I nodded, dropping my eyes to the ground. Not for the first time, West had been lured into the utter chaos that was Saint and me, and I didn’t like it. It only reminded me that I’d abandoned the rules I’d lived by before I’d met him. The rules we both agreed to leave behind. But now I wondered if we were fooling ourselves into thinking we could do things differently, like we said.

Four guards stood at the mouth of Holland’s dock beneath an archway bearing her crest. Every port in the Unnamed Sea probably had one just like it. At the end of the slip, a wooden staircase rose two turns to the port side of the Seadragon.

“We’re here to see Holland,” I said, eyeing the short sword at the guard’s hip.

He looked me up and down before he turned on his heel, and West and I followed. We walked up the dock as the sun disappeared and, one by one, the lanterns above the Sea- dragon flickered to life.

I took the steps up from the dock, my hand dragging on the slick railing. The smell of roasting meat drifted off the ship, and when I made it to the deck, I looked back to the Marigold. She sat in the shadow of another vessel, her sails drawn up.

Holland’s man was already waiting for us. He stretched a hand toward the passageway, gesturing to an open door, where I could see the corner of a crimson rug on the wood slats. I steadied myself with a deep breath before I walked toward it.

Inside, Holland sat before a small, gold-painted table with three different log books open, one on top of another, in her lap. She was wrapped in a scarlet shawl, her silver hair intricately braided on top of her head. Sparkling rubies the size of copper coins hung from each ear.

She looked up at me through her thick lashes. “I was wondering if you were going to show.”

“We said sundown,” I reminded her.

She closed the logs and set them onto the table. “Please, sit.”

I took the seat opposite of her, but West still stood, crossing his arms over his chest.

One dubious eyebrow arched up over the other as she surveyed him. “So? Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” I said, keeping my voice as even as I could.

The tiniest trace of some emotion made the set of her mouth falter. “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”

“We covered every reef in that system. It’s not there,” I lied. But I was still convinced the midnight wasn’t in those waters.