Page 102 of A Promise of Peridot
“Briar, darling,” Kane’s words were coy, but his eyes flashed. “Control yourself.”
“I will do what Iplease,” she said, with deadlier calm than I had ever heard someone speak around Kane. “I have half a mind to show you exactly why you were wise to stay away all those years—”
“You’re right,” I said, the words spilling from my lips before I could catch them. “I’m the full-blooded Fae. He didn’t tell youbecause I begged him not to. Too many people are after me... Kane told me how much he trusted you. I was foolish not to listen.”
I could hear Kane’s frustrated sigh, but I kept my eyes on Briar. I expected wrath, or violence, but when she turned back to face me, it was satisfaction that pursed her lips. Some kind of... acceptance.
“Right,” she said evenly. “I figured as much.” And with that she drifted out of the room as if on a wisp of smoke, and left the rest of us in silence.
?Knowing Mari would wake soon, and that, at least for the time being, Briar would not kick her out of her home, we had decided to leave for Crag’s Hollow in the morning. Griffin, still glued to Mari’s bedside like a barnacle on the bottom of a sunken ship, had brushed off the call to supper, choosing to eat in his leather chair that surely held the distinct imprint of his backside by now.
But I was starving.
Now that I didn’t fear Mari’s impending death, air flowed through my lungs more easily, my tight limbs had loosened, my appetite had returned...
Along with a flood of emotions that must have been kept at bay by all my worry.
Memories of Kane and me, shouting at each other in the wet, muggy jungle. Accusing and admitting in equal measure things I was sure we both wished we hadn’t said.
And Fedrik, urging me to abandon Kane for my own safety.
And Kane, still believing Fedrik had kissed me. Which he had, but—
Believing it had meant something entirely different than it had.
After bathing and dressing, I descended the stairs to find Kane and Fedrik in the dining room, and Briar, dressed in a fine navy gown and decadent fur shawl. “I have a dinner engagement of my own tonight, but Cori’s roast is scrumptious,” she said to Kane, as if she hadn’t just threatened his life mere hours ago. Then she closed the front door primly, leaving me with two beleaguered men and one glistening, savory roast.
The three of us sat down in silence and began to eat, the sound of metal on porcelain a conflicting accompaniment to the harp that played itself in the next room. I brought my fork to my mouth and tried to appreciate the rich flavors, but each bite curdled on my tongue as I thought of all the pain I had brought the three of us.
I tried to cram those thoughts into some cluttered corner in my mind, but the recesses of my psyche were becoming too crowded—each painful thought I shoved in forced an even less pleasant one out.
More cutlery grated on porcelain. More haunting harp music, the strings in the next room plucking themselves. More insufferable silence.
I could think of nothing at all to say to Kane, so I turned to Fedrik. “Have you been to Willowridge before?”
“Yes, a few times, actually.” He finished his bite and looked from Kane to me before continuing, if not a little awkwardly. “The city is quite special. You would love it, Wen. The art here—the galleries. The sculptures alone are some of the best crafted marble I’ve had the pleasure of viewing. And the food. I once had this entire rack of lamb, served out of a—”
“Yes, it’s my favorite of my cities,” Kane said, as he sipped his wine. “I quite like that herb-crusted lamb myself.”
Fedrik frowned, clearly not having intended to directlycompliment Kane’s capital. “Where else do you and Briar like to go when you’re here visiting her?”
I lifted a brow, to which Fedrik only shrugged. But he knew what his question implied. That Kane was a cad, a dog—that he wined and dined beautiful witches and took them to bed after visiting galleries and eating racks of herb-crusted lamb.
Kane’s expression was one of unflinching calm as he put down his fork and said, “There’s a charming bacchanal off Till Street where they fuck sheep and drink the blood of virgins. Shall we stroll by after dinner?”
Fedrik smiled stiffly, but I could tell he wasn’t sure if Kane was joking. I was about to relieve him of his concern, when the mention of Briar brought a strange thought to the surface of my mind.
Kane had slept with his dead mother’s closest friend.
Briar had slept with her friend’s son after she died. A boy she had likely watched grow up.
Suddenly the relationship that had felt so sensual and threatening to me was imbued with sorrow, remorse, and shared grief. It gave me a dull, cloying stomachache, like a too-hot, winding carriage ride.
“I’m full,” I said as I pushed my chair from the table without poise. Fedrik stood, too, polite as ever, while Kane’s silver gaze from his seat stripped me bare. I let my feet carry me down the candlelit hall and up the stairs. Closing the door to my room with such force the books quivered, I dumped myself onto the bed like a rag doll.
But the silence was too loud up here, too. Too oppressive.
I appraised the walls and walls of books, leaning closer to read their weathered spines. A pink-hued leather tome that had clearly once been cherry red reminded me of Niclas and his family’s story.A History of War in Rose.
