Page 115 of A Promise of Peridot
“I wish I could help you both. Truly, I do.” She turned to Kane. “If you are his son then you already know what Lazarus did to my mother, and that I was lucky to make it out of Lumera alive. But my father was fully mortal. I inherited some lighte, but not the ability to discern the will of the Gods.”
“Why does Amber think otherwise?”
“They came here, months ago. Interrogated me, threatened my husband and our son. They didn’t believe us when we told them I didn’t have the skill. When I realized they wouldn’t leave withoutsomething, I... I lied.”
“You told them false prophecies?” I asked.
She dipped her chin, and her eyes spied the stairs behind the counter. “I didn’t know what else to do. They took my husband. Told me never to share my visions with anyone else if I wanted to see him again.” Her face hardened as she came to some conclusion. “I appreciate what you are trying to do, but I need you to leave now.”
“What did you tell them?” I pressed.
Esme squirmed, eyes again darting toward the stairs behind her. “I can’t risk sharing any more, I’m sorry. Please, just go.”
“Of course,” I said loudly. Kane’s eyes shot to mine, but I ignored him. “We’ll leave, then. If you change your mind, we’ll be at Mariner’s Pub until dark. I promise you, Esme, if you help us find what we need, we will free your husband and return him to you.”
“I already told you,” she said, brows knitting together. “I don’t have the ability you seek.”
“I know.” I pushed from the counter, tugging Kane with me by the sleeve.
Once we were a good bit down the road, he whirled on me. “Mind clueing me in?”
“I think Esme has a daughter. I saw her right as we walked in.”
“So?”
“Somaybe her daughter is the one with the ability. She only has one kid. The raincoats, the boots... only three. For her, her husband, and their child. But she said she had a son, and the child I saw was a little girl.”
Kane’s brows furrowed, his eyes considering.
“Can’t seers only be women?” I pushed. “Why else would she lie unless she didn’t want anyone to know what her daughter could do?”
“Even if she had a daughter, and she lied to us about it... that girl would practically be a halfling. The likelihood that such a great deal of lighte skipped a generation...”
“Esme was definitely hiding something. She kept looking toward the basement, where Isawthe girl run off. And no chance she’s getting away with lying to Halden and his men. She’d get a ‘vision’ wrong eventually unless she had someone that was feeding them to her. That bit with the rain pail was a classic charlatan trick. They used to come to Abbington all the time and try to swindle our coin by predicting the leaves would fall.”
Kane ran a hand across his mouth in thought. “So she creates the ruse to protect her child from Lazarus.”
“Right. She saw what happened to her own mother, her husband... I don’t blame her.”
“What makes you so sure the little girl will come find us? It would be an awfully risky thing to do.”
I looked back down at the town below us and the dark, inky water beyond the docks. Fish and salt and pine heavy in the afternoon air. “I’m not sure. But I have hope. It’s what I’d like to think I would do. To get my family back, if they had been taken. And maybe to help the good side win. We’ll have to see.”
Kane chuckled beside me, our feet falling on the stone in seamless rhythm. “Bright-side bird. Should I call you that?”
“Too wordy. I like my nickname as it is.”
“You do? Well, that’s no fun, now, is it? Shall I call you something else? ‘Mongoose’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it...”
I laughed despite myself. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Only for you.”
When I peered up at him, he was fighting off a grin of his own. My eyes widened, shocked that the very earth below us hadn’t crumbled and broken apart or the sea hadn’t swallowed us whole. Kane and I were getting along. And not fighting. And not sleeping together.
I sighed, deep and even, and faced back toward the town.
Kane’s voice was a little like velvet as he said, “Are you ready to drink until dark?”
