Namesake (Fable, #2)

by Adrienne Young

his hands clasped like a hammock behind his head.

tapping his fingers on his elbows as he watched her from the corner of his eye.

“No, you don’t. You have Saint. Now you have Holland.” He swallowed. “But us? Me, Willa, Paj, Auster, Hamish … all we have is each other.” “Then why did you force them to do this?” He swallowed. “Because I can’t lose them. And I can’t lose you.”

That’s not my brother. That’s what Saint made.”

In her eyes, I’d made West into the same thing my father had.

I hadn’t saved them with the Lark. I’d trapped them. With me.

“He’d gotten into some kind of trouble with Holland

This place had known my mother.

back to Bastian for supplies.

To your name sake girlll

He shrugged. “You’re Jevali.”

When she walked away, Koy arched an eyebrow at me. “I think she likes me.”

I dropped down into the water with my chest full of air, and froze when I felt it. When I felt her. All around me, the warm, melting drip of some whisper fell to the back of my mind, winding around me in the cold deep. I could feel Isolde. Feel her as if she was right there, diving beside me.

The sea bottom was nothing but pale silt that lay in parallel ripples far below.

Instantly I felt it again, that familiar hush, like the sound of my mother’s voice humming as I fell into sleep.

The air burned in my chest as I turned, spinning in the current so that I could look around me. Frantic. Because for a moment, I could have sworn she was there. Like a thread of smoke thinning into the air. Isolde.

I tipped my head back to look up at him. “Promise me you’ll do what you have to do.” He took a strand of my hair and let it slip through his fingers, making me shiver. Silence from West was a bad omen. He wasn’t a man of many words, but he knew what he wanted and he wasn’t afraid to take it. “Promise me,” I said again. He nodded reluctantly. “I will.”

I’d thought over and over that maybe I’d never see him again. That maybe I didn’t want to. And here I was, swallowing down the cry trapped in my throat. He was beautiful and terrifying and stoically cold. He was Saint. A puff of smoke trailed up from his lips before he looked at me, and I thought I might have seen something there in his steely blue eyes that mirrored the roaring feeling inside of me. But when his eyes shifted, it was gone.

She had told him about the midnight. But I wasn’t the only one who knew the fabric making up the man I called father. He’d known himself well enough to protect Isolde. From himself. The thought was so heartbreaking I had to look away from him, afraid of what I might see if I met his eyes. He was the only one who’d loved her more than I had. And the pain of losing her was fresh and sharp, knife-edged between us.

“Don’t trust me?” I found a smile on my lips, but it was still wavering with the threat of tears. “I trust you.” His voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it. “Are you going to tell me why?” I could see that he wanted to know. That he was struggling to understand. He’d been surprised when Clove showed up in Bastian with my message and he wanted to know why I’d do it. Why I’d risk anything for him, after everything he’d done. I looked up, and the shape of him bent in the light. I gave him the real answer. The whole, naked truth of it. “Because I don’t want to lose you.” There was no more to it, and no less. I hadn’t known it until that moment in the solarium, when Holland said his name. That I’d loved him with the same fire that I’d hated him. That if anything happened to Saint, a part of me would be taken with him. His mouth twisted to one side before he gave a sharp nod, looking to the street.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like what she was doing by bringing me here, and I hated that I felt small. I set my elbows onto the table, leaning toward her, and she grimaced at the sight.

not when traders and merchants would do anything to control it.

Like Holland

Maybe that was another reason Isolde had left Bastian. If I had to bet on it, I’d say Holland had tried to use my mother, too.

“I haven’t signed the contract yet.” “Oh, it’s been paid for.” Holland smiled. “I had the changes he requested made at the trade office. Everything should be in order.” “What?” I held the deed to the candlelight, reading over the print anxiously. Transfer of ownership: I sucked in a breath, my mouth dropping open when I saw my name. It was written in the same script as the rest of the document. “What did you do?” I panted. The deed shook in my hands. Cold realization filled my skull, making my head ache as I put it together. “West.” West signed the two-year contract with Holland.

“I’ll do what I have to do.” He gave me the words I’d made him promise the night before. “That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.” He had no reply to that. “How could you do this?” I said hoarsely. I started walking, but West’s heavy footsteps echoed behind me. He caught my arm, pulling me back. “I’m not going back to the Narrows without you.” I could see that he wasn’t going to concede. And he couldn’t now, anyway. He’d signed the contract. But West was already haunted. His soul was dark. And I didn’t want to know who he would be if he spent two more years doing someone else’s dirty work. I could feel it. If I lost to Holland at the Trade Council meeting, I would lose West. “You won’t have to. Neither will I,” I said, a tear falling down my cheek. “What?” “I signed one, too.” “Why? How?” “For Saint.” I stared at him. “Now we all get what we want. You, me. Holland.” I almost laughed at how ridiculous it all was.

“You hurt him, or ever mention a word about this to anyone, and the cost will find you.”

“We needed leverage. I took it.”

It ignited a memory, like breath on embers, but I couldn’t place it.

I swallowed, remembering. This was the dress my mother wore in the portrait in Holland’s study. I looked just like her. I looked just like Holland. As if I belonged at a fancy gala or in the private booth at the tea house. But the Marigold was the only place I wanted to belong.

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” I said softly. The shadow of a smirk lit on his face. “So are you.”

“I’m not one more person you have to take care of. You have to stop doing that.” “I don’t know how to,” he admitted. “I know.” I crossed my arms. “But you’re going to have to figure it out. I have to be able to trust you. I have to know that even if we don’t agree, we’re doing this together.” “We are doing it together.” “No, we’re not. You’re trying to make decisions for me, just like Saint.” He bristled at the words. “When I made that deal with Holland, I did it on my own. You were never supposed to be a part of this.” “Fable, I love you,” he breathed, still staring at my feet. “I don’t want to do any of this without you.”

“I’m afraid that you’re going to want what she can give you. What I’ll never be able to give you.” The look of vulnerability that flashed in his eyes made me swallow hard. “I don’t want you to work for Holland because I’m afraid you won’t come back to the Narrows. To me.”

“The answer to that question is always going to be the same. It doesn’t matter what happens.” His hands tightened on me. “You and me.” The words sounded like vows. But there was a grief that bloomed in my chest as he spoke them, like an incantation that gave flesh to bones. My voice deepened, waiting for his mouth to touch mine. “How long can you live like that?” His lips parted and the kiss was deep, drawing the air from the room, and the word was broken in his throat. “Forever.”

Like the flick of wind over water, it all disappeared. Holland, Saint, the Trade Council meeting, midnight, the Roths. It could be our last night on the Marigold, our last night on this crew, but whatever happened tomorrow, we were sailing into it together. You and me. And for the first time, I believed him.

Truthfully, I didn’t care anymore. I had found a family in West, and I’d learned enough from all that had happened to know that I would trade anything in the world for it.

West was right. Holland didn’t understand the Narrows. She thought that wealth and power could buy her way into Ceros, but she’d underestimated us. There was a lifeblood that connected the people who were born on those shores. The ones who sailed those waters. The people of the Narrows couldn’t be bought. More than that, Holland had underestimated me.

“Ah.” Saint pulled the pipe from his pocket, rubbing the smooth chamber with his thumb, as if he was thinking about lighting it. “That won’t happen, I’m afraid.”

My mouth dropped open. They were going to take Holland down for the very plot they themselves orchestrated.

“I’d like to submit a request for a license to trade at the port of Bastian.” His voice echoed. “On behalf of my daughter and her ship, the Marigold.” I stopped breathing, every drop of blood stilling in my veins. My daughter. I had never in my life heard him say that word. Saint turned to look at me, his eyes meeting mine. And every face in the room blinked out into black, leaving only him. And me. And the storm of everything between us. Maybe, I thought, he was paying what was owed. Breaking even after what I’d done for him. Maybe he was making sure that there was no debt to be laid at his feet. But that was the license. Not the words. That wasn’t why he’d called me his daughter. I sucked in a breath through the pain in my throat, not able to keep the tears from falling. They slid down my cheeks silently as I stared at him. And the look in his eye sparked like the strike of flint. Strong and steady and proud. He was handing over the sharpest blade to whoever might use it against him. But more than that, he was claiming me.

People watched us as we passed, and I wondered if they could see him in me or me in him. If there was some visible echo between us that told people who we were.

In my entire life, Saint had never told me that he loved me. He’d fed me, clothed me, and given me a home, but there were limits to how much of him belonged to me.

I didn’t miss that he said her name. I didn’t miss the way it sounded on his voice. Like prayer. It threaded through my heart, the stitches pulling tight.

He looked up then, the blue in his eyes rimmed in red. “I left you there because I have never loved anything in my life like I love you. Not Isolde. Not the trade. Nothing.”

I closed my eyes and the slide of hot tears fell down my cheeks. For him. For me. For Isolde.

It was one long series of tragically beautiful knots that bound us together.

green abalone sea dragon caught the light, turning into waves of blue and purple.

necklace

Saint didn’t know where to find the midnight, but he knew how to find it.

It wasn’t my mother I’d felt at the skerry. It was midnight.

Finallyyy

But West always had a reason why we needed to head back to Jeval early.

West leaned over the railing, grinning when he spotted his sister, and he instantly relaxed.