Page 154 of A Promise of Peridot
A blow to my temple sent my head swimming with pain, and a swift darkness overtook me, alongside the sound of Kane’s muffled roar.
44
arwen
Kane’s brows knit inward. His head cocked to the side. “Don’t you love me?”
“Of course I do.” Of course, of course, of course...
“Then let me take your place. Let me die for you.”
I opened my mouth to tell him no—please, please no—but only embers fell out. Little embers, each with wings. Tiny winged embers falling from my tongue, like ash in wind. Lighting me up from the inside. Setting me ablaze.
My eyes flew open and I gasped wildly, drawing damp forest air into my lungs. I thrashed—
My arms.
They were tied behind me. Wrapped in something. My legs, too, and across my middle. Oh,Stones, my lungs. They were seizing. I needed air. I needed to move. And something smelled like rot. Like carrion. Like death—
The howls and shouts of Hemlock’s inhabitants shook the fog of panic from my mind, and I fought to breathe through mypounding headache, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. All I could make out were wooden bridges and wicker structures lit by lanterns and torches overhead. I was suspended somehow, across a long, thin net that webbed between all the trees and posts and branches supporting the city.
Above me, in the houses and along the interlaced bridges, stood men and women, some husky with tattoos, others thin and underfed, street urchin children weaving in and out of legs to get a better look. Killoran had mentionedentertainment, and the slowly gathering crowd told me all I needed to know about their show of choice.
My shackles weren’t leather or metal or even lilium. But rather stiff, translucent silk. It looped around my wrists, my stomach, my legs, and spread between the trees, the two platforms, forming the netting that held me between the branches and pines.
Not netting. It wasn’t net at all.
It was aweb.
A thin yet impenetrable web laced around the lower trees of Hemlock’s city. And strewn throughout—
Bodies.Carcasses. Half-eaten, rotting, and decomposing all along the tangled silk.
Despite the churning in my stomach, I didn’t dare look away—I couldn’t. Not until I figured out what had killed them. Their state of decay was the only clue I had to decipher whatever was coming to kill me. I squinted at the torn limbs and open wounds.
No, not torn. Burned. Boiled and bubbled as if—
Acid.
Whatever trapped and hunted these less-fortunate prisoners devoured them with acidic venom. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew from the webbing what was possible. Had heard stories from Halden andRyder over the years of widows: spiders the size of lions, with the upper bodies and heads of women. The venom in their fangs so toxic, one touch to the bloodstream could boil you alive.
I struggled against my thin, corded restraints. Bouncing myself on the net, I dug at the threads I could reach with my fingertips, but the tangled silk was stronger than chain. Unmovable.
Bleeding Stones.
I needed to do whatever I did that day with Halden. I had disintegrated rope somehow. How had I done that?
My lighte buzzed and tingled at my fingertips and in my palms. I clenched my jaw and gnashed my teeth.
I could sense it bubbling up.
Thank the Stones.
Feeling the heat, seeing it illuminating the dark—
I cast my eyes down over my shoulder and nearly hurled my entire stomach into the depths, swallowing any lighte back into my body in a flash.
The thin web under my bound body was all that kept me from the endless, knotted pit of trees and cliffs below. If I escaped from this impenetrable silk net and freed myself, I’d likely slip right through the gaps and plunge, screaming, to an instant death.
