Page 119 of A Promise of Peridot
“I know what you fight for.”
“We will do our best to find your father, and if he is alive, we will return him to you and your mother,” Arwen said. “If I can find the blade, I will kill Lazarus. I will fight to give you a world in which you do not have to hide.”
“You will die,” Beth said, devoid of emotion, and I tried to ignore the way three words from the mouth of a seven-year-old nearly brought me to my knees.
Arwen, to her credit, kept her voice even. “I know.”
Beth turned to face Lake Stygian. The sun had disappeared behind Hemlock Isle in the distance, and the night had become chilling and forlorn.
“The story your mother told you was true. She met your father in a tavern, and they spent the night together. He left the next morning and she never saw him again.”
“So shewasmy mother? How is that possible? Was she a full-blooded Fae, too?”
“No. She was mortal. Carrying a full-blooded Fae to term in her womb made her ill. She should have died, from the lighte that poisoned her. But your abilities healed her over and over again. Eventually, she grew immune, and the months of holding a powerful being inside her took their toll.”
“You’re saying I—killed my own mother?”
Beth, not one for sympathy, only nodded. “But she knew what you were. Your father told her the truth.”
Arwen stalled, unable to find words to respond.
“And what was that?” I asked, words forming around my own shock. We needed to wrap this up before Arwen’s shattered heart took some final blow it couldn’t withstand.
Beth brought her chin up to face me. “That he was a Fae God. And he would father the final full-blooded Fae. A chosen one, a prophesied savior of Fae and mortal alike. And that it was unlikely she would survive the pregnancy.”
“But she did,” Arwen said. Not a question. “She survived.”
“You healed her.”
Arwen shook her head. “And then shelived. Even after I couldn’t heal her anymore.”
“Yes,” Beth said, face almost careless.
Arwen’s brows pinched together, and her voice broke as she asked,“Why?”
It could have killed me, to hear so much pain in her voice. I reached for her, but she was fragile, her emotions too precarious—later. I’d trysomehow to soothe her later. I flexed my fingers and folded them into my pocket.
“I can only tell you what happened, or what will happen. Not why.”
“Perhaps it was her love for her children,” I supplied.
“That was what her stepfather thought, too.”
Arwen’s eyes shot from the ground up to Beth. “Powell knew? He knew what I was?”
“Your mother told him everything.”
The beatings. Arwen had wondered why he hated her. Now we both knew. He thought she was killing the woman he loved. It was awful. It wasunfathomable. It was—
“Thank you, Beth,” I said, breathing evenly. “Can you tell us one last thing?”
Beth looked back up to the winding road that led up to her mother’s shop. “I don’t want my mother to come looking for me.”
“Quickly, then. Is there any other way to kill Lazarus? Is Arwen truly the only one who can defeat him?”
“I don’t know all that is to come. I only see bits and pieces. I have seen the way of the Crow, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s possible, but the cost will be greater to her than her own life.”
The pit in my stomach expanded with the weight of the girl’s words. What could cost Arwen more than her very life? The thought terrified me.
