Page 152 of A Promise of Peridot
Killoran grinned up at the bald man to his right before turning back toward us. “Do you know what it’s like here in the winters?”
Kane’s face remained bored. “Can’t say that I do.”
Killoran grinned again, but this time his eyes had grown cold. A foreboding feeling dropped into my stomach.
“In the wintertime, just a few months from now, the sun will fall behind the cliffs’ edge before noon every day. All of Hemlock, plunged into unforgiving darkness for hours and hours before night even begins. Can you imagine how pale we all become? How thin when it is too dark to hunt well? How bored we get? Do you know what boredom does to those like us with demons in our heads?”
Kane’s eyes narrowed.
“And you must know what it’s like in the heat of summer. When this asshole of an island begins to cook and boil like the depths of a valley? When our wells run dry and bodies—men, women, children—begin to pile up? Can you imagine the stench? Do you know what cooked, rotting human flesh smells like?”
I swallowed hard against the nausea that twisted, greasy and bitter in my stomach. I knew his words were a threat. Kane must have felt similarly, because he stepped in front of me, ever so slightly, his hands resting casually at his sides, though I swore black thorns danced around his knuckles.
Kane bared his gleaming white teeth. “I’ll flay the skin from your muscles before I grant you freedom.”
But Killoran only laughed. “Freedom? Is that what you call your world out there? Free? No, pretty king,” Killoran drawled. “Your world is not my freedom. Despite Hemlock’s fickle isle, I have everything I could possibly want here. Out there, in your world, I am a nobody. A murderer, a rapist—” I flinched at theword, and Killoran’s eyes lit with delight. “Just a scummy piece of human grime. But here—” Killoran gestured to the stacks of rusted swords and spears lined against the walls, the abhorrent table before him, covered in dented steel goblets. The gaunt, chained women at his feet, and the men who would lay their lives down for him without a single beat of hesitation. “Here, I am aking. Just like you.”
Kane’s jaw went stiff, and I swore I could feel the rage radiating off him. Rage at this man, dangling our safety like a rat above a python’s open jaws. Rage at the comparison between the two of them. On his worst days I knew this was how Kane saw himself. Ruthless, cruel, self-serving.
“There’s nothing we can offer you?” I asked, surprising both myself and Kane.
Killoran leaned forward with interest, giving me a broad, hateful smile. “So, the armorer girl can speak.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, that peculiar, distant aching in my stomach back once more. “So she can.”
“I never said you have nothing to offer me. In fact, you can offer me the one thing I need most.”
“Well, get on with it. I have dinner plans,” Kane said, running a hand through his hair, the picture of disinterest. “And even more important ones for dessert.”
Killoran sat back in his throne and the wood groaned behind him as he lifted his legs. The thin blond girl who had been next to his feet moved without hesitation underneath them, contorting herself into a human footstool.
I swallowed pure bile but didn’t give Killoran the satisfaction of looking away.
“When I came here, I was only seventeen. An orphan with fewoptions, I had joined a crew of men in the Blade Moors, done things that would pull the breakfast from green eyes over here”—Killoran pointed a blunt finger at me—“and was given a one-way ticket to Hemlock with the very man who had taught me all I knew.
“I had thoughtwewere bad, but the men and women in this place...” Killoran huffed a rueful laugh. “I had no idea ofbad. But it turned out I didn’t have to be the baddest, or the meanest, or the toughest.” Killoran ran a hand over his mustache. “I just had to be thesmartest.
“Night three, I killed the man who had raised me—who had taken knives and lashings for me. I plunged an axe into his esophagus in front of thirty other men.” Killoran chuckled as if it was a fond, silly recollection.
“The next day, the entirety of Hemlock followed me. My own band of merry warriors.” Killoran grinned wide, all too pleased with himself. “It took me years to grind my way to where I am now. Years, and lives, and more sacrifice and hard work than you’ve ever known in your life, pretty king.”
Kane’s jaw tensed. “My patience is waning. What is it you want, Grim?”
I wished I could speak directly into Kane’s mind.He’s playing with us. Let’s go. We’ll come back with your army.The bizarre feeling that hadn’t left since I entered the room was spinning wildly into spiked fear and carving at my insides. I wanted to leave. Now, now,now—
“You haven’t even heard the end of the story! So young, so impatient.” Killoran clucked his tongue. “I’ve ruled the island for two decades now. The longest anyone has ever held on to this throne. And now, after all I’ve done for the people of this island, all the factions I have aligned, I hear there’s amutinybrewing?” Killoran’seyes had narrowed into slits. “I don’t need your weapons, your finery, your provisions. What Ineedis to prove my power. My smarts.”
I didn’t know who moved first.
Kane’s night-black lighte wrecked and thrummed through the room, against the walls, punishingly loud and metallic on my tongue. It spun around us—out of his hands like sable crows’ wings, sailing through the lair, slicing Killoran’s men with the razor edges of dragon scales, talons, and poison fangs. Ropes of that guttering power flew from Kane’s spine, his hackles raised, and strangled a snarling man I hadn’t even seen coming.
And theblood—
So much seeping, oozing blood—
The men, dropping one after another, some sliced at the throat, gore pouring into the threads of their clothes, others carved through the skull or cracked down the chest like ripe, halved fruit.
But one of Killoran’s men was already grasping me around my middle and hauling me backward. I cried out, unable to yank free—
