“If she hadn’t gotten herself killed, you could ask her yourself,” he answered. “Though there’s no telling which tale she would have given you. I never should have trusted her.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Isolde didn’t just take her fate into her own hands when she left Bastian. She took mine too. Letting her onto my crew is the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”

My brow creased. Saint had said the same thing about her, but for different reasons.

“But tonight, I’m going to fix that. Thanks to you.”

There was some faint echo in the back of my mind, trying to string the words together. None of it made any sense. “How could my mother have anything to do with this?”

“Isolde is the reason Holland has had a bounty on my head all these years. She’s the reason I lost any chance I had at trading in the Unnamed Sea and the reason I haven’t been back since.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that when I helped Holland’s daughter escape Bastian, I fell out of her good graces.”

The silk of my dress pulled tight across my chest as I drew in a breath, my head swimming. “You’re lying,” I snapped.

Zola shrugged. “I don’t need you to believe me.”

I pressed a hand to my ribs, feeling as if my lungs didn’t have room behind my bones. What he was saying couldn’t be true. If Isolde was Holland’s daughter …

A group of women floated past us arm in arm, talking in hushed whispers as they made their way to the back of the room. Zola drained his glass, setting it down on the case between us and I wiped my brow with the back of my hand, feeling dizzy. Everything suddenly looked as if we were underwater. I needed air.

When I tried to step past him, he caught my arm, squeezing. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The man beside us looked over his shoulder for just a moment, his eyes landing on Zola’s grip on the sleeve of my dress. “Get your hand off me,” I growled through clenched teeth, daring him to make a scene.

I wrenched my arm free and gave the man a timid smile before I stepped into the aisle of cases, Zola’s hot stare pinned to my back. Zola was a liar. I knew that. But there was some uneasiness that had lifted within me when he’d said the words. I searched through the candlelit memories I had of my mother. Of her stories. She’d never told me anything of her parents. Nothing of her home.

But why would my mother leave this?