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Keep your knife where you can reach it. Never, ever owe anyone anything. Nothing is free. Always construct a lie from a truth. Never, under any circumstances, reveal what or who matters to you.
Miles away, where the moonlight touched the black seam of the horizon, the Lark lay beneath the waters of Tempest Snare. And no matter where I went, I’d never get home. Because home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother’s bones lay sleeping.
He was talking about respect. Safety. Protection. They were things no one owed you. And one way or another, you always paid.
There was something knowing in the way he looked at me. Something that pulled at the knots in the net of lies we’d both told.
“Fine,” I choked. “I’ll go my own way. And if you think I’ll owe you anything…” “You’re my daughter, Fable.” I looked him in the eye, my voice seething with every drop of hatred that boiled within me. “I’m Isolde’s daughter.”
“I took you off Jeval because I didn’t want to leave you there,” he breathed. “I couldn’t leave you there.” It was the first thing he’d said to me that had the heavy weight of truth in the words.
Like a weary bird flying out over the most desolate sea, I finally had a place to land.
Because that kiss broke open some dark night sky within me filled with stars and moons and flaming comets. That darkness was replaced by the blazing fire of the sun racing under my skin. Because the most deeply buried truth, hidden beneath everything my father taught me, was that I had wanted to touch West a thousand times.
“And I think I’ve loved you since the first time we anchored in Jeval.”
What he was saying—the things he told me—was his way of showing me he trusted me. It was also his way of giving me the match. If I wanted to, I could burn him down. But if we were going to do this, I would have to be his safe harbor and he would have to be mine.
