Page 66 of Saint
I let my eyes raise to the small mirror that hung on the wall over the wash bowl. It reflected my shape back at me, the details of my face appearing as I stepped into the moonlight coming from the window. I slid the knife from my belt slowly, winding my braid around my knuckles until it was pulled tight in my fist.
There was no beating Holland with a single trade. No making her pay for what she’d done. Not when she owned every chest of coin from Ceros to Bastian. But I realized in that moment that fate had landed me on the ship of the one person who just might be able to make my mother’s worst nightmares come true.
I pressed the edge of the knife to my braid and met my own eyes as I began to saw back and forth. There was an emptiness there in my expression that I wasn’t used to seeing. A void of some kind. But instead of scaring me, I thought for the first time that maybe I could fill that space with whatever I wanted to.
The blade made it through my braid and I stood there,hands heavy at my sides. My hair fell at an angle, its ends hitting my jaw on one side of my face and almost touching my shoulder on the other. Holland would say that I looked like an urchin. The thought made me smile.
The door opened behind me and I went rigid when I saw Saint’s reflection in the mirror. The light from the hall was a warm honey hue compared to the moonlight. His gaze fell from mine in the mirror to my hands that still clutched the severed braid and the knife before he stepped inside.
The room felt even smaller with him in it. His jacket was in his hand, his hair swept to one side as if he’d run a hand through it as he came up the stairs from the tavern. But his eyes were still that icy blue that glinted in the darkness.
He shut the door, tossing the jacket onto one of the cots as I slid my knife back into my belt. The braid I set onto the small table that held the wash bowl.
Saint crossed the room with patient steps, stopping on the other side of the mirror and leaning one shoulder against the wall. I could feel his gaze moving from my hair to my belt, where the knife was back in its sheath. I could feel it everywhere.
“Who’s looking for you?”
I considered lying. Spinning a different truth than the one that existed. But if Saint was willing to take on Zola for me, I couldn’t see him flinching at the thought of a runaway merchant’s daughter.
“My mother,” I said.
He waited for me to continue, that pensive look on his face unwavering.
“She’s a gem merchant. A powerful one.”
“Who?”
Again, I weighed the cost of a lie. “Holland.”
He didn’t like that answer. The set of his mouth flattened, but his eyes didn’t leave me. “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.”
That was mostly true. It was the thing that had made me open that case and take the midnight. The thing that had made me go to Simon. But the stone in my pocket, I wasn’t ready to talk about that.
Saint’s arms crossed over his chest, his brow wrinkling. As if he were trying to work something out.
“She’ll have people looking for me,” I said. “And she won’t let it go.”
“Does Zola know?”
I shook my head.
Eventually, she’d find out which ship I’d left on. I had no doubt about that. And that meant Zola was walking a narrow road that led to one place—Holland’s retribution.
For a moment, the possibility that Saint and Clove could end up her enemy, too, crossed my mind. The thought made gooseflesh rise on my arms.
“What about you?” I let my eyes drop to his scarred hand, hoping he’d trade one question for another. “What are you running from?”
He untucked the hand from beneath his elbow and turned it over, as if inspecting it. It was a long moment before he finally spoke.
“I was twelve years old. So was Clove.” His eyes lifted, finding me in the dark.
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.
“We were going out on the boat to fish with our fathers and their crew and I was the first to the dock that morning. It was only that year they’d let us start coming along with them, and only because they wanted us to learn how to crew. Not on fishing boats. Our fathers wanted us sailing under real trader’s crests one day.” He paused, trying to find the words. “There were rules. Ones my grandfather and his grandfather before him followed. There was an order to things. A balance between us and the sea. But I’d never believed in them. Not really.”
The adder stones that hung in the window of theRivenflashed in my mind, followed by the bloodied knife as Saint pulled it through his fist. The drops of blood dripping into the water.
