Namesake (Fable, #2)

by Adrienne Young

I wasn’t just some Jevali dredger or a pawn in Zola’s feud with West. I was Saint’s daughter. And before I left the Luna, every bastard on this crew was going to know it.

I remembered I wasn’t the girl who’d leapt for the ladder of the Marigold anymore. The one who’d begged and scraped to survive the years on Jeval so she could go searching for the man who didn’t want her.

“I see.” He reached into the pocket of his vest, pulling a small purse free. “What’ll it cost me?” “Four years,” I answered heavily.

Whether I liked it or not, there were pieces of me that had been carved by those years on Jeval. It had changed me. In a way, it had made me.

“Some trader in the Narrows is going port to port, setting fire to ships. Looking for a vessel called the Luna.”

“Your ships, I suspect,” Clove added. My fingers clamped down harder on the sill of the window. “Saint?” “West,” Clove breathed.

But that night in Dern, when we said we wouldn’t lie to each other, he hadn’t told me the whole truth. And I was afraid of what I might find if he did. That when I saw him again, he would look different to me. That he would look like Saint.

“Your mother wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing that thing.”

I’d felt that way when he kissed me in Tempest Snare. Like we were a world of our own. We had been, in that moment.

Don’t lie to me and I won’t lie to you. Ever. The only promise we’d made to each other West had already broken.

“I’m saying that when I helped Holland’s daughter escape Bastian, I fell out of her good graces.”

When I’d stepped off the Marigold, I’d set our course to this moment. And I didn’t want to admit that West looked different to me now. That he looked more like my father.

“She was always restless. I don’t think there was anything in this world that could calm the sea inside of her.”

The Isolde I’d known had been steady, made of deep waters.

Saint was right that I didn’t know West. So was Zola. I’d only seen the sides of him that he’d chosen to show me.

More dangerous than that was the fact that the idea of something happening to Saint made me feel panicked. Afraid. I didn’t like that I was still instinctively loyal to him when he hadn’t been loyal to me.

Saint was a bastard, but he was mine. He belonged to me. And even more unbelievable, I really did love him.

“I don’t believe you.” “I don’t care if you believe me.”

“I think perhaps Saint is more to you than I realized. I think he was more to Isolde than I realized.”

“But Crane’s not in it. You are.”

We’d both be paying as long as we lived.

“It’s not me I’m afraid for,” Paj answered, and it was so honest and plain that it seemed to make the street noise stop around us.

The words he’d said about my father were dangerous things. They held the power to crush me. Because the most fragile hope I’d ever held was that somewhere in the flesh and bone of him, Saint had loved me.

“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.”

“I heard about the ships. What happened?” “It doesn’t matter. That’s not my brother. That’s what Saint made.”

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.

She was here, somehow. My mother’s ghost was bled into these waters.

“I’ll get the deed back, West.” He looked worried. Afraid, even. “It’s just a ship, Fable.” I smiled sadly, my head tipping to one side. “I thought we weren’t lying to each other.”

“Fable, I love you,”

I could love this West. The one with a dark past. But I couldn’t tie myself to him if he was walking back into it.

“My father said that the worst mistake he ever made was letting Isolde step foot on his ship,”

“I think maybe he hated that he loved her,”

Some part of me had known he’d come. And I wasn’t sure why, because I had no reason to trust him.

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.

“I left you there because I have never loved anything in my life like I love you. Not Isolde. Not the trade. Nothing.”

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

remembering the first time I’d seen him on the docks. The first time I’d seen him smile. The first time I’d seen his darkness and every time he’d seen mine. We were salt and sand and sea and storm. We were made in the Narrows.