before Zola even knew what was happening, they had him by the jacket, dragging him into the dark hallway. “Wait!” he shouted.
Clove closed the lid of the box with a snap as Zola’s screams echoed, and I realized the sound in my ears was my own breath coming in and out in panicked gusts. Zola’s voice suddenly vanished, and I heard his weight fall to the floor.
My fingers were slick around the handle of the knife inside my skirts as I stared into the dark, blinking when a trail of fresh, bright blood seeped across the white marble and into the light spilling from the room. Then there was only silence.
FIFTEEN
He was dead. Zola was dead.
I tried to fit that bit of truth together with everything that had happened over the last ten days. This was why Clove had taken the job on Zola’s crew. It was all leading to this very moment.
Zola wasn’t just a problem for Saint or West. He was a problem the Narrows needed solved. Saint planted Clove on the Luna to get him into Holland’s hands. He’d convinced Zola he could be rid of her threats once and for all. But how had he done it?
The coin she’d given Clove looked like a bounty, and my gut told me Saint’s name had stayed out of it. To Holland, Clove was just a trader from the Narrows looking to make a lot of copper.
It was brilliant, really. My father used Zola’s feud with Holland to get him to sail to his own death. And why kill a trader and risk the fallout with the Narrows Trade Council when a powerful merchant in the Unnamed Sea could do it instead?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice far away.
Clove looked at me with an expression that echoed sympathy. But he kept his mouth shut, his eyes sliding to Holland. He didn’t want her knowing more than she needed to.
Clove took orders from Saint, and Saint had a reason for everything he did. The bottom line was that even if I trusted him, Saint didn’t trust me. And why would he? I’d worked my own schemes against him to free the Marigold.
My gaze drifted back to Zola’s blood on the white marble floor, and I watched the way it gleamed as the firelight moved over it. Only moments ago he’d stood next to me. I could still feel his grip on my arm, squeezing.
The deafening silence made me blink and I realized that Holland was staring at me, as if she expected me to say something. When I didn’t, she looked disappointed.
“I think that’s enough for one night, don’t you?” she said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I wasn’t even sure what she was asking.
“You’ll stay here.” There was no invitation in her tone. She wasn’t asking. Her eyes were still studying me, moving over my hair, my shoulders, my feet. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but West was already speaking. “She’s not staying,” he said, clipped.
Clove picked up the box of coin lazily, tucking it under one arm. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with him.”
He and West didn’t seem the slightest bit afraid of Holland, but I was terrified enough for all of us. At the lift of Holland’s finger, they’d be dragging West or Clove into the dark next.
“You’re all staying,” Holland said. “Fable’s not the only one I have business with.” But that calm in her eyes was the same one that had been there a moment ago when she’d lifted that finger.
In the hallway, I could hear something being dragged over the marble. I swallowed hard.
“I hope you’ll make yourself at home,” Holland said, reaching for the shining handle of another door. She pulled it open and a hallway lit with bright lanterns appeared.
She waited for me to walk through, but I didn’t move. I was staring at the portrait of my mother over the mantel, the firelight catching her eyes.
The rings on Holland’s fingers sparkled as she took a step toward me. The fine fabric of her dress rippled like melted silver, and the combs in her hair twinkled. I couldn’t help but think that she was like someone from one of the old tales. A specter or a sea fairy. Something not of this world.
The same had been true of my mother.
Holland reached for my hand, taking it into hers, and she held it between us, turning it so my palm faced