strokes curved and dipped, making a maze of ocean waves all the way up to the ceiling. Her frock looked like it was made of cream, rippling around her slight form until it pooled on the floor.
“I’m Holland.” She clasped her hands before her and the light caught the stones in her rings. She was looking at me.
West took a step closer to me as I stared at her, not sure what to say.
Holland’s eyes ran over my face in fascination. “You’re Fable,” she said softly.
“I am,” I answered.
In the corner, Clove had his arms crossed over his chest, leaning into the wall beside a glowing fireplace. A framed portrait was set onto the mantel and all the air seemed to leave the room as my eyes focused on a girl in a red gown, a gilded halo around her head.
It was Isolde. My mother.
“And you must be West,” Holland said, her eyes drifting up to him. “Runner of Saint’s shadow ship.”
West went still beside me. He was smart enough not to deny it, but I didn’t like the look in his eye. I was terrified that at any moment he was going to do something that put a knife to his throat.
“Yes, I know exactly who you are.” Holland answered his unspoken question. “And I know exactly what you do.”
I looked between them. How could someone like Holland know anything about West when no one in the Narrows did?
“What do you want?” West said flatly.
She smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll get to that.”
“Holland.” Zola’s voice swallowed the silence, but he shut his mouth when Holland’s sharp eyes landed on him.
The crack in his cool facade was now a canyon. Zola didn’t have any power here and every one of us knew it. Clove was the only one who didn’t seem to be worried. I wasn’t sure if that made me afraid, or relieved.
“I don’t think you were on the invitation list for this gala, Zola.” Holland spoke, and the sound of her voice was like music. Soft and lilting.
“My apologies,” Zola answered, standing up straighter. “But I thought it was time we dealt with our business.”
“Did you?” Holland’s tone flattened, “I made it clear if you ever made port in the Unnamed Sea again, it would be the last time you made port anywhere.”
“I know we have history—”
“History?” she said.
“It’s been almost twenty years, Holland.”
I looked back to Holland, catching her eyes on me before they shot back to Zola.
He unbuttoned his jacket methodically, not taking his eyes from hers, and Holland’s guard stepped closer to him, knife drawn. Zola took hold of the lapels and pulled them open, revealing four pockets. From each one hung the strings of a leather pouch.
Holland jerked her chin at the table against the wall, and Zola set them down one at a time. She didn’t move as he poured the gemstones out onto the mirrored tray, lining them up neatly for inspection.
Zola waited, letting Holland look over the haul. “Consider it a gift.”
“You think a few hundred carats of gemstones can buy my forgiveness for what you did?” The words were so low they sent a chill into the air, despite the blazing fire.
“That’s not all I brought you.” Zola’s eyes landed on me.
I instinctively took a step backward, pressing myself against the wall as he looked at me. But Holland’s attention didn’t leave Zola. “You think this was your idea?”
Zola’s lips parted, staring at Holland. “What?”
“Pay him.” Holland’s command fell like a stone in the quiet.
The guard walked around the desk and took a silver box from the shelf. He set it onto the tray before he opened it carefully, revealing more coppers than I’d ever seen in my life. Thousands, maybe.
Clove finally moved then, stepping out of the shadows. “No need to count it,” he said. “I trust you.” He was talking to Holland.
The ice cold of the sea found me and I reached for the arm of West’s jacket, trying to ground myself. Trying to put it all together.
Clove wasn’t spying on Zola. He was delivering Zola. To Holland.
“A mother never heals from the loss of a child. It’s a wound that festers,” Holland said simply. “One that not even your death will soothe.”
Zola was already shuffling backward toward the door, his eyes wide. “I brought her back. For you.”
“And I appreciate that.” She lifted a finger into the air and the guard opened the door, where two other men were waiting.