My Book Boyfriend: Saf

MBB is an weekly meme hosted over at the Unread Reader--if you want to read the intro post, click here

This week, I'm crushing on Saf from Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue (which is amazing, let me tell you).


Saf is...

• actually named Sapphire--after a Lienid Sapphire because...
• he has purple eyes--different shades because he is a graceling
• was originally born in Monsea, but grew up in Lienid to escape Leck's evilness
• is a thief... and also a treasure diver... and sailor because he grew up aboard a Lienid ship

His hair was brown like wet sand, sun-bleached almost white at the ends, his skin deeply freckled. His facial features, though nice enough, were not particularly Lienid, but the gold studs that flashed in his ears and the rings on his fingers--those were unquestionably Lienid. His eyes were impossibly purple, so that one knew at once he wasn't just a plain person

"He exhaled. "Oh, weaselbugger," he said grimly. 



"I don't know what my Grace is."
This earned him a skeptical look. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said. I don't know."
"Balls. Don't Graces become plain during childhood?"
He shrugged. "Whatever it is, it must be a thing I've never had any use for. Like, oh, I don't know, eating a cake the size of a barrel without getting indigested, except that's not it, because I've tried that one. Trust me," he said, with a roll of his eyes and an apathetic long-suffering wave. "I've tried everything."



How loyal and gentle Saf had been with her, and without her asking it of him. As quick to love as he was to anger, as quick to warmth as to foolishness, and he had a tenderness she wouldn't have expected from him. She wondered if you could love someone you didn't understand.
His eyes flickered open, soft purples shining on her. When he saw her, he smiled.



"What's so funny?"
"I should know by now not to be surprised by anything you say or do, shouldn't I, Sparks?"
His voice had gone gentle somehow. Teasing. They stood close, heads bent together over the watch, her fingers still holding his hand. She understood something suddenly, not with her mind, but in the air that touched her throat and made her shiver when she looked up into her bruised face.

She woke to him settling her onto blankets on the floor. "Stay with me," she said. "Don't go."
He lay beside her and wrapped his arms around her. She slept.