he know where I am?” I couldn’t say my father’s name without my voice fully giving way.
Clove pulled me back to look up at him and one rough hand brushed the tears from my flushed cheek. “He knows exactly where you are.”
If Saint was in on this, he’d known the morning I saw him in Dern. He’d sat across the table from me drinking his tea without so much as a hint about what was waiting for me in the alley.
I gritted my teeth. I was so tired of my father’s games. But the anger I felt was immediately replaced by desperation. I took hold of Clove’s jacket, pulling him toward me. “I have to get out of here. I have to get back to the Narrows.”
“You’re not going anywhere until we finish this.” Clove planted a kiss on the top of my head before he started up the street again, his hands finding his pockets.
“Finish what?” My voice rose as I followed after him. “You haven’t told me anything.”
“We’ve been working a long time for this, Fay. And we can’t finish it without you.”
I stopped in my tracks, gaping at him.
When he could no longer hear my footsteps, the gate of Clove’s stride broke and he halted, looking back.
“Tell me what’s going on or I’m bartering with the first ship down in the harbor for passage back to the Narrows,” I said, my voice tired.
He stopped beneath the faded sign of a fishmonger, sighing. “In a day’s time, you’ll know everything.”
I could see that I wasn’t going to sway him. If this was the work of my father, then there were a lot of moving pieces and I was one of them.
“You swear it?” I took a step closer, daring him to lie to me.
“I do.”
I searched his face, wanting to believe him. “On my mother’s soul?”
The words made him flinch and his lips pressed into a hard line before he answered. “I swear it.” He shook his head with an irritated smirk. “Same stubborn ass as her,” he muttered.
The collar of his jacket was pulled up around his neck and his fair hair curled out from beneath his cap. For the first time since Dern, I felt like I could exhale. He felt like home. As long as I was with Clove, he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. And the truth was, if he and my father were taking down Zola, I was in.
We walked until the street opened abruptly to a square of shops, all clad with huge, clean windows. Each one was fit with flower boxes and fresh, bright paint. Clove stopped before the first shop on the corner, straightening his hat. The sign that hung over the street read FROCKS & LIVERIES.
He pushed open the door and I followed him into the warm shop, where a woman was crouched beside a dress form, needle in hand.
She looked up with her head tilted to the side, eyes raking over us from top to bottom. “May I help you?” The question sounded like an accusation.
Clove cleared his throat. “We need a frock. One fit for a gala.” I rounded on him, stunned, but before I could object, he was speaking again. “And we’ll need it tomorrow.”
The woman rose, sticking the needle into a cushion on her wrist with a flick. “Then you had better have the coin to pay me to sew through the night.”
“It’s not a problem,” Clove answered.
She seemed to consider it for a moment before she wove through the bolts of cloth piled on the long wooden counter. “New silks just came in yesterday. No one in Bastian has anything like this yet.”
Clove ignored my icy stare, following her to the window that looked out over the street.
“What is this?” I whispered, pulling on the sleeve of his jacket.
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I was as angry with myself as I was with him. I should have known the moment I saw Clove on Zola’s ship that Saint was up to something. Now I was entangled in whatever scheme they’d hatched and it wasn’t likely that I’d come out unscathed.
His hand moved over the different fabrics carefully, his lips pursing before he picked one up. “This one.”
It was the richest of blues, the color of the sea on sunny days when it was too deep to see the bottom. The dark fabric shimmered as it caught the light. I couldn’t imagine what Clove could possibly have planned that would warrant a