My mouth twisted as I looked at my reflection in the glass. Once, my mother might have stood before this mirror. Isolde couldn’t have been much older than me when Zola first took her on, and I wondered how long it had taken her to find out what kind of man he was. Her days on the Luna were ones she’d never told me about, and part of me didn’t want to know anything about them. In my mind, her spirit lived on the Lark. I didn’t like the idea of any piece of her being left here.

I pulled my fingers through my hair to untangle as much as I could, and wound the length of it up until I could tuck the end underneath to make a tight knot. I didn’t bother trying to tame the loose waving pieces that fell around my face. Zola may have needed someone to play the role of a Saltblood, but he’d have to settle for me.

Calla tossed the shirt onto the bed and I picked it up, examining the cloth. It wasn’t one that traders usually wore. The linen was newly spun and thin, falling down the arms softly to the wrists. The trousers, too, were new, made of a thick black wool fit with whalebone buttons. Zola had obviously been prepared when he stepped into that alley in Dern. He’d had a very detailed plan. The thought made a tingle run up my spine.

Two days, I told myself. Two days and I would be on my way back to the Marigold.

There was a knock at the door before I’d even finished tucking in the shirt, and Calla opened it to one of the Waterside strays. He held my boots in his small hands. They were cleaned and shined, the laces replaced with new ones made of a tightly knit cord. I stared down at them, and emotion curled thick in my throat, remembering the night that West had given them to me.

I’d stood in the rain at the village gambit, watching him and Willa in the alley. The light from the streetlamps carved the angles of West’s face, and his voice had changed when he said my name. That was the first time I’d seen the underneath of him, if only for a moment. And I missed him so badly I could hardly breathe.

I couldn’t help but wonder at what my father and Zola had said. That there was a darkness to West that went deeper than I’d known. A part of me didn’t want to know. To believe that it didn’t matter. Anyone who’d survived the Narrows had that same darkness. It was the only way to stay alive.