Saint

by Adrienne Young

The helmsman of the Craven was a man I’d seen many times at my mother’s house and on her ships, but he’d kept his distance from me like most of her traders did. No one wanted to touch the flame that burned at the center of my mother’s hands. She protected her precious things.

In a matter of seconds, that world had come crashing down with only three words spoken from Holland’s lips: a necessary sacrifice. It had taken me the length of a breath to decide to open the gem case. To walk out that door. And I was never, ever going back.

He wasn’t the only one who thought I was mad, tempting the sea demons by sailing the rickety old ship into deep waters. But 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.

There was no shortage of bastards in the Narrows who thought they were willing to die for copper.

I’d sooner find my death in the deep than live under a guild’s crooked thumb.

I was never on dry land long enough to rid my bones of the chill or fully dry the damp from my clothes, but the smell of burning wood reminded me of the days before I’d given my life to the sea.

I knew the stories. They were what had given me the name I was known by outside of Cragsmouth—Saint. No one knew Elias, the boy born in a backwater fishing village who’d made a mistake that cost him everything.

there was a solid feeling in my gut as I watched the sea race beneath the ship. I hadn’t just left my mother in the Unnamed Sea. I’d left my home. The place I’d taken my first breaths. But I could feel in my bones that these unknown waters were the place I’d take my last.

There were some sins you paid for your whole life. I knew that now.

She’d been good to us, but the ship was an open, gaping mouth. It was only a matter of time before she devoured us.

The sea didn’t forget our sins. She just let us pay for them in different increments of blood.

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 didn’t know if it was this ship or the sea or the strange look of the sky that made my blood hum in my veins. I hoped it was. I hoped it was anything but him.

Below, the surface of the black water looked like the jagged cut of the onyx or obsidian that covered my mother’s jeweled fingers. Like the moment I touched it, it would cut me open.

Could get used to this. I was glad now that I hadn’t had the chance to ask for his meaning. Because if it had anything to do with the feeling that flooded my veins when his arms wrapped around me, when his cheek touched mine and his hands gripped me tight, I was almost sure I didn’t want to know.

I could only guess that the rumors about Saint and the Riven had been born of a hundred other stories just like them. A mad helmsman and a cursed ship, tempting death with the favor of the sea demons.

He fell quiet again. I was beginning to understand that silence was his preferred method of communication. He dealt in the unspoken moments. The quiet in-betweens. 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.

Before I realized what he was doing, his rough fingertips were moving over my knuckles, like he was tracing the feel of my bones beneath the skin. 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 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.

“Well, look at that,” Clove murmured. But when I looked at him, he wasn’t watching Isolde anymore. He was watching me.

She almost smiled then. Almost. I was beginning to be able to predict that look before it hit her face. I was beginning to get used to the feeling I had when I saw it.

“Why are you running from her?” I bit down on my bottom lip, remembering the way my blood had run cold in the candlelight that filled my mother’s study. The way my father’s portrait looked down at me. “Because she killed my father.”

Saint looked calm, at ease in the shadows, and not the least bit unnerved by the fact that he was touching me. Again. That at any moment, he was going to kiss me. Like he’d just made up his mind and that was it. That was all there was.

He kissed me carefully, like he was being sure to remember the way it felt.

“I’ve wanted you since the minute I saw you. That’s the problem, Isolde.” My heartbeat skipped behind my ribs, shortening my breath. “What do you want?” he whispered. The question made me feel like the rain outside was filling my lungs. This thing between us was like the creaking lines that held the bowing masts of the Riven. At any moment, they were going to snap.

Saint stared at her, letting his silence answer for him. He wasn’t just careful with his words. He didn’t like repeating them either.

My blood was nailed into the hull of that ship. My bones had built it. There was a version of myself that would live in its skeleton for as long as it sailed the Narrows. And when it found its end in the deep, it would take that part of me with it.

The stories the gambit told me are true, I thought. The sea gives. 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.