I bit my tongue. I wasn’t going to lie to him. The truth was that I didn’t know Holland. At times, I felt like I didn’t even really know Saint. But I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t understand what he was saying. From the moment I first saw Holland at the gala, she’d been working toward handing me that contract. She’d trapped me. And the worst part of it all was that I’d been stupid enough to fall for it.

West stopped with the rope, looking out at the water before his eyes drifted to me. “I don’t want you to sign it,” he said, his voice deep.

I stepped toward him, taking the rope from his hands and dropping it on the deck. He softened when I snaked my arms under his and wrapped them around his middle. “Saint will come through. I know it.”

He set his chin on top of my head. “And the Roths?”

“If Saint delivers, they will too.”

He fell quiet for a moment. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t tried to get back at Zola for Willa.”

“West, this was always about Holland. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t asked you to take me across the Narrows.”

He knew it was true. But West’s nature was to take the blame. He’d had people depending on him for too long.

I tipped my head back to look up at him. “Promise me you’ll do what you have to do.”

He took a strand of my hair and let it slip through his fingers, making me shiver. Silence from West was a bad omen. He wasn’t a man of many words, but he knew what he wanted and he wasn’t afraid to take it.

“Promise me,” I said again.

He nodded reluctantly. “I will.”

THIRTY-FOUR

When I woke that morning in West’s quarters, he was gone.

The shutters of the window had come open, tapping softly against the wall in the wind, and the memory of that morning in Dern flashed before my eyes. The gray sky and the cool breeze. The cast of light through the hazy cabin. But it was the Unnamed Sea out the window this time.

I sat up, sliding my hand beneath the quilt where West had been. It was cold. His boots, too, were missing from where they usually sat beside the door.

Out on the deck, Auster and Paj were eating their breakfasts in the breezeway.

“Where is he?” I asked, my voice still hoarse with sleep.

“He and Hamish went to see the shipwright.” Paj motioned toward the harbor.

Auster stood from the crate he was sitting on. “Hungry?”

“No.” I shook my head. My stomach had been turning since I’d come up from the water at Fable’s Skerry.