Holland.
He wasn’t using the haul to start a new venture beyond the Narrows. Zola was paying a debt. For years, he hadn’t been able to sail these waters without getting his throat cut by Holland. He’d finally found a way to make good with her, but how? Three hundred carats of gemstone was nothing to the most powerful gem trader in the Unnamed Sea.
Zola wasn’t lying when he said that this wasn’t about me or West. It wasn’t even about Saint.
My fingers slipped on the dew-slicked frame and I caught myself on the shutter, clinging to the hull.
When I looked back up, Clove’s eyes were on the window, and I held my breath, hidden in the darkness. His eyes narrowed, as if they were pinned on mine. He was stalking across the cabin in the next moment, and I swung back, pressing myself to the carving beside the window. The shutter swung open, slamming on the wood, and I watched his hand appear on the sill, the moonlight catching the gold ring on his finger. I tried not to move, the pain in my leg throbbing as I pushed the heel of my boot into the ledge to keep myself still.
But a moment later, the shutters closed, locking in place.
He hadn’t seen me. He couldn’t have seen me. But the beat of my heart faltered, my blood running hot.
I reached up, hauling myself back to the railing, and threw myself onto the quarterdeck. I raced to the steps and swung myself over them, landing on the deck with both feet, and the stitches in my thigh pulled, stinging. The men at the helm looked up at me wide-eyed as I walked to the passageway and slipped into the darkness.
The door to the helmsman’s quarters was already opening, and I stepped around the light it painted on the deck before I made my way below. Footsteps sounded overhead as I ran down the hallway to the crew’s cabin, weaving between the hammocks until I found the third row. Ryland was asleep and I ducked under him, not bothering with my boots as I sank back into the quilted fabric of my own hammock. I pulled my knees to my chest, shaking.
The shadows in the darkened doorway moved, and I found the knife at my belt, waiting. Zola had taken great care to hide what he was doing in the Unnamed Sea, and if he thought I’d found him out, there was no way he was letting me go back to the Narrows. There was no way he was going to let me leave this ship alive.
I stared into the darkness, clutching the knife against my chest as a figure took shape beneath the bulkhead. I squinted my eyes, trying to make it out. When a beam of light flashed over a head of silvery blond hair, I swallowed to keep from crying out.
Clove. He had seen me.
His shadow moved slowly through the hammocks, his footsteps silent as he crept closer. He peered into each one before he moved on, and when he made it to the next row, I pressed a hand over my mouth, trying to stay still. If I was quick enough, I could strike first. Drive the blade of my knife up into his gut before he could get his hands on me. But the thought made my stomach roil, a single tear rolling from the corner of my eye.
He was a bastard and he was a traitor. But he was still Clove.
I swallowed down a cry as he stopped at the hammock beside mine. Another step, and his legs were next to me as he looked into Ryland’s hammock. He stopped then, and I lifted the knife, measuring the angle. If I stabbed him beneath the ribs, catching a lung, it would be enough to keep him from running after me. I hoped.
The blade shook as I lifted it, waiting for him to come low, but he wasn’t moving. The glint of a knife shone in the darkness as Clove lifted his hands, reaching into Ryland’s hammock. I went still, watching his face from below and trying not to breathe. But Clove’s eyes were expressionless, the cool set of his mouth relaxed, his eyes soft.
The hammock shook above me and something hot hit my face. I flinched, reaching up to wipe it from my cheek, and another drop fell, hitting my arm. When I held my fingers to the light, I went still.
It was blood.
The hammock swung silently above me, and Clove sheathed his knife before he reached back up and heaved Ryland from inside. I watched in horror as he took him onto his shoulder and his limp hands fell beside my face, swinging.
He was dead.
I didn’t move as the sound of footsteps trailed to the door. Then he was gone, leaving the cabin quiet. As soon as the light stopped moving I sat up, staring into the black passageway, my eyes wide.
There was no sound except deep, sleeping breaths and the creak of swaying rope. The hushed hum of water against the hull. For a moment, I thought maybe I’d dreamed it. That I’d seen the work of spirits in the dark. I looked over my shoulder, searching the cabin, and froze when I saw him.
Koy was still in his hammock, his open eyes on me.
ELEVEN
I waited for the others to wake before I dared to move. I lay awake for hours in the dark, listening for the sounds of footsteps coming back down the passageway, but the ship had been quiet through the night until dawn summoned the first shift of crew.
I couldn’t feel the tiredness that had pressed down on me the day before. I could hardly even feel the pain in my leg, where my skin was puckered and red around the stitches. Ryland was dead, and the comfort of relief unraveled the tension wound around me. I wasn’t safe on the Luna, but Ryland was gone, and I didn’t think Koy would be the one to kill me in my sleep.
The real question was what had happened last night, and why.
I scanned the deck before I came up the last few steps, instinctively looking for Ryland to be sure I hadn’t dreamed it. Wick was up on the mizzen, replacing a grommet at the corner of a sail, the wind pulling his winding hair across his forehead. But there was no sign of Ryland.
At the bow, Clove was recording numbers in his log, and I studied the calm, unconcerned way he looked over the pages. It was the same look he had the night before, when I watched him take the knife to Ryland and haul his body from the cabin.
“Crew check!” the bosun called out, his voice echoing.
Everyone on deck grudgingly obeyed, leaving their work to line up against the port side. The last of the deckhands and dredgers came up from belowdecks, the sleep still dragging on their faces. I took my place at the end, watching the bosun look up from his book, marking names as he went.
“Where’s Ryland?” He set his hands on his hips, gaze trailing over each of our faces.
I caught Koy’s eyes across the deck. He didn’t flinch.
“Bastard never got back on the ship last night.” Clove grunted from behind him, his attention still on the logs.
My hands found each other behind my back, fingers tangling together. There was only one reason I could think of that Clove would go after Ryland, but it didn’t make any sense. He’d been the one to tell Zola who I was. He’d pitted me against the crew. Why would he try to protect me?
Tears welled and I tried to blink them away, wiping at the corner of my eye before one could fall. I was afraid to believe it.
I watched Wick for any sign that he was going to object, he’d probably seen the blood in Ryland’s hammock when he woke that morning. But even if he didn’t know who might have put it there, he didn’t want to cross them. He kept his mouth shut.
The bosun made another mark in his book, dismissing each of the crew, and a few minutes later everyone on the Luna was back to work.
Clove didn’t look at me as I went to the helm, his shoulders hunching as I came closer. I looked up into his face, studying the wrinkles that framed his deep-set eyes, and he glanced over my head nervously for a fraction of a moment, to the deck. He was making sure no one was watching us, and that was the only answer I needed.