I instinctively took a step backward, pressing myself against the wall as he looked at me. But Holland’s attention didn’t leave Zola. “You think this was your idea?”

Zola’s lips parted, staring at Holland. “What?”

“Pay him.” Holland’s command fell like a stone in the quiet.

The guard walked around the desk and took a silver box from the shelf. He set it onto the tray before he opened it carefully, revealing more coppers than I’d ever seen in my life. Thousands, maybe.

Clove finally moved then, stepping out of the shadows. “No need to count it,” he said. “I trust you.” He was talking to Holland.

The ice cold of the sea found me and I reached for the arm of West’s jacket, trying to ground myself. Trying to put it all together.

Clove wasn’t spying on Zola. He was delivering Zola. To Holland.

“A mother never heals from the loss of a child. It’s a wound that festers,” Holland said simply. “One that not even your death will soothe.”

Zola was already shuffling backward toward the door, his eyes wide. “I brought her back. For you.”

“And I appreciate that.” She lifted a finger into the air and the guard opened the door, where two other men were waiting.

They stepped into the room without a word, and before Zola even knew what was happening, they had him by the jacket, dragging him into the dark hallway. “Wait!” he shouted.

Clove closed the lid of the box with a snap as Zola’s screams echoed, and I realized the sound in my ears was my own breath coming in and out in panicked gusts. Zola’s voice suddenly vanished, and I heard his weight fall to the floor.

My fingers were slick around the handle of the knife inside my skirts as I stared into the dark, blinking when a trail of fresh, bright blood seeped across the white marble and into the light spilling from the room. Then there was only silence.

FIFTEEN

He was dead. Zola was dead.

I tried to fit that bit of truth together with everything that had happened over the last ten days. This was why Clove had taken the job on Zola’s crew. It was all leading to this very moment.

Zola wasn’t just a problem for Saint or West. He was a problem the Narrows needed solved. Saint planted Clove on the Luna to get him into Holland’s hands. He’d convinced Zola he could be rid of her threats once and for all. But how had he done it?

The coin she’d given Clove looked like a bounty, and my gut told me Saint’s name had stayed out of it. To Holland, Clove was just a trader from the Narrows looking to make a lot of copper.