My throat ached, seeing him washed in the icy blue moonlight. “Saint.” My father’s name felt foreign to me, somehow. “He used me to lure Zola here so that Holland would kill him.” I wasn’t even sure I understood it all, but those were the pieces I’d put together.

“Lure him how? What is Holland to you?”

“I think…” I searched for the words. “I think she’s my grandmother.”

West’s eyes widened. “What?”

The word sounded odd and misshapen as he said it, and I realized that the darkness was moving around me. I couldn’t draw the air into my chest.

The ghost of my mother hovered between these walls, some echo of her in the air.

In the flood of memories that danced in my mind, I searched for anything Isolde may have told me about this place. But there was nothing but tales of dives and the streets of the city where she was born. Nothing of Azimuth House or the woman who lived here.

“When Isolde ran away from Bastian, she took a place on Zola’s crew.” I pressed my hands against the blue silk wrapped around my torso. “Holland is her mother. That’s why Zola lost his license to trade in the Unnamed Sea. That’s why he hasn’t sailed here in over twenty years.”

He fell silent, but the room was filled with his racing thoughts. He was looking for a way out of this. An escape from the trap we’d both walked into.

I went to the window, looking out to where the harbor would sit in the darkness. “What about the crew?”

West stood and the shadows found his face, making the darkness under his eyes more severe. “They won’t make a move.”

“You sure about that?” I asked, thinking of Willa. When we didn’t show up at the harbor, she’d be ready to tear the city apart.

I sat on the edge of the bed and he stood before me, looking down into my face. His hand lifted as if he was going to touch me, but then he froze, his eyes focusing on the shine of gold tucked beneath the fabric of my dress. He slid the tip of a finger beneath the twine and pulled until the ring dangled in the air between us.

He stared at it for a moment before his green eyes flickered up to meet mine. “That’s what you were doing in Dern?”

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry.” The words broke in my throat.

The crease in his brow deepened. “For what?”

“For all of this.”