Page 124 of A Promise of Peridot
I wanted to sayI’ll try, but all I could manage was a nod.
He sighed once, releasing my fingers, and drew his hand across his still-wet eyes. “And I’ll always be here for you, to help.”
And I don’t know if it was the pain—the raw vulnerability in his voice—or the revelations of the day, or the brutal past week, or simply the rhythmic pounding of rain against glass and stone, but a surge of emotion I had been stifling down, pressing into the farthest, most buried recesses of my very soul came barreling out with the force of a tidal wave.
“But I won’t,” I whispered. “I won’t be here.”
My chest and neck felt hot and sticky, and I realized I was well and truly crying. “I don’t want this,” I admitted through the tears, the truth spilling from my lips after all this time. “I never wanted to sacrifice myself. I want to end Lazarus, I swear that I do. I want to save all the suffering people, kill him for what he did to you, and Dagan, and Griffin, but...” The words were barreling out too fast to catch, to cram back inside. “I want a chance at a real life, too. I want to watch Leigh grow up, to have a family of my own, maybe.There’s too much I’ve never seen, too much I’ll never do. And I’m so scared... of what it will feel like. If there will be anything after. Of how much it will hurt.” I choked on the word. The pain I imagined would devour me as the life was drained from my heart.
“I don’t want to be the full-blooded Fae. I don’t want to save the realms. I don’t want to be brave.” All the thoughts that I had buried so deep within myself were finally free. It was the most agonizing relief I had ever felt. “I don’t want to die, Kane.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you don’t.”
He wrapped me in his arms and I wept into his chest. I cried for my short, lonely life, which was going to be snuffed out right when I might have finally found the things worth living for. I cried for Leigh and Ryder losing another family member. For Mari. For Dagan.
And I cried for Kane. For the horrendous things he had seen. For those he had lost. His guilt, his suffering. His mother. His brother. His too-large, passionate heart that only ever meant to do good. And for the fact that even if I succeeded in killing his greatest enemy, Lazarus would still win. He’d still take someone else Kane loved with him when he went.
I cried and cried and cried—fat ugly tears, deep heaving sobs. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to. I wanted to suffocate in my grief and leave the weight of the world on someone else’s shoulders. And all the while, Kane held me, rubbing slow circles into my back. Tucking my hair away from my wet face. Murmuring soothing words against the top of my head.
Until finally, there was nothing left to expel.
No more grief. No more truths. No more tears.
I was free.
36
arwen
I peeled my face from Kane’s now soggy shirt and looked up at him.
“Feel a bit better?”
I sighed in affirmation, long and heavy.
“Accepting this fate with ease, estranging yourself from everyone to spare them the pain of losing you... It’s been killing you, Arwen. It’s the antithesis of who you are. You are hope incarnate.”
Despite everything, my blood sang at his words. “I didn’t want to be that weak, vulnerable little girl anymore. The person I was when we first met—I couldn’t to go back to that.”
“You told me once that emotions aren’t weaknesses. Take some of your own advice. Admitting you don’t want to die isn’t cowardice. In fact, it’s the opposite.”
It reminded me of something Dagan had said months ago.“There is only true courage in facing what frightens you.”And in Azurine, how vulnerability was what made us human. Gave us something to fight for.
Kane’s expression was softer than I’d ever seen it. He wiped the tears away from under my eyes but didn’t release my face. Instead, he brushed his calloused thumb over my cheek with such gentleness my face began to heat.
“We will find a way out of this,” he murmured.
There was no other way. Not if we wanted to conquer Lazarus, and we both knew it. I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued.
“I told you I used to dream each night of their deaths. Now, I dream of something else, too. I dream of losing you to him the same way. I wake up dripping sweat, heart pounding through my chest, sheets torn around me with your name still lodged in my throat.”
I stilled at his words.
“I said it before, on the ship to Citrine all those weeks ago—I will not let anything happen to you. Nothing, not even the good of all the realms combined, is worth the loss ofyou. We will find another way.”
I stared at Kane—his still-wet cheeks, his simmering silver eyes lit with nothing but adamant, unbending will. Such determination, and still so calm, so assured...
“I want to believe you, but I’m so, so scared to have hope.”
