EIGHTEEN
Holland’s man led us back up the staircase, and I ran a hand along the banister, looking up to the window-paned skylight above us. Dust glinted off the glass like the facets of a gem.
“Fable.” West’s voice made me blink. He stood at the end of the corridor with Clove, his face cut sharp with apprehension.
My fingers slipped from the bannister and I curled them into a fist. He waited for me to step inside the room and closed the door behind us, leaving Clove outside.
I searched the table for a match and lit the candles. Through the window, I could see the sun setting beyond the horizon. When it rose again, we’d be on our way to the harbor.
“Are you going to take it?” West’s words filled the quiet.
My stomach dropped as I looked up at him, the smoking match still in my hand. He was shut up tight, the hardness in him showing. “What?”
“Are you going to take the offer from Holland?”
I turned to face him. “Are you really asking me that?”
But he didn’t hold my gaze. His eyes dropped to the floor between us. “I am.”
I caught the crook of his arm and waited for him to look at me. “I told her I didn’t want it.”
The look of relief on his face was more obvious than I knew he wanted it to be. But he didn’t appear to be convinced.
“You can’t trust her, Fable,” he breathed. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take her offer.”
“You sound like you want me to take it.” I sank into the chair beside the window. “What is it?” I asked softly.
He was unreadable, silent for a long moment before he finally answered. “We need to talk.”
But I wasn’t sure I was ready for what he might say. “We don’t have to.”
“Yes, we do.”
“West—”
“We should talk about it before you decide.”
“I told you. I’ve already decided,” I said again.
“You might change your mind when you hear what I have to say.”
My pulse beat under my skin rapidly, my mind racing. I wasn’t sure why I suddenly felt afraid of him. Since the moment Saint told me West wasn’t who I thought he was, I’d been holding my breath. Waiting to see where the break would be between us. Maybe this was it.
“There’s more to my position with Saint than I told you. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.” He slid his hands into his pockets, pressing his lips together before he continued. “I was crewing as a Waterside stray on a ship. The helmsman was the one I told you about. He wasn’t a good man.”
I still remembered the way West’s face looked when he told me the helmsman had beat him in the hull of the ship.
“Our route put us in Ceros for two days every three weeks, and one night, when we made port, I went to Waterside to see Willa. When I got there, I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. I had to ask around before I found out someone who worked at the tavern was coming around while I was gone and stealing from her and my mother. Every time I left port, he would show up. He knew there was no one to stop him, and Willa didn’t tell me because she was afraid of what I would do.”
I’d seen that look on Willa’s face before, the fear of West taking matters into his own hands. That’s what she was trying to avoid when she sold her dagger to the gambit in Dern. She was trying to keep West out of it.
“It was nearly morning when I made it to the tavern, and when I found him, he was drunk. If he wasn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to…” He paused, his eyes moving over the floor as if he was seeing the memory. “He was sitting at a table alone. I didn’t even think about it. I wasn’t afraid. I just walked up to him and put my hands around his throat and this quiet came over me. It was like … it was so easy. He fell out of his chair and he was kicking and trying to pull my hands away. But I just kept squeezing. I kept squeezing even after he stopped moving.”
I didn’t know what to say. I tried to imagine him, maybe fourteen years old, strangling a grown man in the middle of an empty tavern. His pale waving hair in his face. His golden skin in the firelight.
“I don’t know how long it took me to realize he was dead. When I finally let him go, I just sat there, staring at him. And I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel bad about what I’d done.” He swallowed. “When I finally looked up, there was only one other person in the tavern sitting at the bar. I hadn’t noticed him until that moment. And he was watching me.” West met my eyes. “It was Saint.”
I could see him, too, sitting at the bar in his blue coat with a green glass in his hand. Wheels turning.
“I knew who he was. I recognized him. At first, he didn’t say anything. He just kept drinking his rye, and when he was finished, he offered me a place on his crew. Right there, on the spot. Of course, I took it. I thought that anything had to be better than the helmsman I was working for. And he was. Saint was fair to me. So, when he started asking me to do him favors, I did them.”
“What kind of favors?” I whispered.
He let out a deep breath. “We’d make port and sometimes, there was something that needed to be done. Sometimes there wasn’t. Carrying out punishments for unpaid debts. Hurting people who wouldn’t be intimidated. Sinking operations or sabotaging inventories. I did whatever he asked.”
“And Sowan?”
His eyes flashed. He didn’t want to talk about Sowan. “That was an accident.”
“But what happened?”
His voice was suddenly quieter. “Saint asked me to take care of a merchant there who was working against him. I set fire to his warehouse when we stopped there on our route. The crew didn’t know,” he said, almost to himself. But that was the part of the story he’d already told me. “When we made port in Dern, I found out someone was in the warehouse when I started the fire.”
I’d been there when the merchant told him. I’d seen the look of confusion that passed between Paj and the others, but there had to be some part of them that knew what West did for Saint. They were too smart to have missed it.
A million things flitted through my mind, but too fast. I couldn’t grab hold of a single one. 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.
“We’ve all done things to survive,” I said.
“That’s not what I’m trying to tell you.” The air around him changed as he spoke, “Fable, I need you to understand something. I did what I needed to do. I didn’t like it, but I had a sister and a mother who needed my wages, and I had a place on a crew that treated me well. I know it’s not right, but if I could go back, I think I would do it all again.” He said it so earnestly. “I don’t know what that makes me. But it’s true.”
It looked as if those were the words that had cost him most of all. Because he was telling the truth. There was no blame to be placed on anyone else’s shoulders. This was West, and he wasn’t lying about it.
“That’s why Saint doesn’t want to lose you. Why he gave you a shadow ship to run.” I rubbed a hand over my face, suddenly so tired. “But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“I knew I was going to have to tell you about my work with Saint. I just wanted to…” He paused. “I was afraid you’d change your mind. About me. About the Marigold.”
I wanted to say that I wouldn’t have. That it wouldn’t have made a difference. But I wasn’t sure if that was true. Crewing for my father was one thing. I knew him. There was no mystery about who he was or what he wanted. But West was different.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to trust each other,” I said.
“I know.”
I knew that West was in deep with my father, but this was something different. West was the reason people feared Saint. He was the shadow Saint cast on everything around him. The haul from the Lark wasn’t just buying West’s freedom from my father. It was buying his soul.
“If you hadn’t known about the Lark … if you hadn’t needed it to save the Marigold, would you have taken me onto the crew?”
“No.” He answered without a breath of hesitation.
My heart sank, tears springing to my eyes.
“I don’t think I would have. I would have wanted you to get as far away from me as possible,” he admitted. “In a way, a part of me still wishes that we hadn’t voted you on.”
“How can you say that?” I said, indignant.
“Because you and I have cursed ourselves, Fable. We will always have something to lose. I knew it that day in Tempest Snare when I kissed you. I knew it in Dern when I told you that I loved you.”
“Then why did you do it?”
He was silent for so long that I wasn’t sure he would answer. When he finally did, his voice was hollow. “The first time I ever saw you, you were standing on the dock at the barrier islands. We’d made port at Jeval for the first time, and I’d been watching for you. A girl with dark auburn hair and freckles with a scar on the inside of her left arm, Saint said. It was two days before you showed.”
I remembered that day, too. It was the first time I’d traded with West. The first time I’d ever seen the Marigold at the barrier islands.
“You were bartering with a trader, arguing for a better price on the pyre you were hocking. And when someone called from the deck of his ship and he looked up, you slipped a blood orange from one of his crates. As if the whole reason you’d been standing there was to wait for the moment when he wasn’t looking. You dropped the orange into your bag and when he turned back around, you went right on arguing with him.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“I do.” The shadow of a smile lifted on his lips. “Every time we dropped anchor at Jeval after that day, I had this constricting pain in my chest.” He reached up, tucking a hand into his open jacket as if it were there now. “Like I was holding my breath, afraid you wouldn’t be on the docks. That you’d be gone. And when I woke up in Dern and you weren’t there, it came back. I couldn’t find you.” His voice wavered, splintering the words. He looked so heavy. So tired.
“You did find me. And I don’t want Holland’s offer.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He softened, the look in his eye more familiar. The sound of wind whistled outside the window, and ease finally found the set of his shoulders.
“But what are we going to do about Saint?” I asked, my mind drifting to my father.
“What do you mean?”
“Holland is after him, West. It’s only a matter of time before she figures out Clove isn’t going to deliver. She’ll find another way.”
“We cut our ties to him.” West shrugged. “Saint can take care of himself.”
My brow creased. I tried to understand his meaning.
“We can’t get involved, Fable. He left us to deal with Zola when we were dead in the water. Now he can deal with Holland. You don’t owe him anything.”
“It’s not about owing. This is about the future of the Narrows.” It was mostly true.
He sighed, raking a hand through his waving hair. “Which is why we need to get back to Ceros.”
For me, it wasn’t that simple. If Holland got license to trade in the Narrows, it didn’t matter how much coin the Marigold had. She’d wipe out every trader within a matter of years.
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. But this went beyond me begging for a place on his crew, or him abandoning me on Ceros. If Holland got ahold of Saint, I was going to lose him forever. And it didn’t matter what he’d done, or why. I couldn’t let that happen.
West couldn’t see that. He never would.
“Tomorrow, we’ll leave Bastian and go home,” he said.
I nodded, reaching up to take his hand.
He stared at me, his eyes dropping to my mouth. But he didn’t move.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I whispered.
“I wasn’t sure if you still wanted me to.”
I stood, lifting onto my toes. He pressed his forehead to mine before he parted my lips with his, and I let out the breath I’d been holding since I woke up on the Luna. I wanted to cry, the ache in my chest breaking open and filling me with relief. Because I’d been here before, over and over in my dreams since I’d left the Narrows. But this time, it was real. This time, I wouldn’t wake. West was living and breathing, warm in my arms. And the feel of him touching me was humming in every drop of my blood.
I don’t know what I had expected him to say or what explanations he would have for the past. But West had none.
More than that, he didn’t even have regrets.
I don’t know what that makes me.
His words whispered back to life in my mind as I touched his face and his arms tightened around me. But I didn’t feel afraid of him the way I thought I would. I felt safe. I didn’t know if I could love someone like my father, but I did. With a love that was deep and pleading. With a love that was terrifying.
And I didn’t know what that made me.
NINETEEN
I laid awake listening to West’s breathing. It sounded like the waves lapping the shore of Jeval on warm days, rushing in and then dragging out.
I didn’t think I’d remember any of those things when I left Jeval—the color of the shallows, the stretch of the sky, or the sound of the water. Those four years had been so shadowed by the pain of losing my mother and the yearning for my father that it had consumed both light and dark. Until West. Until the day the Marigold showed up at the barrier islands, her strange winglike sails bowed in the wind. It took almost six months for me to believe that every time I saw it sail away wasn’t the last time. I had begun to trust West long before I realized it. But I wasn’t sure yet if he trusted me.
A flash of light ignited along the crack beneath the door, and I watched as it disappeared. Out the window, dawn was more than an hour away, leaving the sky black.
I slipped out of West’s heavy arms and sat up, listening. Azimuth House was silent, except for the sound of quiet footsteps on the staircase down the hall. My bare feet found the plush rug, and I stood, holding my skirts in my arms so they didn’t rustle. West was lost in a deep sleep, his face soft for the first time since I’d seen him at the gala.
The handle to the door creaked softly as I lifted it, opening the door. Clove was snoring against the wall, his legs crossed in front of him and the chest of coin under his arm.
The glow of a lantern was bobbing along the wall, and I peered over the bannister to see a head of silver hair below. Holland was wrapped in a satin robe, making her way down the corridor.
I looked back to the dark room before stepping over Clove’s legs and following the light. It washed over the floor before me as I took turn after turn in the dark, and when I reached the end of the corridor, it flickered out.
Ahead, a door was open.
I walked with silent steps, watching Holland’s shadow move over the marble, and the light hit my face as I peered through the crack. It was a wood-paneled room with one wall covered in overlapping maps, the others all set with mounted bronze candelabras. Holland stood in the corner, staring up at a painting that hung over the desk. My mother was wrapped in an emerald green dress fit with a violet gem brooch, her face aglow in the candlelight.
I pushed the door open and Holland’s gaze dropped to meet mine.
She lifted a finger, wiping the corner of her eye. “Good evening.”
“Almost morning now,” I answered, stepping inside.
Holland’s eyes fell down my wrinkled dress. “I come down here when I can’t sleep. No use in lying in bed when I can get some work done.”
But it didn’t look as if she was working. It looked as if Holland had come down to see Isolde.
She pulled a long m
atch from a box on the desk and I watched as her hand floated over the tapers. When the last wick was lit, she blew out the match and I studied the illuminated maps pieced together on the far wall. They showed a detailed system of reefs, but this wasn’t just any chain of islands. I’d seen it before.
Yuri’s Constellation.
I took a step closer, reading notes written in blue ink along the margins of the diagrams. Different areas were crossed out, as if someone had methodically marked them. It was an active dive chart, like the ones my father would hang up in his helmsman’s quarters on the Lark. And that could mean only one thing.
Holland was still looking for the midnight.
Behind her, another large portrait of a man was hung in a gilded frame. He was handsome, with dark hair, gray eyes, and a proud set to his chin. But there was a kindness in his face. Something warm.
“Is that my grandfather?” I asked.
Holland smiled. “It is. Oskar.”
Oskar. The name seemed to fit the man in the portrait, but I was certain I’d never heard my mother speak it.
“He apprenticed as a gem sage with his father, but he’d given his heart to the stars. Against your great-grandfather’s wishes, Oskar took an apprenticeship as a celestial navigator.”
I guessed that’s where Azimuth House had gotten its name, as well as its design.
“He was the best of his time. There wasn’t a trader in the Unnamed Sea who didn’t revere his work, and nearly every navigator out on those waters was an apprentice of his at one time or another.” She smiled proudly. “But he taught Isolde the trade of a gem sage when he realized what she could do.”
The tradition of a gem sage was something that was passed down, and only to people who had the gift. My mother had seen early on that I had it. I wondered how long it had taken Oskar to see it in my mother.
I reached up, touching the edge of another portrait. It looked like the same man, but he was older. His white hair was cut short, curling around his ears.
“Odd that your mother never told you about him. They were quite close from the time she was a little girl.”
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