of this ship cleaned and polished before we dock, understand? Every set of hands better be working from the time the sun comes up to the moment I see land on the horizon. I’m not making port in Bastian looking like a Waterside stray,” Zola muttered, taking the rye in one shot and pouring another.
Clove looked into his glass, swirling what was left of the amber spirit. “She’ll know the moment we dock. She knows everything that happens in that harbor.”
“Good.” Zola smirked. “Then she’ll be expecting us.”
I studied Zola’s face, confused. But slowly, the pieces began to fit together, the thoughts swirling in my mind before landing.
Holland.
He wasn’t using the haul to start a new venture beyond the Narrows. Zola was paying a debt. For years, he hadn’t been able to sail these waters without getting his throat cut by Holland. He’d finally found a way to make good with her, but how? Three hundred carats of gemstone was nothing to the most powerful gem trader in the Unnamed Sea.
Zola wasn’t lying when he said that this wasn’t about me or West. It wasn’t even about Saint.
My fingers slipped on the dew-slicked frame and I caught myself on the shutter, clinging to the hull.
When I looked back up, Clove’s eyes were on the window, and I held my breath, hidden in the darkness. His eyes narrowed, as if they were pinned on mine. He was stalking across the cabin in the next moment, and I swung back, pressing myself to the carving beside the window. The shutter swung open, slamming on the wood, and I watched his hand appear on the sill, the moonlight catching the gold ring on his finger. I tried not to move, the pain in my leg throbbing as I pushed the heel of my boot into the ledge to keep myself still.
But a moment later, the shutters closed, locking in place.
He hadn’t seen me. He couldn’t have seen me. But the beat of my heart faltered, my blood running hot.
I reached up, hauling myself back to the railing, and threw myself onto the quarterdeck. I raced to the steps and swung myself over them, landing on the deck with both feet, and the stitches in my thigh pulled, stinging. The men at the helm looked up at me wide-eyed as I walked to the passageway and slipped into the darkness.
The door to the helmsman’s quarters was already opening, and I stepped around the light it painted on the deck before I made my way below. Footsteps sounded overhead as I ran down the hallway to the crew’s cabin, weaving between the hammocks until I found the third row. Ryland was asleep and I ducked under him, not bothering with my boots as I sank back into the quilted fabric of my own hammock. I pulled my knees to my chest, shaking.
The shadows in the darkened doorway moved, and I found the knife at my belt, waiting. Zola had taken great care to hide what he was doing in the Unnamed Sea, and if he thought I’d found him out, there was no way he was letting me go back to the Narrows. There was no way he was going to let me leave this ship alive.
I stared into the darkness, clutching the knife against my chest as a figure took shape beneath the bulkhead. I squinted my eyes, trying to make it out. When a beam of light flashed over a head of silvery blond hair, I swallowed to keep from crying out.
Clove. He had seen me.
His shadow moved slowly through the hammocks, his footsteps silent as he crept closer. He peered into each one before he moved on, and when he made it to the next row, I pressed a hand over my mouth, trying to stay still. If I was quick enough, I could strike first. Drive the blade of my knife up into his gut before he could get his hands on me. But the thought made my stomach roil, a single tear rolling from the corner of my eye.
He was a bastard and he was a traitor. But he was still Clove.
I swallowed down a cry as he stopped at the hammock beside mine. Another step, and his legs were next to me as he looked into Ryland’s hammock. He stopped then, and I lifted the knife, measuring the angle. If I stabbed him beneath the ribs, catching a lung, it would be enough to keep him from running after