Page 39 of Saint
“Found him!” she chirped.
“Started without me, I see.” Clove smiled, tipping the girl forward so she could peer at Emilia from beneath her curls.
They were too similar not to share blood, but too far apart in age to be sisters. Emilia was the girl’s mother, I realized.
“There she is.” Tansy’s tone was a reproach. “I called for you over an hour ago.” She pulled the girl from Clove’s arms, but the girl was sliding down as quickly as Clove handed her over, and then she was crawling into Saint’s lap.
He barely acknowledged her, pulling one arm from the table so that she could curl into him. There was no rigid set to his mouth now. No attempt to put more space between them. He looked as if she’d sat there a hundred times.
He reached into his jacket, producing a small iridescent shell, and her eyes widened before she plucked it from his fingers. The smile buried on his lips was visible for half a second before it disappeared again.
Emilia pulled out a chair for Clove beside her, and he was taking a bite of bread before he’d even settled into the seat. His blond scruff was like gold dust in the candlelight, making him look younger than his time on the sea painted him.
“Was wondering if those traders in the merchant’s house had eaten you for supper.”
The comment wasn’t an innocent one. She was probing. Wanting to know what exactly they’d been trading. Even if there was history between them, it was clear there were still secrets.
The little girl’s bare feet dangled under the table, her toes tapping my leg as Saint shifted. When I looked up, her widegreen eyes were trailing over me as she chewed a too-big bite of stew. A dribble of broth dripped down her chin.
“I’m Hazel,” she said, wiping it with the back of her hand.
I followed the smear of dirt on her cheek to where it disappeared into her hairline, smiling. She was a wild creature. A character that would fit into one of my father’s bedtime stories.
“Isolde,” Saint said quietly, giving her my name.
It was timid almost, as if he were trying the name out in his own voice for the first time. 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.
The talk moved from news in Dern to news in Sowan, and discussion about rye barrels I didn’t know how to decode. But across from me, Hazel’s attention slowly narrowed, growing more acute by the second. Her eyes were focused, her brow wrinkling as she absently turned the piece of bread in her hand.
I set my elbows onto the table, watching her.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
“What is what?”
Her lips pursed before she set down the bread, and her gaze fell to my pocket.
“The stone,” she whispered.
I stilled, suddenly feeling like the midnight in my pocket weighed a hundred pounds. But the strings of the small purse were tucked in. She couldn’t see it.
She couldfeelit.
My eyes flitted from one face at the table to the next, gooseflesh racing over my skin. But they were lost in conversation. All of them but Saint.
“Leave it, Hazel,” he said lowly.
She picked up her bread, shoulders hunching like a scolded puppy’s, but every few seconds, her head involuntarily turned back in the stone’s direction. As if it were a magnet drawing her gaze.
I said nothing, not wanting to draw any attention to the stone in my pocket. If Saint had stabbed a man for red beryl, I didn’t want to know what he’d do for something as priceless as the midnight. But he didn’t seem to be curious about what Hazel had said, and something told me that was because he didn’t wantmepaying any attention to the fact that she’d just sniffed the stone out with no reasonable explanation.
Emilia’s chair scraped against the floor and she stood, tossing her napkin onto her empty plate. The others didn’t even look up, carrying on with Clove about something to do with the next harvest. But Emilia caught eyes with Saint and he mirrored her without a word, shifting Hazel from his lap so he could get to his feet.
He followed her to the door and pulled it closed behind him, the cuff of his shirt shifting beneath his jacket sleeve just enough for me to see the fabric painted a bright red. I bristled, remembering the way the blood had pooled on the counter in the merchant’s shop.
Looking at him now, I couldn’t tell the difference between the Saint that had stabbed the screaming man and the one who sat across the table, the ghost of a smile on his lips and the gleam of firelight in his eyes.
Maybe there was no difference at all.
