall.

Her eyes fly open. That hole looked empty, except for the rope hanging down through it. A rope very similar to the one before Lyx now. She’d thought it was just a piece of décor, but what if it’s more?

She scans the floor and retraces her steps through the belly of the ship. If she’s correct, the hole in the wall should be a few levels below her, with a rope stretching upwards.

She follows the curving rope on the wall. It trails around the shelves, a decorative outline that leads back to the mounted wheel. Lyx presses close to the wall to peer behind it. There, the rope winds around the axle before it disappears through a small hole in the wall.

Her fingers close around one of the spokes. The wheel turns for a second before it catches. Furtively, she feels along the back for something keeping it in place. At the very top, she finds a metal hook. It takes a few tries, but she unlatches it and pulls on one of the handles.

The wheel begins to turn.

With some effort, Lyx rotates the wheel, watching more of the rope wind around the spindle. Eventually, something settles behind the wall. The wheel stops moving.

She latches the wheel back into place, but nothing reveals itself. No door opens. Something is right on the other side of this wall, but Lyx can’t quite reach it. Biting the inside of her cheek, she presses her palms against the wheel and wallpaper until a section gives way.

She traces the outline. Something large and square has been cut out, with the wallpaper aligned to cover it. On one side, Lyx finds a divot so small she can barely curl her finger into it, but when she pulls, it slides open.

She squints against the light inside the dumbwaiter. It looks like a piece of the moon, but when Lyx’s eyes adjust, she realizes it isn’t one mass. It’s a collection of pearls of all shapes and sizes emitting beautiful light.

Is this what the oysters are for? That seems…familiar. Lyx plumbs her memories until she lands on one of Mollo. Lyx’s jaw clenches. She was pissed at Mollo that day, too, screaming at her for destroying Lyx’s room again.

Mollo hadn’t even cared, floating flippantly through the water. “You know, oysters have a way of dealing with that. If something sneaks inside that they don’t want, they trap it forever. They roll it up inside a pearly prison.” Mollo smirked. “Maybe you should try it.”

Lyx plucks up one of the pearls. Despite its smooth luminance, it’s easy to see the imperfections of its form. In fact, all of the pearls are misshapen, dented or oblong or grown together. The sheer amount of them is impressive, but they can’t be worth any money like this.

So what is Heathen doing with them?

Lyx sets the pearl back into place, but another one tumbles off the pile. She scrambles to catch it before it hits the floor, clamping it between her palms and lifting it back toward the others. But this pearl catches her eye. The color is a milky blue, an iridescent sheen with hints of purple and pink. It’s shaped like a bell, large and round like —

The light from the pearl reflects off of Lyx’s scales. They shimmer in sync, like they’re rippling into each other.

Lyx sucks in a breath. This pearl is from her.