Page 145 of A Promise of Peridot
“Arwen—”
“That is not a price I am willing to pay for my life. You’d be dooming me to an existence of grief. That’s not a noble sacrifice; that’s you taking the easy way out.”
“Arwen—”
“You told me—promisedme—that we would find a way out of this, and I am choosing to finally have some hope, and now you tell me your brilliant plan was to kill yourself?”
“No,” I said calmly, attempting to ease her hysterics. “I won’t go. If that’s what you want, I won’t go see him.”
“Thank you.” She exhaled.
“We’ll find another way.”
“We have to,” she said. “We just have to.”
?We called a meeting to converge in the war tent at six. Inside, noblemen and soldiers crowded the space, sharpening weapons, poring over maps, and discussing strategy over piping-hot mugs of coffee and tea. At the sound of our entrance, over two dozen eyes landed on us like moths pulled to a flame, focusing on our hands, twined together.
“Holy Stones.” Mari clutched her collarbone, looking up from the spell book in Dagan’s grasp. “Did you two finally—”
“Definitely, they did,” Amelia said, lounging in a leather love seat next to Ryder, who peered up from a desk stacked high with diagrams.
“You two are so foul,” Ryder said.
Mari rolled her eyes at him, but it was Amelia’s reaction to Ryder that caught my eye.
She blushed. Actuallyblushed.
And not secretly, privately, hiding her face from him, like some schoolgirl with a crush on Arwen’s brother.
No—this was the flush of a shared secret. A private joke between two people who had shared something intimate. Thinking nobody was watching them, Ryder and Amelia made the briefesteye contact, so fleeting, so quick that I was sure I had made the whole thing up.
Until he brushed his hand against her folded arm and they both fought a smirk.
Maybe something had happened between them while stuck in Citrine together. Ryder surely had the blind arrogance needed to get within a foot of the impenetrable Amelia.
But what on earth did she see inhim?
I wanted her to be happy—to find someone she cared about, and not just for the benefit of her father—butRyder?
The kid was a weasel. A thief, a coward who paraded around as brave but seemed to always protect himself first and everyone else second, if at all. He was a self-serving, boastful creep who likely knew of Arwen’s suffering at the hands of his father her whole damn childhood and did nothing about it.
As if Arwen could sense my tension, she gave my hand a squeeze. When I caught her curious expression, I shook my head as if to sayit’s nothing. I’d fill her in on what I saw later, once we had returned safely to Shadowhold with the blade.
Right now, we had more important matters at stake than who may or may not have been sleeping with whom.
42
arwen
Kane and I chose not to tell anyone save for Griffin about our trip to Hemlock Isle. When I asked why we shouldn’t bring more men with us than those already stationed on the prison island, Kane had explained that Hemlock was a precarious ecosystem that functioned almost as if it were its own separate kingdom. To bring an army might disrupt the island’s fragile order. Or worse, incite war. Griffin was the only one we trusted not to fight us on the decision to go alone. And the fewer people who knew where the blade was at any given moment, the better for us all.
Kane and I approached Griffin and Eardley, who were wound into some kind of tense debate. Eardley had rich dark skin and a strong jaw. He looked a bit too pretty to be a lieutenant, but when he spoke, the entire room went silent straining to listen, nearly as much as when Griffin did. They both fell quiet at our arrival.
“Morning,” Kane said. “Has the battalion left yet to track down the seer’s father?”
“Yes.” Griffin nodded. “Late last night.”
“Good.”
