up. Her thumbs spread over the lines there, and her hold on me tightened when she saw the tip of my scar peeking out from beneath my sleeve.
Her pale blue eyes lifted to meet mine and she let me go. “Welcome home, Fable.”
Home.
The word stretched and folded, the sound of it strange.
I clutched my skirts with both hands and walked through the door, biting back the turn of my stomach. Saint may have gotten what he wanted, but now Holland was the one with the upper hand, and she knew it.
The guard led us into another corridor that ended at the foot of a winding staircase, and we followed it up to a salon that overlooked the bottom floor. He didn’t stop until we reached a door at the end of the row. It was painted pearly pink with a bouquet of wild blooms at its center.
“Someone will come for you at the first bell,” he said, letting the door swing open.
The room was bathed in pale moonlight cast through a large window. Beneath it was a bed, half of it shrouded in shadows.
West stepped inside first, and the man caught him in the chest with a hand. “This room is for her.”
“Then I’m staying here too.” West shoved past him, holding the door open for me to follow.
I looked over my shoulder to Clove. He leaned against the banister, giving me a reassuring nod. “See you in the morning.” His manner was cool, but there was an unsteady look in his eye. I wasn’t the only one who could see that Holland was the oil in a lamp, ready to catch flame.
The guard who’d dragged Zola into the dark appeared at the top of the staircase. He walked toward us with quick steps, and I studied his jacket and hands for any sign of blood. But he was crisp and clean, just like the gala and its guests below.
He took a place beside the door and West closed it behind me, stilling to listen when the latch fell into place. When footsteps faded into the distance, his shoulders relaxed. He leaned into the door, crossing his arms over his chest as he faced me.
“What the hell is going on, Fable?” he grated.
My throat ached, seeing him washed in the icy blue moonlight. “Saint.” My father’s name felt foreign to me, somehow. “He used me to lure Zola here so that Holland would kill him.” I wasn’t even sure I understood it all, but those were the pieces I’d put together.
“Lure him how? What is Holland to you?”
“I think…” I searched for the words. “I think she’s my grandmother.”
West’s eyes widened. “What?”
The word sounded odd and misshapen as he said it, and I realized that the darkness was moving around me. I couldn’t draw the air into my chest.
The ghost of my mother hovered between these walls, some echo of her in the air.
In the flood of memories that danced in my mind, I searched for anything Isolde may have told me about this place. But there was nothing but tales of dives and the streets of the city where she was born. Nothing of Azimuth House or the woman who lived here.
“When Isolde ran away from Bastian, she took a place on Zola’s crew.” I pressed my hands against the blue silk wrapped around my torso. “Holland is her mother. That’s why Zola lost his license to trade in the Unnamed Sea. That’s why he hasn’t sailed here in over twenty years.”
He fell silent, but the room was filled with his racing thoughts. He was looking for a way out of this. An escape from the trap we’d both walked into.
I went to the window, looking out to where the harbor would sit in the darkness. “What about the crew?”
West stood and the shadows found his face, making the darkness under his eyes more severe. “They won’t make a move.”
“You sure about that?” I asked, thinking of Willa. When we didn’t show up at the harbor, she’d be ready to tear the city apart.
I sat on the edge of the bed and he stood before me, looking down into my face. His hand lifted as if he was going to touch me, but then he froze, his eyes focusing on the shine of gold tucked beneath the fabric of my dress. He slid the tip of a finger beneath the twine and pulled until the ring dangled in the air between us.