Her mouth twisted up on one side as she tapped a finger on the desk.
“I don’t want your empire, but I will find the midnight. When I do, I’ll have your word that you won’t touch Saint. Or his trade.” I held out my hand between us.
Holland stared at it, thinking. I could see her sizing me up, trying to see what I was made of. “I think perhaps Saint is more to you than I realized. I think he was more to Isolde than I realized.”
She wasn’t stupid. She was putting it together. She knew that Saint was Isolde’s helmsman, but she didn’t know he was her lover. And I wasn’t going to tell her she was right.
“Do we have a deal or not?” I lifted my hand between us.
She took it, smiling so that the candlelight flashed in her eyes. “We have a deal.”
TWENTY
Bastian was beautiful in the predawn dark.
I stood at the window with my fingertips pressed to the cold glass, watching the glimmer of streetlights below. Azimuth House sat at the top of the hill, overlooking the landscape like a sentinel, and it was fitting. Holland had her eye on everything that happened in this city. The docks. The merchants. The Trade Council. And now she had her sights set on Ceros.
It was only a matter of time before she was doing the same thing in the Narrows.
The maps from the walls in Holland’s office were rolled up tight and tied with twine on the table beside the door. She’d looked me in the eye when she gave them to me, a spark of recognition making me still. In that moment, I’d felt as if I were looking at my mother.
There was a break in the rhythm of West’s breaths and I turned from the window. He lay on top of the quilts, one arm tucked beneath a pillow, and even in the low light, I could see that the color was coming back into his cheeks.
That’s why I hadn’t woken him, I told myself. Why I’d stood in the dark silence for the last hour, waiting for him to open his eyes. But really, I was afraid.
I climbed onto the end of the bed, watching his chest rise and fall. His brows pulled together, his eyes still closed, and he sucked in a sharp breath with a jolt. His eyes fluttered open and I watched them focus frantically. He dragged his bleary gaze over the room until he spotted me. When he did, he let the breath go.
“What’s wrong?” I reached out, hooking my fingers into the crook of his arm. His skin was hot, his pulse racing.
He sat up, pushing the hair back from his face. His eyes went to the window and I realized that he was looking for the harbor. For the Marigold. “We should go. Get on the water before the sun rises.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears as he got to his feet, my teeth clenching. “We can’t.” I folded my fingers together to keep my hands from shaking. “I can’t.”
Almost instantly, West’s face changed. He turned toward me, his back to the dark sky. “What?” The sound of his voice was deepened with sleep.
I opened my mouth, trying to find a way to say it. I’d turned the words over in my head again and again, but now they escaped me.
The look in his eye slowly transformed from concern to fear. “Fable.”
“I can’t go back to the Narrows with you,” I said. “Not yet.”
His face turned to stone. “What are you talking about?”
I’d known the moment I made the deal with Holland that it would cost me with West. But I had to believe that it was something I could fix.
“Last night,” I swallowed. “I made a deal with Holland. One you’re not going to like.”
The color drained from his cheeks. “What are you talking about?”
“I…” My voice wavered
“What did you do, Fable?”
“I’m going to find midnight. For Holland.”
“In exchange for what?” The words were clipped.
This was the moment I’d been dreading. That flash of fury in his eyes. The tight clench in his jaw.
I pressed my tongue to my teeth. Once I said it, there was no going back. “Saint.” I unfolded my legs, sliding from the bed, and West took a step back from me. “If I find the midnight for Holland, she’ll leave Saint alone.”