His weight drifted forward until I was leaning over the side of the ship and the toes of my boots lifted from the deck. I searched the heads behind him for Clove’s wild blond hair, but he wasn’t there. When I almost fell backward, I dropped the knife and it hit the deck with a sharp ping, skittering across the wood until it was out of reach.

Calla picked it up, sliding it back into her belt, and Zola’s hand instantly let me go. I dropped, collapsing into the ropes and choking on the air.

“Get her cleaned up,” he said again.

Zola looked at me for another moment before he turned on his heel. He strode past the others to the helm where Clove leaned into the wheel with the same indifferent expression cast over his face.

Calla yanked me up by my arm with her good hand and shoved me back toward the bow, where the bucket of water was still sitting beside the foremast. The crew went back to work as she pulled a rag from the back of her belt.

“Take those off.” She spat, looking at my clothes: “Now.”

My eyes trailed to the deckhands working behind her before I turned toward the bow and pulled my shirt over my head. Calla crouched beside me, rubbing the rag over a block of soap and drenching it in the bucket until it lathered. She held the cloth out to me impatiently, and I took it, ignoring the attention of the crew as I scrubbed the suds up over my arms. The dried blood turned the water pink before it rolled over my skin and dripped onto the deck at my feet.

The feel of my own skin brought back to life the memory of West in his quarters, his warmth pressing against mine. Tears smarted behind my eyes again, and I sniffed them back, trying to push the vision away before it could drown me. The smell of morning when I woke in his bed. The way his face looked in the gray light, and the feel of his breath on me.

I reached up to the hollow of my throat, remembering the ring I’d traded for at the gambit. His ring.

It was gone.

West had woken alone in his cabin. He’d probably waited at the bow, watching the harbor, and when I didn’t come, maybe he’d gone into Dern to find me.

I didn’t know if anyone had seen me dragged onto the Luna. If they had, it wasn’t likely they would ever tell a soul what they saw. For all West knew, I’d changed my mind. Paid for passage back to Ceros from some trader on the docks. But if I had, I’d have taken the coin from the haul, I reasoned, trying to carve out every other possibility except the one that I wanted to believe.