Page 3 of Saint
It took a moment for me to realize he was talking about the earrings he’d been inspecting when I walked through the door. I hesitated before I reached up, unclasping each one and dropping them into his hand. They were worth over a hundred coppers each, but I’d expected to pay more.
He tucked them into the pocket of his vest, jerking his chin toward the door, where the young woman was still patiently waiting.
“Get her something to wear, Eden.” He handed her the parchment. “And have the seamstress cut up that frock. The silk should fetch something.”
She vanished without another word, leaving us alone in the dark cellar.
Simon leaned into the edge of the table, watching me as her steps faded up the staircase. It was only then I could feel just how far I was from the protective reach and scrutinizing gaze of my mother. And instead of that knowledge bringing me fear, there was only fury burning inside of me.
“Looks like fate is smiling on me tonight,” he said, almost to himself.
My hand slipped into my pocket, finding the small purse that held the midnight stone. It was the only thing that hadthe power to pierce Holland’s iron skin. The only thing I’d ever seen put a flash of terror in her eyes, bright behind that look of hunger.
Simon’s attention seemed to narrow on me the moment I thought it. “What exactly is it you’re you running from, Isolde?”
I didn’t like hearing my name on a stranger’s tongue, but there was more than one answer to that question. My mother. Her empire. Her blood that ran through my veins. It wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to escape, but when I heard those words leave her mouth, the cold had wrapped around my heart and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe.
A necessary sacrifice.
It had been almost a year since my father died on Yuri’s Constellation, the system of reefs I’d grown up diving. The helmsman who’d run the dive for my mother arrived at the harbor with the news. A terrible accident, he’d called it. A sudden turn of tide in an unexpected storm.
It wasn’t until the night of the gala, almost a year later, as I stood in my mother’s study listening to her hushed words entangled with the voice of the Unnamed Sea’s Gem Guild master, that I understood. She’d called my father a necessary sacrifice.
The pieces clicked together one at a time until the picture formed in my mind. It took only minutes to find the ship logs. To find no mention of the storm that had swallowed my father and my heart in a single moment.
He’d wanted to leave Bastian with me. To take me away from my mother’s growing shadows. I would have followedhim anywhere, but Holland had made sure I had no one to follow. No one but her.
My hand squeezed the purse of gemstone in my pocket so hard that my knuckles ached. I wasn’t just going to set fire to everything she’d built. I was going to throw her into the flames too.
Simon took a step toward me. “I said, what are you running from?”
My eyes lifted to meet his, the midnight burning like a hot ember in the center of my palm. “A monster.”
1SAINT
My father told me once that the only fools who sailed the Narrows were the dead and the dying. Sometimes, I think I’m both.
I leaned into the railing of theRivenwith both hands, watching the lanterns in the harbor flicker to life one by one in the distance. Water dripped from the sails overhead and the meager crew on the deck was still white-faced from the swells we’d carved down only an hour before we spotted land.
Behind them, Clove stood at the helm, the spokes light in his fingers as it spun. His stained shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and most of his blond hair was now unraveled from its knot, blowing across his face as we turned into the wind.
We’d chosen Dern for two reasons. The first was because there was little cause for anyone to come here, other thanthe traders from the Unnamed Sea who bought grain from the crofters for less than it cost to grow it. The second was because Rosamund was the only shipwright willing to risk taking the coin off two fishermen’s sons from Cragsmouth who had no legitimate way to explain where they got it.
There was an explanation, of course. Just not one I was willing to give.
The fading daylight painted the sails over our heads a brilliant amber and the intricately stitched canvas glistened with droplets of rain. They were more patchwork than anything these days, having been repaired by the sailmaker so many times that he’d flat-out refused to take a needle to them again.
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.
I unfolded my hand, eyeing the fresh cut across my palm beside a stack of healed scars. It was still raw and red from the last port we’d left, stinging as the skin stretched.
“Take us in,” I murmured to Clove, ducking into the narrow passage behind him.
His voice called out the orders to our sorry excuse for a crew as I pushed into the sorry excuse for a helmsman’s quarters. The cramped room smelled like mold and years-old mullein smoke seeping from the damp wood, but it had been my home for the last two and a half years and it had stayed afloat, which was more than most bastards got.
I hadn’t had oil for the lantern in weeks—another luxury we couldn’t afford—so when the sun went down it was damn near impossible to see anything. I felt my way along the bulkhead to the chest against the wall and lifted the lid. The stiff hinges creaked as the trunk opened and I reached inside. I didn’t bother hiding copper on this ship because there wasn’t anyone stupid enough to steal from me. That was where the stories they told about us had served us well.
My reflection appeared on the round, cracked mirror beside the window as I stood. Blue eyes stared back at me, set beneath thick, dark brows. The angles of my face were deeper than usual, and my jaw was shadowed with scruff. But there wasn’t a single coin in our coffers that hadn’t already been spent. The lowest on the list was a full belly or a clean shave or lanterns we could actually light. I wouldn’t have any of those things until well after Rosamund was paid.
