Saint

by Adrienne Young

She’d called my father a necessary sacrifice.

Holland had made sure I had no one to follow. No one but her.

I wasn’t just going to set fire to everything she’d built. I was going to throw her into the flames too.

I’d come out the other side of enough black, tangled clouds to stop asking whether a storm would kill me. The sea had had her chance enough times. She’d never taken it.

Anyone could throw a drowning man a line. Finding someone who would catch hold of you before you fell overboard in the first place was harder, if not impossible.

I was mad. Reckless. Just asking to meet my death out on the water.

Saint. No one knew Elias, the boy born in a backwater fishing village who’d made a mistake that cost him everything.

But there was no way Zola could know I was a gem sage. My father had made sure of that.

I could feel in my bones that these unknown waters were the place I’d take my last.

It was the darkest shade of red. The kind that looked like threads of fire when the light touched it.

My name rolled off my tongue so easily that it made my blood run cold for just a moment. Because it wasn’t the one I was known by.

There was something about her that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

There weren’t many helmsmen who’d have given him the choice I had.

“You get caught and I’ll deny I helped you. And there isn’t a bastard

I didn’t like how she met my eyes so directly. I wasn’t used to that anymore.

There was something about her that filled up the space. She was like a thick, curling smoke in the air.

I was a believer in signs, and the sea gave plenty of them. But there had been no warning when I caught sight of her in the tavern and that heavy feeling sank deep in my chest. There was no accounting for the fact that it hadn’t left me either.

It sounded like he was saying that as long I was on the Riven, I was safe. But nothing felt safe anymore.

The thing that made me want to bite my tongue was that I did trust him. I had absolutely no reason to, but I did. And I didn’t like that feeling.

He met my eyes again in that open way that made me feel like the ship was threatening to give way around me.

That look on his face was as beautiful as it was cold, and I didn’t like that I’d had to force myself to tear my eyes from his.

I hoped it was anything but him.

She didn’t like being claimed, I realized.

The house was a home in every sense of the word, but not like any I’d ever known.

The curve of the word was soft and gentle, like those hills the sun had fallen behind. The sound of it made me bite down on my bottom lip.

She couldn’t see it. She could feel it.

She cared about them—Saint and Clove. “They’ll deny it until they’re two breaths from death, but they need a keeper,”

“If she wants a place, she can have it.”

The dredger had gotten under my skin and I wasn’t sure how to remedy that. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to.

The only problem either of us had was each other. That was how we’d always done things and that way of life had kept us both alive. But something about it didn’t feel true anymore.

“All right.” I met Saint’s gaze. “What do you need me to do?” For a moment, I thought I could see the smallest tug of a smile on his lips. Maybe even a look of approval in his eyes.

“Could get used to this,”

“Brace!” The word tore from Saint’s throat again and his arms came around me, driving us backward toward the main mast.

He looked me in the eye. “Breathe.” The word was soft.

Saint’s face appeared over the side of the ship, his ice-blue eyes finding me. But they were missing the calm that usually lived there.

I was more precious to her than a single haul of gems, but not because she loved me. I was irreplaceable to Holland because of what I could give her.

It was the scent of deep water, something I could never describe with words but that I would know anywhere.

The tenderness in his voice when he answered made me still,

But there was something about the helmsman that reminded me of gemstone. Like even when he wasn’t speaking, I could still hear, or feel, something in the center of my chest.

It wasn’t foolish. It was terrifying.

I could feel that endless well within me, the capacity I had to fall in love with this trader and his dreams.

So, why couldn’t I say no to him? Why couldn’t I just say I didn’t want it?

He was touching me. On purpose. With a curious kind of intent. As if he hadn’t been sure what would happen if he did.

I never should have touched her. That was a mistake.

In the end, it would have been better to wake and find her gone than to imagine that she’d stay. But nothing was worse than admitting I wanted her to.

What I was really saying was that she didn’t want it. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her.

I looked at her one more time, tracing the shape of her face, her jaw, the curve of her throat. I etched it into my mind to keep for no other reason than I felt like I had to. And then I turned and walked away.

I’d known then that I was finished. I’d given her the one thing she needed to curl her fingers around the world. And now I would place it in the hands of her enemy.

Her blood ran in my veins. And no matter how far I ran, I realized, I’d never, ever be rid of her.

My mind would stop drifting to her, I told myself. I would forget the way I’d felt when I’d looked into her eyes in the alley in Dern or when I touched her without thinking on the Riven. These things would fade. Drift into the past. No matter how untrue, it was easy to believe when a whole future stretched before me.