Page 132 of A Promise of Peridot
I wasn’t hiding from what might tether me to this life anymore. I wasn’t concealing my feelings for my own benefit—I was doing it for his.
Was that foolish? Or a mercy?
I stared across the bustling castle, gloomy and shadowed as ever—Stones, I had missed this place. The candles flickering in the summer wind that slipped through wide-open stained-glass windows. The fireflies drifting around in drowsy late-afternoon air. I knew fall would be here soon, and all the trees would turn the maple color of my childhood.
I wondered if I’d be here to see it. What it might feel like to blend my old home and my new. What I might look like, wrapped in my familiar fox fur, my new boots stomping through the crisp, fallen leaves all over the courtyard. The children I might treat in the apothecary, knees scraped from hay and hands blistered from carving gourds.
Did Kane love the rusted red and sunflower yellow of the leaves when they grew here in his bountiful keep? Or still loathe them as much as he did back in Amber? If he did, I would have to convince him otherwise. If we were both still here then, I would drag him, grumbling and rolling his eyes, into the gloomy woods and force him to jump in the leaves with me like schoolchildren. To brew cider with me, as rich as the one from Mariner’s Pub—mulled and sweet and spiced. I’d show him all the reasons autumn was spellbinding and gorgeously melancholy. Why even as a citizen of Onyx, it would always be a part of me.
“Arwen?” Mari rounded out of the throne room with Ryder and Leigh in tow, shaking me from my hopes.
Hope.
That’s what that felt like.
Leigh flew into me with racehorse speed. The stone floor of the hallway was cold on my knees as I sank to the ground and held her, blonde hair filling my vision. Ryder joined us on the floor, making the hug smell of tobacco.
“You’ve been smoking,” I whispered into them.
“I would never,” Leigh swore against my back.
“Not you.” I grinned, pulling on one of her curls. “How are you both?”
Leigh withdrew and spoke first. “You’re in love with Kane?”
My eyes widened. “Eavesdropping?”
Ryder blanched. “I wasn’t, just her.”
“You love him, but you’re not going to tell him?” Leigh’s face was grave.
“Leigh, this has nothing to do with you.”
“When will you stop treating me like a kid?”
My heart sank. We were already fighting. “Why are you so angry with me these days?”
“I’ll let you two talk,” Ryder offered. Torchlight glinted along his hair as he ambled down the stone hallway back toward Mari.
“I’m not angry with you,” Leigh said.
“Yes, you are. You’ve been furious with me since the day we left for Citrine, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.”
“I’m not angry,” she conceded, and with more maturity than I had seen from her before, said, “I’m afraid.”
For a moment, I couldn’t fathom an adequate response. Of course she was afraid. How had I been so blind?
“Me, too,” I admitted, taking her hand in my own. “Of Lazarus, of this war. But what do your fears have to do with me and Kane?”
“No, that’s the problem,” she said, yanking her hand from mine. “You can’t be scared, too. One of us has to be brave.”
“Leigh...” I started, her words a vise around my heart. “I wish I knew what to say to make everything feel safe again.”
“I know there isn’t anything.”
“Maybe not. But you know what? When I was most scared, there was one thing that helped me.”
“Running?”
