Saint

by Adrienne Young

I was the hungry one who was never satisfied, and that had gotten us into trouble. It had also cost us almost everything.

I’d been sure we’d never see her again. I’d also hoped with every breath that I was wrong.

Isolde’s eyes were on me. But I didn’t meet them. There was a threshold being crossed here and I wasn’t sure I knew where it would take me. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.

I didn’t know what her observation meant. A way to ask me if there was something wrong, maybe. It was the same question I wanted to ask her. But I wouldn’t.

He wasn’t trying to take anything from anyone or play tricks. He was just trying to make something he could keep.

I didn’t know until he started talking that I hadn’t actually expected him to answer. I went still, half afraid he’d fall quiet if I made the slightest move.

A tear rolled down my cheek, but I didn’t blink. His eyes were still locked on mine, and I didn’t want to take that anchor from him.

There was no denying there was a pull in the air between us, and he wasn’t particularly good at hiding it.

“But I haven’t figured out what exactly you want from me.” “Neither have I,” he said lowly.

It just felt so good to be told the truth. It felt like the sun after an eternity of night.

“What is this feeling I have?” He spoke again before I could make up my mind. “This thing that makes me not want you to leave?”

I had no idea why he felt like a breath I’d forgotten to take. Like a weight on my chest I couldn’t move. “Just … don’t,” he said. “Don’t what?” “Leave.”

Something shifted into place inside of me. Some off-kilter piece of my soul that had fractured that day in Bastian. I didn’t know what we were doing. Where it could possibly lead. But this—he and I—we fit, somehow.

I closed my eyes before I drew the air into my lungs, knowing what scent I’d find there. Deep ocean. Saint.

he’d put words to the thing that had been unspoken, like letting a wild animal loose from its cage. There was no point in pretending we could put it back.

If she wants to go back to the Luna, there’s nothing stopping her.” Still, Saint didn’t move from his spot in front of me.

The sound of him saying it took the breath from my lungs, and it was only then I could admit that I’d been afraid he would agree. That he’d cut his losses as soon as he realized I hadn’t been completely honest with him.

It wasn’t just the humid rain making me sweat. It was Isolde. That softness that had been there between us that morning was gone now, making me feel like there was a rope tightening around my chest. I’d been the worst kind of fool. And now I was going to pay for it.

“What do you want me to do? I’ll do it.” My jaw clenched painfully. “I want you to go back in time and not walk into the tavern that night.”

Isolde and whatever she was running from in Bastian was the first thing that had ever made me feel like it was slipping from my fingers.

“It’s not just the two of us anymore.” He was missing that bitter charm now. He was worried.

He wasn’t the fearless helmsman the Narrows thought he was. In fact, I was sure now that it was fear that drove him into those black clouds.

“I might not be one of you, but I’m not one of them either,” I breathed. “I never was. That’s why I came here. Why I can’t go back.”

“You’ll come back?” he asked. “If you still want me.” He moved so close that when he looked down into my face, the tip of his nose was inches from mine. “I’ve wanted you since the minute I saw you. That’s the problem, Isolde.”

“What do you want?” he whispered.

I didn’t know where we fit together or how. I just knew that we did.

I wanted him. But it was more than that. “I want to build something that’s not theirs.” “All right,” he said. “Then we will.”

It was about the helmsman standing in front of me. It was about that dark gleam in his eyes. The way he said exactly what he meant. If there was a future for the Narrows, he was it. And that was a future for me too.

But I could cast my lot alongside Saint’s and know that there was something true in it. Because there was. The hum in the air that hovered around us. The calm that settled in my blood when he touched me. The feeling that we were only the beginning of a story that would be told long after we were gone. They were things I could take with me. A year was nothing if it let me come back to this.

The cold that lived in my bones was gone for the first time since I left Cragsmouth. Isolde slept soundly beside me, despite the fact that she’d face the Trade Council when she woke.

If she was leaving, I was going to remember it.

I’d never been given anything, not even from my father. He’d believed in earning. Making myself worthy of something. But I was painfully aware that there was nothing I could do to merit that feeling of warmth at my side. And I wouldn’t pretend to.

“And if you or anyone else touches that gem sage you had couriered from Bastian, I’ll cut the tongue from your mouth and feed it to the seabirds.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I was thanking him for. I was mostly just glad he existed. That I’d been lucky enough to find him.

There will be a fine paid to this council in the amount of—” “I’d like to purchase the contract,”

“There’s a pier in Dern, where a newly constructed schooner is anchored and waiting to set sail,” Saint continued. “This is the deed.”

She was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture in my surroundings. A part of the landscape that made up my life. And I couldn’t help feeling like it was rarer than that gemstone in my pocket.

“I won’t sign a contract. Not with you,” I said. “If you’re here, with me, it’s because you want to be. The minute that changes, you’re free to go.”

I wasn’t the kind of man who could weigh that cost or wield that power. I’d given up a ship for this girl without thinking twice. I’d give a sea of midnights, if I had to. And something told me that eventually, it might just come to that.

“I wanted you too. The minute I saw you.” She whispered my own words against my lips—words I’d once thought could be the end of me. Now, I was certain they were.

There, leaning on the portside railing of the ship, Saint was watching. He was always watching.

It meant that his face was the first thing I saw every time I came up from below.

Saint believed that she would never betray him. He’d given his heart to her, after all. Like he’d given it to me. But something told me the deep wouldn’t share a love like that forever. One day, she would take.