Fable (Fable #1)(58)

“Everything.”

“You just told Saint that you gave me passage to save your own neck.”

“I took you off Jeval because I didn’t want to leave you there,” he breathed. “I couldn’t leave you there.” It was the first thing he’d said to me that had the heavy weight of truth in the words.

I tried to read him, studying the shadows that moved over his face, but only fragments of him were visible, as always. He was only pieces, never a whole.

He was quiet for a long moment before he took a step toward me. “I’ll cast my vote to bring you on as our dredger.” The heat of him coiled around me. “If you tell me that you understand something.”

“What is it?”

His eyes ran over my face. “I can’t care about anyone else, Fable.”

His meaning filled the small bit of space between us, making me feel like the walls were creeping in. Because I knew why he’d said it. It was in the way his eyes dropped to my mouth sometimes when he looked at me. It was in the way his voice deepened just a little when he said my name. West was taking a different kind of risk by voting me onto his crew, and in this moment, he was letting me see it.

“Tell me you understand.” He held his hand out between us, waiting.

This wasn’t just an admission. This was a contract.

So, I met his eyes, not a single hitch in my voice as I took his hand into mine. “I understand.”





TWENTY-NINE



A single lantern glowed up on the Marigold as I walked down the dock in the dark.

The empty ships floated in the harbor like sleeping giants, the crews drinking their weight in the city, and only the harbor workers they’d paid to watch the bays were out. Even Waterside looked empty, the little faces that usually lined the alleyways gone. Ceros looked so much smaller in the dark, but I felt less small within it.

When I reached the slip where the Marigold was anchored, my boots stopped at the bloodstain on the dock where the two bodies had been that morning. It was scrubbed clean, but the hints of red were stained into the wood. I could still see them, their crumpled frames lying in the sun, and I wondered who they were. Probably poor men spending their nights for hire to make extra coin. It was a pathetic way to die, caught in the middle of someone else’s feud.

The ladder was unrolled, waiting for me, and I looked up, fitting my bandaged hands onto the rungs. I thought I’d stood on the decks of the Marigold for the last time, but now, this ship would become my home. This crew would become my family. And like the turn of the wind before the most unpredictable of storms, I could feel that everything was about to change.

I lifted myself up over the railing, and the others were already gathered on the deck, standing in a circle before the helm. The naked masts towered over us like skeletons, reaching up into the dark until they disappeared. The torn canvas now lay rolled up in the hull.

West stared at the deck as I found a place beside Willa, the tension visible in the way he stood. He’d agreed, but he wasn’t happy about it, and that wounded me more than I wanted to admit.

“You sure about this, dredger?” Willa’s arm pressed into mine as she leaned into me.

I looked at West, and for just a moment, he met my eyes. “I’m sure.”

And I was. It wasn’t just that there was nowhere else for me to go. It was that since that first night sleeping in the empty hammock below deck, there seemed to be a place for me here. I fit. Even if West didn’t want me on the crew, I could make my own way with the five of them. I could trust them. And that was enough. That was more than enough.

Auster pulled the wool cap from his head, letting his unbound hair spill over his shoulder, and held it upside down in the middle of the circle.

A lump rose in my throat as I stared into it.

Willa took a single copper from her belt. “I say we let this good-for-nothing Jevali dredger crew for the Marigold.” She flicked the coin into the air, and it flashed against the lantern light as it spun, landing in Auster’s hat. “Even if she is a bad luck charm.”

“Fine by me.” Paj snapped a copper between his fingers, shooting it in after Willa’s.

Auster followed, giving me a wink. “Me too.”

Hamish took a copper from his vest, eyeing me. The hesitation wasn’t hidden on his face. “What was Saint’s daughter doing on Jeval?”

I shifted on my feet, my hands sliding into the pockets of my jacket. “What?”

“If we’re going to trust you, I want to know the story. How’d you end up on Jeval?”

“We don’t need to know.” West gave Hamish a warning look.

“I do.”

“He left me there,” I said, my throat tightening. “The night after the Lark sank, he left me on Jeval.”

They fell silent, their eyes finding the ground. I didn’t know their stories, but I imagined they couldn’t be much better than mine. I wasn’t foolish enough to feel sorry for myself. The Narrows was the edge of a blade. You couldn’t live here and not get cut. And I didn’t have it in me to be ashamed of where I’d come from. Those days were gone.

Hamish gave me a nod before he flipped his coin in, and they all looked to West. He stood silent as the seabirds called out in the dark behind him, and I wondered if he would change his mind, letting the crew outvote him.