Calla followed the narrow hallway all the way to the end, where a doorless passage opened to a dark room. I stepped inside, one hand instinctively drifting back toward my knife. Empty hammocks swung from thick timber beams over jackets and belts hung from the hooks on the walls. In the corner of the room, a sleeping man wrapped in quilted canvas snored, one hand dangling.

“You’re here.” Calla nodded to a lower hammock on the third row.

“This is the crew’s cabin,” I said.

She stared at me.

“I’m not crew.” The indignation in my voice sharpened the words. The idea of staying with the crew put my teeth on edge. I didn’t belong here. I never would.

“You are until Zola says otherwise.” The fact seemed to infuriate her. “He’s given strict orders that you’re to be left alone. But you should know…” Her voice lowered. “We know what you bastards did to Crane. And we won’t forget it.”

It wasn’t a warning. It was a threat.

I shifted on my feet, my hand tightening around the knife. If the crew knew I had been on the Marigold when West and the others murdered Crane, then I had as many enemies on this ship as people breathing.

Calla let the unsettling silence stretch between us before she disappeared back through the open doorway. I looked around me in the dark room, letting out a shaking breath. The sound of boots pounded overhead, and the ship tilted slightly as a gust of wind caught the sails, pulling the hammocks like needles on a compass.

The eerie quiet made me wrap my arms around myself and squeeze. I sank into one of the dark corners between trunks to get a wide view of the cabin while being hidden by the shadows. There was no getting off this ship until we made port, and there was no way to know exactly where we were headed. Or why.

That first day on the Marigold came rushing back to me, standing in the passageway with my hand pressed to the crest on the door. I had been a stranger in that place, but I’d come to belong there. And now everything within me ached for it. A flash of heat lit beneath my skin, the sting of tears gathering in my eyes. Because I’d been a fool. I’d let myself believe, even if it was just for a moment, that I was safe. That I’d found a home and a family. And in the time it took to draw a single breath, it was all torn away.

THREE

Beams of pale moonlight drifted across the wood plank floor throughout the night, creeping closer to me until the warmth of morning spilled through the deck overhead.