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