If that was true, then why hadn’t she ever told me about him? The only explanation I could think of was that maybe she didn’t want to risk anyone knowing she was the daughter of the most powerful people in the Unnamed Sea. That would bring its own kind of trouble. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the reason my mother hadn’t told me about Holland was because she didn’t want to be found. That maybe, Isolde had been afraid of her.

“I didn’t know she had a daughter until I got a message from Zola. I didn’t believe him, but then…” She drew a breath. “Then I saw you.”

I looked again to the portrait of my mother, measuring myself against it. It was like looking in a mirror, except that there was something gentle about her. Something untouched. Her eyes seemed to follow me about the room, never leaving me.

“Did she tell you where she got your name?” Holland said, breaking me from the thought.

“No. She didn’t.”

“Fable’s Skerry,” she said, walking back to the desk. She moved a pile of books, revealing a map of the Bastian coast painted onto the desktop. She ran a finger along the jagged edge of the land, dragging it into the water to what looked like a tiny island. “This was her hiding place when she wanted to get away from me.” She laughed, but it was faintly bitter. “The lighthouse on Fable’s Skerry.”

“A lighthouse?”

She nodded. “She was no more than eight or nine when she started disappearing for entire days. Then she’d reappear out of nowhere as if nothing had happened. It took almost two years for us to figure out where she was going.”

My chest felt tight, making my heart skip. I didn’t like that this woman, a stranger, knew so much about my mother. I didn’t like that she knew more than I did.

“How did she die?” Holland said suddenly, and the look in her eye turned apprehensive. As if she’d had to summon up the courage to ask.

“Storm,” I said. “She drowned in Tempest Snare.”

Holland blinked, letting out the breath she’d been holding. “I see.” There was a long silence before she spoke again. “I lost track of Isolde for years after she left Zola’s crew. I didn’t hear that she’d died on the Lark until a year ago.”

“That’s why you want Saint?”

“It’s one reason,” she corrected.

I didn’t know what she knew about Saint and Isolde, but there’d been a stone in my stomach since that morning, when she’d said his name. If Holland wanted Saint dead, it was likely that she’d get what she wanted. And that thought made me feel as if I were sinking, no air in my lungs, watching the surface light pull farther away above me.