Page 157 of A Promise of Peridot
The widow lunged for a cowering, dirtied child and I yanked her back with all my strength until the tendons in my arms were straining, sweat beading and pooling on my brow—
Back, Stones-damn it,back—
She screeched again, so close to my ear it sent my teeth gnashing.
“That’s not the one you want,” I bit out. “How about the man that chained you?”
The widow retracted from the boy and cocked her elegant head in my direction. Long, silken black hair spilled over my knee and I wriggled from the sensation.
“He’s up there.” I tugged the chain toward Killoran’s war room. “And I’m going to kill him.”
The widow took off, climbing vertically over the unpolished posts, pails of water, a butcher’s hut—one long, elegant leg plunging through a cut of beef as patrons ran for the bridges and dove off the platform, away from her still-dripping fangs.
Higher still she climbed as arrows rained down on both of us. But if I had practiced one single skill with my lighte in the weeks since Siren’s Bay, it was the iridescent golden shield I flowered around me, which protected us both from the weapons that sailed overhead.
We climbed high enough that I could see Killoran, dragging Kane by his lilium chains away from the balcony and into his throne room. The widow would keep climbing, keep feasting through the city. This was my shot—
Without even steeling myself, I released her hair and leapt.
I landed hard, halfway onto the knotted beams of Killoran’s balcony, hands scrambling to grip the ledge. I hoisted myself up and over the mismatched wooden planks and slumped down onto the floor to catch my rough, ragged breaths.
I was mere feet from Kane, who was too pale and drenched in sweat, trying to call to me through the leather gag.
But I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything except the roaring in my ears and the racing of my heart and that pulsing, unfathomable pain in my mind, back again. I tried to push myself up but my sight had blurred—
Killoran’s men had me in their grip within seconds.
Exhaustion consumed me and I sagged against their steadfast hold.
“No matter,” Killoran muttered from across the room. “I’ll dispose of her myself,” he roared to the crowd outside. But all I could hear were their screams as the widow prowled through their city, plunging her spiked legs through their canvas roofs and tearing her fangs into anyone in sight.
Served them all right.
I hoped she went to bed very full tonight.
Killoran stalked toward me, unsheathing his sword.
And suddenly that mind-altering sensation, that crippling, gooseflesh-inducing twist...
It was replaced by an onslaught of sea wind and cackling, white-hot coals and the unflinching stare of death and a cold morning filled with dazzling sunbeams and—
I strained against the assault and squeezed my eyes shut.
An assault of sequences I hadn’t ever seen—a child inside a womb, a decaying fox in a wood, a chorus of bells, ashes and embers and flames—I sucked in air as I tried to grasp one image, one sensation, and make sense of it before another invaded my mind. I strained against my captors as the power battered me.
Unrelenting madness and ecstasy and power.
Pure, persistentpower—
Beckoning to me—
To its master.
Reunited, though we had never met.
I was not afraid.
I knew what it was.
